Chapter Text
Days where Eris wakes with her skin crawling are never good. Those are the days when harmless brushes feel just like the impending strike of Thrall-claws. Unexpected movements in her vicinity touch her like a physical thing. The felt-unfelt sensation of it runs over her like a ripple of revulsion. The half-felt whispers of the Hive linger and cling to her like the smell of smoke. It makes her long for some kind of stability or comfort that she cannot quite imagine anymore.
Without warning, such memories sometimes rush her like stormwaters. Their painfully reinstated immediacy muddles present and past, closeness and distance, distorted like light that refracts and reflects through moving water.
Unpredictable. Unreliable. Inconsistency is maddening. It is difficult to trust her surroundings when they can at random become superimposed and entangled with another truth, another place, another time.
Today is not good.
Eris rises from the tiny bunk in the shadowy interior of her ship. A hiss escapes her. Already she catches herself gritting her teeth at the contact of her own clothing. She folds her arms across her chest and rubs her hands over her upper arms as if to warm them up, trying to physically remind herself where she is.
The plain, worn linen underlayers she wears under her armor are utilitarian, but usually comfortable enough. Their familiarity is steadying. Wearing them while she rests makes it easier to armor herself in a hurry if she needs to. No one is there to transmat her gear on in an eyeblink if she is caught with her guard down. The next time she falls, no one can raise her. She is alone.
If she put on her armor now, its protective weight and bulk might make her feel safer in the short term. Sometimes, when fear’s claws sink deep, it helps. But today, that would only keep her mind bound in this troubled, fearful state by the physical reminder. She can tell. She has been at this crossroads many times. Eris is familiar with the vagaries of her own mind, even if she is still subject to them. For now, the best she can do is put on something soft and comfortable and get through the day.
She is trying. She is trying so hard to break the titanium grip the past has on her.
Nonetheless, no armor means no work on Luna today. In any case, she would only end up snapping at visiting Guardians to keep their distance, unable to focus on her work. Yet she is still a Hunter at heart: few things are as torturous as inactivity. Perhaps a trip to the City for supplies is in order a little earlier than planned.
If she visited the Tower, she could consult with Ikora, as well. The idea placates her. While she can describe her current research over comms, it is easier to just show her the progress she’s made. Ikora is an excellent researcher who is sensible and intelligent and doesn’t waste time on trivialities. She has many helpful references and perspectives to share.
Besides, Eris appreciates her company. In her quieter moments, Eris will sometimes even admit to herself how much she missed it, in her years abroad. Ikora has always been kind to Eris, incredibly kind. Too much so, sometimes.
Decided, Eris changes the cloth over her eyes and dons loose pants and a long-sleeved tunic that give her enough room to move. They’re dark and nondescript like most of her wardrobe. The give of the heavy knit fabric helps ease the physical part of the discomfort that pervades her entire being today. Except for the tracery on her hands, the length of her cuffs conceals those of her scars that lay on her skin. But others remain as evident as ever in her gait, in the way her body moves through space, and written across her face in garish glow and bleeding dark.
Her breath comes a little easier once she wraps her voluminous headscarf about her head and shoulders. Like her field cloak, it is reinforced with countless interwoven strands of treated ultrafine spinmetal wire. Due to the metal’s unique resonance with Arc, it used to help her channel the lightning. Now, she is simply too accustomed to the unique flex of the way such fabric hangs on her frame to change it. The difference is subtle, nearly unnoticeable except for the slight heaviness of the cloth and incremental resistance to crumpling. The weight of it helps ground her as much as the extra protection. Without something substantial over her shoulders, she is far too exposed. An errant breeze becomes the telltale airflow through damp stone tunnels, a warning of presence: the possibility of her last breath. Something as solid as a touch at her scapula - intolerable. She pulls her scarf a little tighter at the mere thought.
Likewise, she wraps herself in her talismans as she does every day. Sai’s necklace at her brow and Omar’s knives at her belt remain in their usual places. Eriana’s letters from Wei go in one pocket and Toland’s journal in the other, each a comforting weight against her thigh. In the absence of her armguards and gauntlets, she wraps Vell’s mark around one forearm like a vambrace. She knots it gently at the back of her wrist, giving the corners of it a gentle tug with her free hand and her teeth.
Her ever-burning Ahamkara bone she secures in a pouch at her belt, where it glows luridly between the weft and warp of the cloth. It is neither subtle nor necessary. Still, she has business to do, and it leaves her hands free while relegating her accompanying beacon out of the center of focus. It tends to distract vendors.
Eris stretches her stiff muscles for a few minutes before heading to the cockpit. She eases the creaks out of her bad wrist and ankle as well as she can, tenderly tests the tension in her nightmare-tossed aching spine and shoulders. Then she settles herself in and frees her jumpship from its orbit around Luna.
Night has long fallen on the City once Eris breaches atmosphere and arrives at the Tower. She is glad of it. Although the gauze over her eyes helps shield her from the brilliance of the sun, exposure to its searing brightness for too long gives her headaches. Her stolen sight is better suited to sounding darkness.
She makes her way out of the hangar and across the courtyard without incident. She speaks to no one who does not address her first, and avoids meeting anyone’s two eyes with three. However, when she steps into the looming stone hallway that leads the bazaar, Eris finds that she may have miscalculated her current ability to be around other people.
A few Tower staff engrossed in animated conversation come up behind her too quickly, trying to pass by her too close. She cannot help but hiss and recoil. It takes most of her focus to stay the hand that instinctively twitches toward the blades at her belt as she rounds on the people who are not her attackers.
“Whoa! Hey!” Affront.
“What the h-“ Anger.
“Sorry, ‘scuse us.” Fear.
Eris does not speak. She has already slipped down a side hall past a sweeperbot and retreated to the darkest recesses of the little alcove. The cries she elicited subside to an uneasy murmur and move away.
Several paces away from the entrance where the uninterested bot guards the gap between her and everything else, she leans back against the wall. Her heart pounds. She must look as crazed as the rumors say: a vicious shadowy figure snarling before slinking back into the dark, eyes glowing.
Her nerves still thrum with misdirected alarm, her breaths quick and shallow. With arduous effort she measures and lengthens them. She times them to the slow strokes of the sweeperbot’s broom, listens to the rustle of bristles over paving stones and the synthetic buzz of the unknown tuneless song the machine hums.
Lost in her focus on the next objective, she forgot to account for how much navigating people tends to aggravate and drain her. She used to spend most of her time in the Tower’s busy heart, before Oryx’s fall. But after her years of solitary searching, she is not accustomed to it anymore. She had forgotten.
Perhaps it is even easier to forget when she is already burdened, as today. Pain makes one forget many things, especially those that might be helpful. Perhaps this was foolish to come here now, to expose herself to a different source of it. Nevertheless, she is already here. She will do the work she came here to do.
It would take far too long to collect herself completely, so she settles for taking just long enough to let her heart stop racing. Her steps make themselves light and silent as she emerges once again. She gives the humming sweeperbot a slight nod as she passes. It doesn’t seem any more fazed by her courtesy than her transgression.
The bazaar never quite empties, even at night. But it is far less populated. This lets her maintain her necessary space with greater ease. It also lets her go somewhat more unnoticed, as is her preference. But while her civilian clothes might pass her for a Tower worker, her eyes would still give her away. Even behind the thin gauze tied across them like a blindfold, there is no hiding their alien origin any more than their luminous green glow. Furthermore, navigating human-tailored spaces with them can be a challenge.
Most colors are indistinguishable to her eyes now, and she misses fine details that are not textured. However, her eyes’ tripleness triangulates depth with high accuracy, and they track brightness and movement with remarkable ease. At night, the Tower’s wall sconces throw long slices of illumination across its halls and courtyards, and numerous lamp-pools dot the bazaar like a profusion of lilypads. They provide far more than enough light for her to navigate by. She could manage easily with just a few low lamps throughout the whole space, or even just the lights from the City. But that sensitivity comes at a price. Bright and busy scenes easily slip over the boundary between the merely unpleasant and the overwhelming to the point of incapacitation. The latter always lurks closer when she is already troubled.
Speaking little, she moves quickly through the stalls. Some vendors are unconcerned by her, others unsettled. Purchases include more pemmican, rice, and other preserved rations; a few parts for minor ship repair. She needs extra leather and sheet spinmetal for armor construction, too, and a new awl to replace the one that broke. Since the discovery of the Pyramid on Luna, traffic there has increased, and so has the demand for her custom armor resistant to its Nightmares.
Eris doesn’t let herself look for Ikora until she passes the circular pavilion set into the bazaar’s long balcony to get to the armorsmith supply. It hangs there overlooking the City, an elegant aerie lined with columns but fully open to the stars. As always, Ikora holds court at its center. Yet the powerful aura of her presence reaches far beyond the limits delineated by that little ring. Voices go a little hushed as people pass by, even in a bustling place of business like the bazaar. Guardians stand a little taller when they approach their Warlock Vanguard. Some of the tension in Eris’ muscles loosens as she nears the little circle.
Ikora is in deep conversation with a number of her Warlocks, all in flowing robes. Eris huffs out a short breath of annoyance and once again resists the pull to fall into her orbit. She will speak to her after finishing her resupply, when Ikora is not so engrossed in her duties.
Even after her visit to the armorer it looks like Ikora will be awhile yet, so Eris makes a detour from the main area of the bazaar into the textiles hall. Sound is softer in there, muffled by the swathes of fabric laid out on the tables and swooping from the rafters. As much as it vexes her sense of battle-readiness to make the concession, on days like these, she could truly use more clothing made from something softer than her under-armor linens.
Her fingers run over the ranked bolts of fabric, seeking out a good texture. When she finds one that feels soft yet reasonably sturdy, she pulls it out to squint at under the lamplight. She holds her sleeve up to it to compare. It’s slightly darker, but it’s probably a similar brown, she hopes. Eris tries to keep her wardrobe all within a range of natural browns. Not only does it help with camouflage and minimize reflected light glare, but it lets her avoid having to match colors that are now beyond her perception.
The bolt has a similar dull blush of what little color she can see. Her suspicions are confirmed by the clerk who nods to the sleeve she’s holding the bolt against and offers that it’s a fairly close match. She nods in thanks and has the clerk cut a few lengths of it. She uses her handheld unit to transmat it away with her other purchases.
When she wanders back to the main plaza, Ikora is standing alone again in the center of her circle. Something about the sight plucks a string of sadness within Eris. Ikora stands there like an unassailable pillar in the center of the plaza, so far from everyone else in it, simply waiting for the next person who needs her. It leaves Eris hollow.
Though Eris makes no sound, Ikora turns around at her approach with a warm smile.
“I thought that was you. I didn’t expect to find you here. It’s good to see you, Eris.”
That’s the thing about Ikora. From anyone else, such words would be the pointless small talk Eris despises. But in Ikora’s soothing voice, it’s so clear that she genuinely means them, and it puts Eris at ease.
“And you,” Eris says with a deep nod of greeting and acknowledgement. “I came to bring you my latest research into the Pyramid.”
With her hands clasped behind her back, Ikora squares her shoulders as her face tightens. “Your discoveries are dire enough to bring you here directly?”
“Ah - no, not at all.” Ikora’s shoulders drop in relief, and Eris feels herself relaxing, too. She steps just a little closer over the edge of the rug in the middle of the pavilion floor, closer than she would venture to most people. “I have no definitive conclusions, only further frustrating mysteries. No, believe it or not, I came here of my own volition. I had need of supplies, and thought it… expedient to visit you as well.”
“I see. Well, that is a relief.” She turns another small smile on Eris. “Though I’m sure you’ll soon convince me that not knowing is far more worrisome.”
“Is it not? We cannot effectively move against the enemy until we know which way it moves, what intentions drive it.”
“Too true. Still, I am glad to see you again regardless.” Though Ikora does not reach toward her or come closer in any way, she does unclasp her hands and open one palm toward Eris, welcoming. “Will you let me treat you to ramen while we go over your research? We never did get to go down to that shop I told you about.”
Bemused, Eris stares blankly until she recovers an old memory: an invitation accepted but never acted upon. The day Ikora had first made the offer had also been the same day Eris had broken the news that she was leaving the City to seek answers abroad. They had never gotten the chance after the resulting altercation that left them both heartsore.
“Ikora, that was years ago.”
“I know. You remember, too. It’s still there, and I don’t think it has plans to go anywhere.”
“I do not have -“ she cut off. She did have time, actually. Returning to Luna was still out of the question, and her armor commissions could wait. Truly, she would like to accept this peace offering, this second chance, for what it is. But, as always, other factors hold her back. Prolonging her presence among others would be foolish in her current state. City civilians were less accustomed than Tower staff to the many peculiarities of those who had seen many lifetimes’ worth of battle, much less those who looked like Eris.
“I cannot go into the City now, Ikora. This is hard enough.” A small measure of the pain slips into her voice. She lets it, hoping it will let Ikora know that she is not trying to chase her away.
“Of course.” Always the diplomat, ever gracious. Then, unpolished and hesitant: “If you would rather have something here, the shop in the bazaar is still quite good. We could even take it toward the library wing where it’s quieter. I wanted to check some of my own research notes, in any case.”
Ikora doesn’t have to make it so easy, but she does. Eris acquiesces with a nod. “I... would like that.” She is weary, but anything that makes Ikora smile like that is worth it.
By the time they leave the queue at the bazaar shop, Eris is doubly grateful for Ikora’s offer of a quiet space. Her shoulders have crept up toward her neck. The delayed crash from her fright in the hall earlier has finally caught up with her, making her senses both sharp and scrambled. She is fast approaching the limit of her tolerance for being around others. Ikora’s calm presence, though, is a far cry from the grating unpredictability of strangers. Ikora smiles and understands and neither pushes too hard against her limits nor recoils from her proximity. Ever since the day Eris crawled back to the City changed, Ikora has always been there, the way she is for so many people.
Hunched over her bowl like a hawk over its food, Eris catches a few long noodles with her chopsticks and eats them. They are chewy and salty with brine. Ikora does the same right next to her, on the other end of the same stone bench in one of the quiet courtyards just off the libraries. She leans against the wall behind them with her ankles crossed, holding her bowl in one hand and occasionally taking a sip of broth between bites without spilling a drop. The casual, ordinary ease of it all makes something within Eris ache in a way she can no longer ignore.
They have been dancing around each other, since Eris returned. Something broke between them when they parted, but it seems that they both have been carrying the pieces around with them ever since. If they chose, they could put them back together, shape something new in that tentative space.
Ikora has been silent, giving Eris time to recover from the bazaar. Eris takes the opportunity gratefully, keeping her eyes on the food. But as she collects herself once again, shame creeps back in, too.
“I do not wish to keep you from your research. You wanted to speak of the Pyramid, did you not?” Eris asks.
“Not until you’re ready,” Ikora says, voice even and untroubled. “Finish your ramen. We have time.”
“You don’t have to do this.” She can feel Ikora’s eyes on her. “Go out of your way for me. I know your time is precious.”
Ikora pauses while fishing a bean sprout out of her ramen. “Is it so hard to believe that I enjoy your company?”
Eris finally lets herself look at her, feeling like a moth looking into the light.
Ikora drains the last of the broth from her bowl and sets it aside. Her eyes stay on her own hands as they fold neatly in her lap. “You matter to me as a person, Eris, not just as a source of information. Though I will say, the quality of intelligence you uncover puts the rest of the Hidden to shame. But that is beside my point.”
Her eyes flick upward, face still half cast down. She watches Eris as if peering through a cracked door, unwilling to push it further open - but equally unwilling to walk away. “I’ve missed you, Eris. I just wanted to spend some time with you. Perhaps I should have said…”
Her words make the pain in Eris’ chest go simultaneously sharper and softer. The earnest curve of Ikora’s brows, the hesitance of her gaze and the memories lingering in her eyes tell Eris that they both know. She is offering up those jagged pieces of what they once could have been, trusting that Eris will not turn their harsh edges upon her.
Emotions keep turning themselves over within her. Eris cannot eat any more. She puts her ramen bowl down on the bench with a clink of stoneware against stone. Without something warm to hold, her bare hands curl against the cold.
“Ikora… “ she begins. Despite her aversion to inertia, she knows not how to continue. She cannot remain still, and though she rises to her feet, she cannot bear to go far. She paces back and forth in front of the bench. Her steps do not bring her quite close enough to brush the hem of Ikora’s robes, but close enough she must be careful to avoid them.
She touches a hand to the outside of each pocket, feeling the crackle of old paper and the weight of a storage drive beneath. Featherlight touches of fingers find the cool metal of the brace of knives at her waist, then the smooth, angled shape of carved stone beads. The long strands of them circle her head and wind down her arm opposite the one wrapped in an old, faded Titan mark. If only Eris could tell her fireteam how much she misses them still.
Oh.
Eris stops mid-stride. She whirls around to face Ikora, who rises from the bench to her full height. Worry and apprehension weigh down her brows and the corners of her mouth.
“Ikora. I have missed you too,” Eris says simply. “So much,” she adds in a whisper of escaping truth.
At the words, the heaviness evaporates from Ikora’s face. The expression that replaces it is one that Eris has only ever glimpsed, a shadow of something too real to let herself consider too closely. Something that scared even Eris, who has always sought first and reckoned later. Now, seen in its entirety, she regrets not having looked deeper, neglecting to sift through the shadows for this truth.
Ikora stands right there before her, eyes soft, staring directly into hers. Eris tracks her gaze as it meets the entirety of her own in a rotation of minute movements: right eye, up and center, down and left, and back again, none left out. Ikora’s smile blooms warm with affection, her expression almost wistful. She is close enough to reach out and touch. The idea makes Eris’ heart twist within her chest.
Eris wants and wants and wants. But the moment she begins to move, her arms seize up with a rigidity that holds her every bone hostage. All at once this is all too much — she can’t. Being this close has already been too much for her, too much for someone who can hardly stand anyone within at least five paces. Perhaps if this had happened any other day, if Eris were not already stretched thin enough to break… She still strains against herself to lean forward, needing, but pulls back with a hiss of distress that she curses for being stronger.
A mask of concern replaces Ikora’s aching softness. In an instant, she is taking a step back from Eris and slowly lifting her open hands into the air, far from harmless but nonetheless a peaceful gesture. Her booted feet lay lightly on the floor, ready to take her further away.
“Don’t go.” Eris’ voice cracks on the pathetic plea.
“I’m right here.” Her steady voice is grounding, soothing, certain. “I won’t hurt you, Eris. I will not try to touch you. Tell me what’s happening.”
Eris does try. She tries to find a way to convey the terrible tension: the ever-present memory of a thousand taut scars of too-close-they-almost-got-you-that-time, warring with the gentleness that is rending her chest asunder every time Ikora so much as looks at her. She cannot tear the roots of that soft desire out from between her lungs any more than she can strip the lattice of scars from her ashen skin. Nor does she want to. Like Ikora, it is too bright, too strong, too precious to her. But that does not change the fact that for years in the darkness, Eris only survived by either avoiding or killing any other living thing that crossed her path. The habit has been ground into her deeply enough to become a second, stranger nature.
She does not want to kill Ikora. Therefore, her only other automatic response to such closeness and potential vulnerability is fear, raw and raucous within her. She is struggling to keep it in check long enough to find another answer. And she must find another. She needs this, for herself as much as to give Ikora a fraction of what Eris wishes she could.
Though her eyes weep only trailing darkness, Eris’ breath still chokes in her throat like a sob of frustration. Despite her desperate attempts to say something, anything that makes sense, the only raw words that manage to pull themselves free from behind her teeth are a half-whispered, halting, strangled “I love you.”
Surprise floods Ikora’s face as her deliberate composure falters. Her lips part as if to speak, but no words are forthcoming. A measure of that vulnerable tenderness returns to her gaze. She lowers her hands.
“I know I do not show it well. But you must know, Ikora. You must know.” Eris addresses her inadequate words to the expanse of flagstone between them.
“Oh, Eris,” Ikora says, as if her heart is breaking. Eris looks up in alarm, only to have a look of such care and adoration directed at her that she immediately looks away again. Before that beacon, she folds her arms about herself to hold steady.
A soft rustle of robes breaks the silence. Facing her, Ikora sinks to the bare floor and seats herself cross-legged. She gestures with one graceful arm for Eris to do the same. Eris does so. The tightness of her chest decreases slightly. Standing, the scant few paces between them mean little, easily crossed. But seated, they shape a deliberate distance that calms the frantic part of her that cannot ignore the potential, no matter how unlikely.
“You say you do not show it well, but there are a great many ways to show affection. Yours have not gone unheard… nor been unwelcome. I, too...” Ikora trails off into a self-deprecating chuckle. “Well, I may not be able to say it right now, but... yes.”
“Ah.” Eris has known this. Why else would she have avoided looking the truth in the face? Of course she knew. The confirmation still rings in her like a revelation.
“Still, I’d like to understand more about what just happened. The last thing I want to do is hurt you.”
Eris hisses through her teeth, mostly at herself. But she tries again.
“Ikora. I care for you so deeply.” She takes a moment to appreciate the flustered response this produces in the unflappable Warlock Vanguard. “But you know how I often cannot bear to have anyone physically near me. You have always been so careful, and for that I have long been grateful.”
“There is nothing wrong with that, Eris. You don’t have to -“
“You misunderstand me,” Eris cut in. “I crave your closeness. Yet it is... difficult for me. My trauma will not let me forget fear when I draw near you, even though I may wish it.”
“... Oh.”
“‘Oh,’ indeed,” Eris agrees. She offers Ikora a wry, bittersweet smile. “I do not always know when my wounds will reopen. When they do, my body remembers far more quickly than the rest of me. It has been happening a lot, today.” Eris shivers. The adrenaline rush that has been carrying her through this conversation has begun to fade.
Pain is writ large across Ikora’s face in sympathy. “I’m sorry, Eris. Truly. I cannot imagine the true scope of everything you’ve been through. One could hardly blame you for how it has affected you.”
A dry, humorless laugh escapes Eris. “Couldn’t one? Most do.”
Ikora’s lips go thin with muted anger. “Those who do lack either understanding or compassion.” But then the line of her mouth softens again. “I hope you do not count yourself among them.”
A grimace contorts Eris’ face. “It is a rare duality indeed that divides clearly in two.”
Ikora frowns. “You have long favored the complexity of difficult truths, and that is a rare strength. Yet I would not believe that anyone deserves the unkind treatment that many have seen fit to give you.”
Eris tilts her head sideways in grudging acknowledgement. “It is a misguided foolishness I have learned to endure. I have far more important things to attend to.”
Sorrow and disappointment paint Ikora’s face. “Your needs are important, Eris.” She gives a sad smile. “I would offer you a hug, but…”
Eris shakes her head, more in uncertainty than negation. “Perhaps someday. I believe I could learn, slowly. You deserve that.”
Ikora regards her carefully. “Only if you wish to, Eris. I feel your closeness even now, just like this. Your care is already more than enough. I would welcome you closer, but I would rather see you at peace. That means far more to me. Please... don’t hurt yourself believing you must.” She looks stricken at the thought.
Eris looks at her with intent, taking in all of her: the smooth planes of her face, her hands at rest against her thighs, the rich texture of the heavy fabric of her robes, her effortless posture even while sitting on the floor. Deep, expressive eyes watch her. Eris can tell her own are glowing high by the triple bright pinpricks reflected in them. The very bones of Eris’ hands and arms ache with wanting to hold her. But even that poignant ache is only the smallest echo of the sweet, painful softness that blooms and billows beneath her ribs.
“I want to,” she says clearly, leaving no room for doubt.
Ikora’s face does something interesting and flustered yet again as she nods in acknowledgement. Her discomposure should not be so compelling. “Very well. Then I welcome anything you wish to give and no more.” Eris suspects Ikora might be blushing, but it’s hard to tell. Her skin is dark, and basic colors are difficult to distinguish, much less subtle changes in hue. Nonetheless, if she touched Ikora’s cheek, she expects she would find it rather warm.
Compelled by the thought, Eris lifts one unsteady hand in the air between them. But she just as soon closes it into a fist and draws it trembling back in to her chest. She is still shaken from her earlier panic. She cannot bring herself to move any closer.
Yet once again, neither can she bear to pull away.
The distance between them is such that if they both reached out to the utmost, their fingertips would barely brush. Perhaps, in this moment, that is the perfect distance: the inflection point between the pit she crawled out of and the mountain she would climb.
“Let me try something,” Eris says.
“What?”
“Just stay where you are.”
Eris breathes in the cool air. It tastes of stone and paper, metal and gunpowder and wind: the Tower. Though fear lingers in her limbs, that devastating softness still holds court in her core. It is fragile yet tenacious, like new grass on broken soil. She lets the feeling bubble forth from her chest, relaxing one muscle at a time down along one arm, edging out the fear and aspiring toward her fingertips. Slowly, so slowly, she lifts her arm and meets Ikora’s eyes.
Her arm hangs in the air between them, bent and tentative. Measuring and controlling her breaths with great care, she stretches it out toward the woman before her.
She sees it in Ikora’s eyes when she understands. After a moment, she, too, reaches out, if even more slowly, more hesitant.
Fear insistently attempts to wrest back control, sinking tendrils of tension back into Eris’ stomach and shoulders. But it has not yet won. She retaliates by relaxing her shoulders once more and reminding the wary part of her that she is here; that she can be still. Flexing her forearm against the pressure of Vell’s mark wrapped close around it, she prays for a fraction of his strength. She reaches.
Eris has almost forgotten that she is not wearing her usual gauntlets, until the pads of her fingers brush Ikora’s upturned ones, skin to skin.
For the first moment, it is absolutely unremarkable, the pinnacle of human mundanity: a touch. The next, she is inundated.
It burns up her hand and her arm, making her go rigid and forcing her eyes shut. Ikora’s hand falters in hers, but she does not pull away, and Eris is glad of it. It hurts, yet it burns her to life.
It is much like the first sunbeam that fell on her after she had emerged from the shadows of the Hellmouth. She had stepped out from a dark cave into a pale crater full of lunar noon. She had expected it to be strange and too-bright for her new eyes, and it was. She had not expected the yellow star’s faint warmth to caress the exposed skin of her face the same way it always had. In the intervening years, her sun-starved skin had gone ashen with forgetfulness. After so long without it, the sensation had given her full-body chills and momentarily stunned her to a stumbling stop. It was mere luck that she had not been pursued at the time. Such hesitation could have cost her her escape before she could force herself onward.
Here and now, Eris does not have to rush herself through this moment to put it into the past. Even though her every nerve starts snapping with the impulse to get her away from this vulnerability, she digs in and holds. Perhaps it was not only for surviving undetected amongst enemies that she learned the skill of wrapping her own chaos in stillness. Because now, even though she shudders, she can keep herself here to be known.
Firm and gentle fingers brush over Eris’ own scarred ones. The slight friction sends shivers over her body. If pressed, Eris would not be able to say whether what she is feeling is pleasure or pain, joy or fear. They all run together into an undifferentiated morass of intensity. In the midst of it all, a single thought opens up a small, still well of startling clarity.
Eris cannot remember the last time she was touched by anything kind.
The resulting barrage of indecipherable emotions make her gasp for air, but it catches on the tightness in her throat. Ikora begins to pull away, doubtless fearing to have hurt her. Eris catches the ends of her elegant fingers in the coarse grip of her own battered ones. She is holding on too tightly. But when she forgets all others, that is the only way she remembers to cherish something.
When Eris at last retracts her hand, it is trembling, just barely. Cradling her long-outstretched arm in her other hand, she presses her fragile fingers to her lips.
She finally opens her eyes again to see Ikora fold her own hand into a fist and bring it to her chest, as if holding something precious against her heart.