Archive of Our Own

Saint wakes up in an icebox.

His eyes shutter in time to catch the way his exhalation fogs out before him. He burrows back under the covers with a violent shiver. As his groggy brain catches up with his body, his first thought is that he doesn’t remember the house being quite so freezing. The second thought is that he doesn’t even remember falling asleep.

But Saint does remember, with polymer-deep certainty, what it was that woke him up: icy breath spilling across his cheek, terribly close to his mouth.

His heartbeat slows to an imperceptible whirring as he holds perfectly still on his side, straining his sensors for any signs that he’s not alone – panting, footfalls, the sound of a weapon being drawn. Saint’s eyes are violet pinpricks as he scans the bedroom with mistrust.

Then he feels it: a weight where there shouldn’t be; the mattress dipping behind him, where Osiris usually sleeps.

Saint squares his jaw in silent fury.

He twists sharply around to catch them unawares, but to his shock, no one is there to meet his fist. In disbelief, he rips the pillow away and pats the sheets down, as though the intruder could’ve slithered away beneath the blanket. Then he throws that off, too.

Nothing. Everything on the left side of the bed is cool to the touch. There’s no impression in the mattress.

There’s no one else here.

He’s scarcely accepted this as fact before an ancient fear – seeded by decades trapped in the Infinite Forest, nurtured by Hive trickery – grips Saint’s heart with new questions: Has anyone ever been here? How is he so certain he should be here?

By now this train of thought could almost be an annoying tune that’s impossible to banish, so familiar is its stupid refrain. Saint takes a deep breath. He throws his legs over the side of the bed and runs his fingers over his head, tracing three gouges in his face, carved centuries ago by shock blades. Though they’ve smoothed over with time, he’s able to recognize the subtle, tiny ridges in his plating: an Exo’s equivalent of scar tissue. Saint always takes care to hug children against the left side of his face, so he doesn’t scratch theirs by accident.

Next, he walks over to the armor mount in the corner, counts the ribbons braided upon his breastplate and mark, and nods, satisfied. The newest accolade, bestowed upon Saint by his young protégé, still retains its glossiness. Georges’s has a faded singe mark. Yes, Mei’s ribbon is frayed at the ends, but it’ll hold together thanks to Ms. Levante’s sealant. And Jasleen’s hairtie is in its proper place: looped around his left bracer.

Saint turns and stares unfocusedly at Osiris’s travel bag. He sits on the floor next to it and fishes out a dog-eared tome, thumbing through its pages until he locates a familiar envelope. He removes its letter, and begins to read.

Osiris,

I hope you are well. Overseeing your Trials keeps me busy, and I am glad for it. But more than anything, I long for your company.

I have something I wish to tell you, and I hope it comes as no surprise – I love you. Eternally, and unrepentantly so. You never stray far from my thoughts, but in the wake of your parting kiss to me, I am obsessed.

There is this saying that has never sat right with me: falling in love. Why must it be a fall? Why does it sound like it is always an accident, or something to fear? I did not fall in love with you, Osiris – I walked into love with you. One day I stepped off the path I was so used to taking, and followed you instead. The scenery was foreign to me, but it was beautiful, too; I never felt lost with you at my side. In time, I came to understand that this was where I was meant to go.

But you are always a few steps ahead of me. Each time I reach for your hand, you slip away, farther and farther, until it becomes a chase. Even before your exile, I was always chasing after you. One day, I hope that we can slow down, and marvel at what we see for a bit longer.

It is hard for me to admit, but I am dissatisfied with surviving. I want to live, Osiris – I want to enjoy living again. With you, I think that is possible. Before you came back into my life, I compromised for my happiness. I thought that, so long as I executed my orders and protected our people, I could not possibly want more. I did not ask for more; I did not know how. To be honest, I still do not know. But I will ask it of you now – every day, so long as we are together, I will ask more of you.

And you will ask it of me as well. All that you could ever want and need, I will give to you. Do not shy away from leaning on me for help, or think that your troubles are not worth my attention. The things that seem small to you might mean everything to me. And the reverse holds true. We may be old, but there are still things we can learn about the world, and each other.

I think I understand how Warlocks lose themselves in their quest to understand the universe around them. I feel similarly when I look into your eyes. I want to lose myself with you so completely so it is time that chases us, because it fears losing the thread.

I wake with your name in my heart, where I keep it safe and sound. I long to hold you in my arms and tell you these things in person. Stay safe, and return to me when your work is finished.

-Saint

Saint had sent this letter to Osiris with his heart in his throat and a half dopey, half terrified expression plastered on his face. It was a herculean effort to commit these thoughts on paper, the product of hundreds of years of pining and hope, and it meant the world to him that Osiris would keep it on him whenever he flew off-planet.

Tonight, Saint re-reads his earnest confession with a cold and critical eye. He’s only interested in rooting out aberrations in his handwriting, odd sentence fragments, discolorations, and the like. And when he replaces the letter among Osiris’s things, he doesn’t think about it again – until the next crisis.

Saint performs similar rituals throughout his home, inspecting relics, documents, and anything else that can verify he is who, where, and when he should be. Each confirmation brings some relief, loosening the ever-present knot that sits between his ribs. The simple act of fixing the thermostat is cathartic, too, because he can feel the change in real time.

When he’s ready to call the medbay, he crashes onto the couch and stares at his communicator. Now the coiled tension in his chest feels like barbed wire.

Saint apologizes to the receptionist for the ungodly hour, asking if they could please remind him of the timestamp when Osiris was checked in – yes, nanoseconds, thank you. He hangs up feeling… not better, but not worse.

All in all, it takes him forty-three minutes to complete his tasks, down from an hour and ten. And he didn’t even need to wake Geppetto! He’s come a long way from the jumpy Saint-14 who slammed Osiris into the bulkhead of The Gray Pigeon’s cabin and broke his shoulder, all because the old man didn’t knock.

Saint hooks his fingers between the kitchen blinds and drags them down to stare pensively at the moon. Going back to sleep doesn’t sound appealing to him right now.

Pacing up and down the hallway it is, then.

His stomach is a mess of battery acid and resentment. The Ahamkara, the Vex, the Witch Queen… they thought their deceptions were infallible. They were meticulous about big picture ideas, and neglected the more ‘extraneous’ details: things like the Speaker’s preference for yak milk in his tea, the manufacturer of the gun polish Saint uses for his shotgun, and the color of the flowers that grew between the pavement cracks of Hangar 7.

On their own, and to most sane people, minor deviations from the norm aren’t enough to draw suspicion. Certainly not enough to doubt your identity and place in the world. But if you allowed yourself to grow complacent with what is comfortable, or expected… if you don’t listen to your gut…

Savathûn could mimic the way Osiris moved and the way he spoke, but she could not grasp the depths of his anger, joy, or love. These, Saint knows better than anyone else. He makes it his life’s work to protect the people and ideals so dear to him, and that includes preserving them in his heart as best he can.

It’s why he takes great pains to maintain his accolades throughout the ages, to honor the memories of those who trusted him. It’s why he can’t absolve himself of his role in the Endless Night, and Osiris’s continued torment. It’s why he hurts so much all the time.

Blaming himself is easy. It gives his pain a clear target. But it also prevents Saint from knowing how to fix things, because he can’t defeat himself. He can only do better, be better.

But how much better? How much longer? When will he be good enough to save everyone?

Saint’s restless feet bring him back to the bedroom. With a start, he realizes he’s forgotten another test – producing Light to disprove a Vex simulation.

It’s so late, though; he’d rather not bother his curmudgeonly Hunter neighbor. He’ll have to trust himself.

Exhausted, Saint crawls into bed, and pulls the blanket over himself.

He might physically be in the right place, but ever since Savathûn’s deception was laid bare, every day has felt catastrophically wrong.

Saint looked up from the overflowing laundry basket in his arms, his curiosity piqued by what sounded like animated conversation coming from the bathroom. Hadn’t Osiris gone to take a shower? Who on Earth was he talking to? He put the basket down and knocked.

Osiris paused his speech for a handful of seconds, mumbled, “End recording,” and then louder, “Saint?”

Upon entering, Saint spotted a small black rectangle wedged between a folded pile of clothes on the counter. He brought a hand to his temple in disbelief. “You work in the shower?”

“Not exactly,” Osiris answered. His frosted silhouette turned back to the showerhead; Saint pictured the Warlock addressing it like a microphone. “I have a tendency to record my thoughts before a mission so that they might later be compiled into the field report.”

“Do not play word games with me, old man; you work in the shower.”

Osiris released an explosive breath, sliding the glass door back enough to squint at his partner. “If you wish to be pedantic, then: yes, I do.” He grumbled, “I didn’t want to lose this thread.”

“Maybe you just like hearing yourself talk,” Saint retorted, smirking. His face softened when he asked, “Are you worried about what you saw in your vision?”

“About –? No,” Osiris said quickly, disappearing under the water again. “I know what I must do. I am just… a bit tired, I think.”

That worried Saint. He could count on one hand the number of times Osiris admitted to feeling tired. Each time, it was said after a terrible battle, or an unsettling premonition that kept him up for days. Even with bloodshot eyes and deep shadows clinging below, Osiris bristled at earnest suggestions that he should take a break.

Deep down, Saint knew he could no more force the Warlock to divulge his secrets than he could force himself to voice his own fears. It was a dance they knew well, but it was starting to wear on Saint.

He pushed away from the wall he’d been leaning against. “I will make you tea,” he decided, because he didn’t know what else to do. “It is a day’s journey to the moon. Rest a bit on the flight, my bird. You need your strength.”

“Thank you.” The response is delayed, and very tired, indeed.

As he turned to exit, reality finally dawned on Saint: He would not see Osiris again for some weeks – perhaps even a month. He didn’t relish the idea of a somber parting.

It was impossible to hear a soft beep over the spray as he pressed the recording button on the device. With a confident grin, Saint slid open the glass door, and stepped inside the shower.

Osiris blinked water out of his eyes. “You’re still wearing –”

He was pressed to the tile wall as Saint warmly assured him, “Is fine. I am doing laundry.”

Three days after his unsettling nightmare, a bored Saint checks his work inbox only to find that it is still empty. Granted, he’d checked it just an hour before, and got the same result.

He’s waiting on feedback for a new sidearm and fusion rifle; Lord Shaxx offered to run the numbers with his Redjacks, but it’s been five days since their last correspondence, and the man is usually so prompt… too prompt, perhaps, when it came to weapons testing. A gentle nudge might be in order.

“Yes?” Shaxx’s voice is strained on the other end of the comm.

“Good morning, Shaxx,” Saint begins, scrolling through his tablet. He’s amused by the polarizing reactions to the Hunter helmet for Trials; he’ll have to forward some of these to his armorer. “Did you get my message about –”

“I have your damned calibrations, yes, Saint, of course. I will send you the attachment in a few hours.”

Surprised by the uncharacteristic venom in the other Titan’s voice, Saint slowly puts his tablet down and leans back, brow plates furrowed. He stirs his chilly coffee with a Solar-hot finger. “...Thank you, Brother. I am sorry for bothering you.”

“What – no, you’re not.” Shaxx sighs. “Give me just a moment.”

Saint sips his drink and listens to the relaxing sound of a rocket being fired, the ensuing explosion once it’s found its target, and the intense cackling that followed.

“You are not in Tower, then,” he surmises, grinning. “Forgive me – I did not know you were out.”

“I thought it best to do field testing in the actual field – in this case, the Derelict Leviathan,” Shaxx explains. “Then this… thing interrupted me, so I had to teach it a lesson. A sidearm wasn’t enough.”

This thing? Saint lowers his mug. Reed-7 and Aisha returned not long ago from the Leviathan, too, and what he overheard them talking about is still weighing heavily on his conscience. “Did you encounter a phantom? A… Nightmare?”

“Just so.” Shaxx’s vicious pleasure from the thrill of the hunt has dulled suddenly, like a cheap knife. Now he sounds morose.

Saint stands up from the table and does not ask who is it of?, though he has a few strong contenders as to its identity. “Then we will speak once you are returned, my friend,” he says. “Goodbye.”

He hangs up, downs the remnants of his scalding coffee, and tries not to be anxious over having free time. There’s not much he has to do until Shaxx emails him the calibrations, so Saint decides to tidy the living room – again. Maybe he missed some spots while vacuuming.

He lifts each piece of furniture above his head and inspects the carpet, satisfied that only a bit of lint had escaped his wrath. He pulls all of the baubles and books from their shelves to dust beneath them, and carefully replaces each one. He stares at the clean windows and decides they need to be completely transparent, or he’s a failure to society.

Saint curls up on Osiris’s armchair when he’s done, glancing at the ceiling and wondering if it’s worth cleaning it as well. It’s a struggle not to get up and check his inbox one more time on the off chance that someone – anyone! – needs assistance.

But… Oh! When was the last time he cleaned the guest room, anyway? He springs to his feet.

When he makes his way to the back of the house, brandishing the vacuum with cleanly threat, Saint is distracted by the sound of running water. He tilts his head, listening intently. Seems like it’s coming from the master bathroom?

Forgot to turn off the sink, he thinks. He abandons the vacuum and jogs over to the bedroom instead.

Upon closer inspection, as he comes to a stop just outside the door, Saint realizes the water pressure is much too strong for a sink faucet. It’s clearly the shower.

But how can that be? He bathes in the evening, and he knows for a fact that he didn’t leave it running overnight.

“Geppetto?” Saint calls out, wondering if she’d just come home and he’d missed it. It’s entirely plausible that she’s the one who started the shower. Geppetto employs a kind of forceful thoughtfulness when she’s worried about her Guardian – leaving him loud hints that he should take better care of himself. These days, it’s usually her putting a tea kettle on, and waiting for him to hear its whistle from across the house.

He pushes his way into the bedroom, hoping to see her flitting about. He’s disappointed – and perturbed – when he doesn’t.

Saint calls a bit louder, “Geppetto?”

Silence. He really is the only one here. Unlike with his bizarre experience a few nights ago, this does not put him at ease.

At the same time, he can’t think of a good reason why he should be bothered over investigating the bathroom. If someone’s in there, he’ll deal with them in a calm, rational manner. And if no one’s in there, then he’ll call a plumber. Problem solved.

Saint gently cracks the door open only to be buffeted by a hot, dense cloud of steam. It’s like stepping into a Venusian forest. Shocked, he shoves the door all the way to the wall and squints around. It’s pitch dark, and the showerhead’s on full blast.

He reaches over to the light switch, but the damn bulbs are out, somehow. Didn’t he change them both two weeks ago?

Fine, he’ll just be mindful of where he walks. Saint shuts the door behind him, and takes a step forward… into an enormous puddle of water.

His eyes flicker off. If he was worried before, he’s just pissed now.

“What the hell?” Saint hisses, shaking a wet pant leg. Some experimental splashing about tells him that the whole floor is submerged. How long has this thing been running?

Due to the layout of the bathroom, it’s impossible for the bedroom light to brighten the shower stall, so Saint adjusts his eyes to a flashlight setting. He grumbles under his breath, waiting for the sluggish diagnostics to finish; it’s always disorienting for his brain when he has to switch modes.

He scans the floor and the walls around him to assess the damage, but sees nothing out of the ordinary – well, besides the lake he’s standing in, anyway. Then Saint carefully rounds the corner and–

–someone is staring back at him from behind the frosted glass: a misshapen figure swathed in darkest black, eyes gleaming red, palms flattened against the open door. The relentless spray from above doesn’t seem to be affecting them. Nor do Saint’s luminous eyes, for that matter; their features are impossible to make out.

The stranger presses closer to the glass when Saint reels back in surprise, and rasps something to him.

The Exo’s visuals revert to normal as his body collides with the stall – his knuckles shatter the glass in one swift punch, raining shards and searing water upon him and the intruder.

But the stall is empty.

Saint rips open the closet behind him. No one. He hurls everything out of it, out from beneath the sink’s cupboard, overturns the trash and the lanky potted plant.

Nothing. Nothing. No one.

He storms out chasing an unknown quarry. There are no wet footprints to follow, only his own, but he sprints outside anyway. No sign of anyone fleeing. Undaunted, he rushes back inside and locks all the doors – if they’re hiding, he’ll trap them. He searches every dark corner of the house. He turns on every light.

Nothing.

Nothing.

No one.

Saint returns to the bedroom once he’s sure that his home is safe, calmer now, yet conflicted about what he’d actually seen. Was his mind playing tricks on him? Was it a vocalization he’d heard, or the shower spray?

He’s forced to admit that it’s entirely plausible he’s just tired. In fact, it’s not just plausible, it’s… probably the truth. He hasn’t been sleeping very well as of late.

Frustrated, Saint buries his head in his hands. He’s not looking forward to explaining the mess to his Ghost. Hello, little sun. Sorry I demolished the bathroom.

After changing the bathroom lights again (maybe he should cave and get those fancy Arc bulbs, he thinks irritably), Saint spends a couple of miserable hours mopping and picking up the broken glass. The simple pleasure of cleaning is lost on him now; he keeps turning to stare at the shower, and picturing the figure standing within it.

(Had they been standing? Or were they hunched over?

It does not matter, he chides himself, eyes boring holes into the damp tiles. It was not real.)

He finishes his work and hovers in the doorway, digging his thumbs into the small of his back and stretching. His body is sore – not just from the furious cleaning, but as a byproduct of stress. He’ll give himself an hour’s worth of rest before meandering down to the hangar.

Saint peels out of his wet clothes, and hunts around for his undersuit. Ah – he’d thrown it over the armor stand. As he pulls the top over his head, he remarks sheepishly to himself, “Well, that is… one way to kill an afternoon.”

“Ooh, do you have a moment?”

The coolant in his veins turns to ice.

Saint whirls around, his heart screeching in its chassis.

How? HOW? He never wanted to hear her voice again.

“Don’t worry,” Savathûn purrs, her words scratching the back of Saint’s skull like a horde of rats; “this is just a recording. Come a little closer. That’s it. Don’t be shy.”

The speech is coming from Osiris’s travel bag – from the digital recorder. The digital recorder which should not have a message from the Witch Queen, because Saint’s listened to each message over and over and –

He could just leave. Leave and call Ikora. Savathûn’s dead. Her tricks have no sway over him any more. He’s stopped having nightmares about her. He doesn’t need to listen.

He does, though: Saint kneels before the bag like a supplicant, but plucks the machine out from its pocket with two fingers and drops it on the floor, scoffing. He won’t deign to give her with the respect she demands.

“I’m so cold on this mortuary table, my love. Won’t you come and hold me, one last time?”

“Shut. Up,” he snarls, shaking violently from rage and revulsion. She cackles.

“It’s been so long, Saint. How’ve you been? Terrible?” she goads. “I’ve got a lot of work cut out for me in death, so I’ll try and stick to the script. It’s a bit much – but it’s a fun one.”

The simpering cadence of her voice makes him sick. “Shut your evil –”

She lowers her voice to a sordid whisper; Saint leans away. “Listen to me now: it’s all a con. I know one when I see it. It’s the Vanguard that’s ruining your life, what with all their dogmatic filth about ‘duty’ and ‘loyalty’. Duty to what? Loyalty to whom? And for how long? Forever?

“I’ve seen it with my own eyes as I walked by your side,” she insists. It forcibly brings to mind what a fool Saint had been to not recognize his own lover. “While Commander Zavala and Ikora Rey ask you to die for the good of the City, they keep you in the dark when it’s time to make difficult decisions. They can’t trust you’ll handle them with maturity. I mean, it’s not like you’re an ancient warrior who’s fought in nearly every war that the Traveler provoked.

“Did you ever ask yourself if they knew more about Osiris than they let on? Hmm?”

Back in the real world, Saint ponders the merits of hurling the recorder off the balcony. On one hand, he’ll lose access to valuable evidence for the Hidden; on the other, more gratifying hand –

No. He must be patient, and indulge this vile queen for the last time. He also can’t risk lobbing a brick at an unsuspecting neighbor.

“--And yet… it must take great fortitude to live your worst life for the sake of people who don’t deserve you. But it’s also infuriating to those who know what you really are – and I’ve lived with you long enough to see it firsthand.”

Saint has been exceedingly patient with her insults up to this point, tuning out the majority of her nonsense; now, he reaches for the off button, convinced he’s heard enough. Hopefully, Ikora will have answers for how the hell –

“--Have you figured it out yet, Saint? Have you… divined what it is you really are?”

He brings a hand to his temple. I know who I am, he thinks, furrowing his brow plates. But the mantra sounds… uncertain now. Hollow.

Delusional.

Saint would be lying if he tried to say that Savathûn’s words didn’t resonate eerily with his own troubled thoughts from time to time.

Then again, he’s not surprised; the Queen of Lies could never have been so successful had she not disguised her poisons with honeyed half-truths.

“You are a wretched, barbaric, soulless machine. An idol of suffering – your suffering, and the suffering of those around you. All you’ll ever been good for is destruction. All you’ve ever wrought is misery. You failed your City, your father, your man – you justify your agony for ‘righteous causes’. And what ever became of your mission to the Forest? Of the sacrifices you’ve made?

“Nothing,” she whispers.

Saint squares his jaw. He stares straight ahead.

“The world broke from the Red War and crawled on without you. The Speaker never got to see his tin soldier come home, and you never got to bury his body…”

That ever-present tightening in Saint’s chest flares up with a vengeance, heavy like chains. He’s made peace with his culpability in the City’s fall, if only because he wasn’t there to experience the horrors that took so many of his siblings-in-arms. It belittles their memory to yearn for a fighting chance at their side when he’d failed his own mission in the Forest.

There is no battle to be won in hindsight. There is only Saint, swearing an oath to crush the next beast that comes for his people.

The Speaker… he’s still a sore spot. An old wound, nearly healed at this point, but one that Saint would prefer not to irritate. Saint’s been to the grave but once, and hasn’t brought his father up in casual conversation since the memorial. It fills him with shame every time he walks past the Speaker’s dark office. He doesn’t bow his head before a photo of them together when he prays, because nothing of theirs survived the war.

The truth is, Saint can’t bear to think of his father’s remains lost among the smoldering ashes of The Almighty. Saint wants to remember him as the kind, dry-witted, dutiful man who believed in the Traveler – in the City – to the very end. Dominus Ghaul? He was a thieving, murderous coward.

“...And now all that’s left is a dying partner who couldn’t tell you apart from the dust in his lungs.”

At the callous mention of Osiris, Saint’s parasympathetic system helpfully mimics an acrid burn in the back of his mouth – a remnant of his first life, when he could still vomit. All he can do now, though, is stew in a sea of nausea.

But the Witch Queen is swinging for the low hanging fruit, huh? What’s she going to do next, come for his Ghost? Saint’s not having it.

Savathûn’s tone deceptively takes on a softer quality, though there’s no banishing that undercurrent of malice – a dagger cloaked in velvet. She muses, “It doesn’t have to be like this, you know. You’ve proven that you enjoy it when others take the lead and leave all the heavy lifting to you. It’s comfortable, isn’t it? To be a mindless ant, working towards another’s goal? It means you’ll have less time to hurt over what you’ve done.

“Saint, I admire these qualities of yours – the faultless obedience, the unwavering resolve. They’ve taken so many lives in so many wars. You could’ve been right at home with my Knights.” A wistful sigh. “I… sort of remember what that was like. Not the failing at everything I ever tried bit, the obedient and resolute bit. Young Sathona… she had it bad, too. I think you and her have a lot in common. We both wanted to save our people –”

The threadbare tethers that had kept Saint’s flaring temper in check snap altogether. He instantly leaps to his feet, fists clenched and jaws ground so hard that he's spitting sparks. Fury lights a fire in his soul at the witch’s insinuation that she and he are in any way the same. It’s enough to drag him out of his stupor of self-loathing, and back into righteous indignation.

“I could NOT give a damn about your past,” Saint fires back at the machine. “I do NOT care about YOU, or the PAWN you were, and DIED AS!”

The foundation of the house is rocked from the force of his Light-fuelled yelling, the windows rattling in protest when Saint pounds the walls behind him. All around, various objects are dislodged from their shelves and tumble to the floor, but he doesn’t notice. “NOTHING you built will last! NO MORE of your plans will come to fruition! YOU –”

The Exo’s chest heaves with immeasurable rage; his hands can’t stop shaking; his eyes dart restlessly about, as though straining to catch her lurking in the shadows.

How dare Savathûn try to garner sympathy from him? How gullible does she think he is? Did she think she’d break his heart with her juvenile taunting, make him curl up in a ball and cry? Has she learned nothing about him by assuming Osiris’s identity?

“You DID fail at everything!” Saint roars, stalking the room like a caged lion. “Because I am still alive, and YOU will rot in–”

“ –n’t coming back. Though… you already–”

Her cut-off speech catches up with his aural receptors before his brain can fully process what he’d heard. Once her words really hit him, he staggers backward like he'd taken a surprise punch to the face. Did she say...?

Heart in his throat, he plays the audio back from just before he’d started yelling. “We both wanted to save our people. We both thought we were special. Thought we’d been chosen by our gods, thought we could keep what mattered most to us – our families – in one piece…"

"No," Saint fumes, yet hanging on to her every word; "you never cared for that. Maybe you did once, but no longer."

“I’ve gotta say, though – my brother and nephew may be dead, and my sister may be tearing through my throne world as we speak, but I still think I’m doing better than you in the ‘keeping the family in one piece’ department. At least my sister can still communicate with me.

“This may be difficult for you to hear, but Osiris isn’t coming back. Though… you already know this, don’t you, O beloved mine? You’re going through the motions of a bereaved partner, but you lost faith in him a long time ago.”

Amidst the deafening silence, caught in the space Savathûn left for him to react, Saint stares blankly at the recorder, as though he’s just now registering its existence. All of his agitated energy from seconds ago is replaced with a cold, stabbing dread that pries apart the cracks in his armor – and stakes new ones along the way.

“What,” he croaks, sinking to the floor; his knees have given out. Saint wants her to answer – now. “What are you–”

“This is cruel, even for you – keeping him alive against his wishes, hooking him up to devices that do all the living for him. It’s wrong to prolong this mockery of a life just because you’re afraid to be alone. Everyone knows that the longer it takes for him to ‘wake up’, the less likely it’ll ever happen. How do you do it?

“I was going to say that he’d hate for you to see him like this, but the poor man won’t be seeing you again. So let him go. Let him rest. Let yourself rest. You’re great at starting over – you’re practically a professional at it!”

The recording pauses here for a few breaths, as though to give the Witch Queen ample time to luxuriate in Saint’s torment. As though she were in the room with him, instead of splayed atop a bloody dissection table, a Y incision exposing her desiccated heart. “If only you had creases in your palms – I could read them for you. I could pinpoint where you went wrong in your unnatural life.

“But it’s like you told Shaxx yourself – your meddling in Osiris’s life is what killed him. We don’t need a prophet to tell us that.”

The walls close in on Saint. There’s a sharp pain radiating from his sternum to every filament, every actuator, every damn part of him until he can’t recall a time when he wasn’t in excruciating agony. He can’t make his useless lungs work no matter how desperately his brain screams for air. He can’t breathe; he doesn’t need to breathe, but he needs to, but he can’t, but he has to –

Trembling, Saint tries to crawl toward the recorder; he has to make it stop, stop it from repeating the awful, craven fears that he’d locked away so tightly within himself. Why is it so far away? Why are his limbs so heavy? He doesn’t know what his body is doing, or why it won’t do what he needs it to.

Only the Witch Queen’s message can propel Saint forward. Only her voice fills his mind with perfect clarity of what’s happening to him:

Recompense for taking his partner’s life.

“There’s this game I’m fond of playing: two truths, two lies. I’ll cut this short for both our sakes, and give you my most honest truth,” Savathûn murmurs.

“It doesn’t matter how desperately you cling to your hopes and dreams, Saint. In the end, your hands will be empty.”

Someone transmats in the opposite end of the house.

“I’m home, Brother Saint!” Geppetto announces from the foyer. She sounds exhausted. “The meeting with Ophiuchus ran a bit longer than I’d expected, I’d almost forgotten how he loves to… pontificate on… Why are all of the lights –”

Her voice curls downward with uncertainty the longer it takes for Saint to respond. And when he doesn’t, she hurriedly flies through the house, searching for him.

Saint is crouched between the balcony door and the bed, a hand over his mouth, his eyes shut off, shaking. Just shaking. The recorder lays a few feet away from him on the floor, silent.

Geppetto sits with him until the sun goes down.

It’s close to midnight when Saint arrives to the Botza district, alone. Misraaks’s workshop is easy to find – it’s the only facility that isn’t completely falling apart, since the Kell built it with his own four hands. Saint’s broad shoulders are no issue for an entryway constructed with a Captain’s dimensions in mind.

He knocks gently on the frame, and waits to be admitted.

The door buzzes open. Misraaks lifts his head from a schematics table, tugs off his goggles, and raises his arms in greeting. His eyes shine happily in the gloom upon recognizing the Titan.

It’s such a small thing, but it does much to lift Saint’s spirits, which have plunged so low they might as well have fallen through Earth’s core.

“Velask, Saint,” says Misraaks, climbing to his feet.

Saint feels his mouth plates form a smile, but that smile falters when he looks a little closer at the Eliksni’s left eyes – they’re twitching slightly. There appears to also be a tremor in Misraaks’s hands.

Before he can inquire about it, Misraaks springs a question of his own: “Might I trouble you about a book Ikorakel lent me? It is called ‘Cinder-Ella’. I have been puzzled by it since yesterday, but I am… embarrassed to seek her counsel.”

“Oh… of course.” To be honest, Saint has only a vague recollection of this story, and could use a refresher. He promises, “I will do my best to help.”

Pleased, Misraaks clasps his lower hands together. “You recall that I am studying your children’s texts to improve my reading comprehension, yes? I have even begun to transcribe some of them for the hatchlings, though Eido is… far quicker than I, with her Techeun education,” he notes, and chuckles ruefully.

In spite of the distress still looming over him, Saint can’t help but be cheered at this development. He’s observed some of Eido’s lessons to young Eliksni from a safe distance; they adore storytelling as much as any human child. Perhaps one day – if their families would allow it – Saint could sit and listen with them.

“I do,” he answers, bringing a hand to his chest. “I have been trying to do the same with the ones you gave me, but…”

“You are burden-heart,” Misraaks kindly finishes for him – far kinder than the Titan feels he deserves. “It can wait.”

Saint bows his head in gratitude. Speaking a new language is always easier for him than reading it, but he’ll learn with time.

“What was your question?” He drags a human-sized kitchen chair over, and straddles it backward.

“Ah! Yes.” Misraaks curls a left hand, and raps it thoughtfully against his cheek: a gesture learned from their young Guardian friend. “Could you explain how a pumpkin understands the concept of ‘midnight’?”

Saint manually blinks. “I… what?”

The Splicer begins to pace around the cluttered workshop (Eido calls it “organized chaos”), two arms folded behind his back. He reminds Saint of a scholar grappling with the mysteries of the universe. “Could it be a trait of the ancient pumpkin?” the Kell inquires of himself, his voice soft, and almost conspiratorial. “Genetic modification might account for why the modern pumpkin lacks this ability…”

“Can you, eh, run your question by me again?” Saint coughs. He’s not positive he’d heard it properly the first time.

“The vehicle that Cinder-Ella arrives in was transfigured by a witch’s spell, yes?” Misraaks posits, very matter-of-fact. Shaky hands gesticulate with enthusiasm as he lays out his case. “She warned Cinder-Ella that at the stroke of midnight, her spell would wear off. The dress, the shoes, the carriage and its attendants would be no more. I – wait just a moment.”

He vanishes into the adjoining room at alarming speed, a man on a mission, his cape rippling behind him. The Captain’s flight gives Saint enough time to spy a possible explanation for his friend’s unusual energy: a lone mug of deep brown liquid, half-drunk, resting atop a pile of leaflets.

Is that coffee? Saint wonders, frowning. The ring stain beneath the mug evokes the image of a habitual drinker. Interesting; he didn’t know that Eliksni could digest caffeine.

Saint approaches the workbench, his curiosity getting the better of him. A quick sniff confirms that this is not coffee, or at least no coffee he’s ever had – it smells medicinal. Strong.

Now he turns his attention to the colorful tomes piled high behind the mug, their rich lavender hues threaded with gold reminding him of Reef finery. He flips through a tome at random. Esoteric sigils neatly stamp each page, along with the ingredients required for each invocation. Great swaths of text are diligently translated into Eliksni.

These are definitely Eido's textbooks, then. But why does Misraaks need these? Saint is baffled by the notion that someone would research a fairy tale to this extent. Surely there must be Eliksni stories that are just as magical and illogical as human ones.

“What confounds me” – a clatter of squeaky wheels heralds the return of Misraaks, dragging what looks like a Hidden’s evidence board behind him – “is how a fruit could be particular about the passage of time.”

Very quietly, Saint takes a seat again.

With his back to the Titan, Misraaks swiftly begins to write using a half piece of chalk. (Saint’s limited knowledge of the Eliksni alphabet comes in handy here: he recognizes the words for “Awoken” and “ground”, and can hazard a guess on the rest.) There’s little space for Misraaks to work with, as the board is almost entirely covered by theorems and schematics for various projects, including – ah. A cutaway drawing of a pumpkin carriage, lovingly rendered.

“We know that plants adapt to changes in their environment – light, soil properties, weather, time of day – but to have perfect chronoception is… unheard of.

“Hmm.” Misraaks puffs contemplatively on his Ether. He paces again; he lifts his eyes to study the ceiling, as though scrying the drywall for answers. “If Reef magic could serve as a template for our study, then in order for the carriage to appear, the spell must override the pumpkin’s natural defenses.

“Suppose Queen Mara Sov instructs an all-powerful coven to banish winter squashes from existence. These crops are absent from the Reef; the Techeuns would have difficulty visualizing their target without more information. I will complicate matters further by saying that the pumpkin went extinct during humanity’s Collapse, and no records of it survived. How, then, can a Techeun defeat something she will never encounter?

“Paracausality. Weaponized thought. So long as the concept of a pumpkin exists, our Techeun could manipulate it, then expunge it from reality. It is a paradox: there must be a pumpkin somewhere in all of creation in order for it to be destroyed.” He takes a breath. “It is… a beautiful thing, that nothing is ever truly gone, if it ever existed at all. Now–”

Saint’s inclination toward politeness is so deeply ingrained that it may as well be hard coded into his personality matrix. He’s discomfited by the thought of interrupting something that clearly matters to Misraaks – something that has kept his friend up at night, if the mysterious beverage and tomes are any indication.

But, at the same time, his desire for friendly advice – his need for a level-headed perspective on the day’s events – is just barely winning out over the politeness. He has to cut this short.

Saint makes a solemn promise: In the future, he will listen patiently to Misraaks’s dissertation on the ontology of fruits. Traveler knows he’s sat for more confusing lectures by Osiris.

He folds his arms over the back of the chair. “Misraaks,” he interjects; Saint hopes his expression is sufficiently apologetic. “This is all very interesting, but I do not understand what this has to do with Cinder-Ella.”

Misraaks swerves around to give Saint a look, arms dropping to his sides. It’s rare to see the Captain so peeved. He glowers. “I was getting to the point.”

Saint smiles painfully. “Ah. Okay.”

“I ask you, Saint: Is every fruit in Cinder-Ella’s world capable of perceiving time? If so, why did the witch choose a pumpkin of all things? There must be something special about it!”

It appears he’ll have to play along for a bit longer, then. Nothing else will soothe the Kell’s agitation. “But, why must it be the pumpkin?” Saint tries. “Maybe it is the magic.”

“Aha!” Misraaks barks, jabbing in his direction with the chalk and startling the Titan. His eyes are ablaze. “That seems to be the most obvious answer. But it is not!”

Saint is at a loss for words. Misraaks, on the other three hands, is not. He has so many more words. “Without a thorough explanation on how magic operates in Cinder-Ella’s world, I can only speculate on the conditions required to wield it.” The Kell begins to scribble a new equation. “But since we know her spell had a time limit, we may conclude that the witch had casted a very simple transformation spell.”

“A very simple one,” Saint parrots to the floor, his forehead resting on his arms.

Misraaks ignores him. “Reefborn transformation is much more complicated, as it requires a minimum of two separate invocations: one to transform the target, and then another to ‘lock’ the spell in place. Sentient beings require considerable effort on the Techeun’s part to defeat their will, whereas inanimate objects need very little. Reversing the spell will also tax her energy reserves. It is possible for a sentient being to overpower the Techeun’s magic and reclaim their original form, or resist the transformation entirely.”

Wait. You can resist it? Throughout Misraaks’s rambling on magic, Saint has been nursing a growing worry in the back of his mind about Queen Mara Sov’s tech witches turning everyone around him into pumpkins.

He wants to ask Misraaks if he knows anything about Hive magic – particularly how to combat it – but he keeps his mouth shut. Later on, he can ask Eido.

Actually, maybe he won’t ask Eido.

“I am confident that Cinder-Ella’s witch did not try, or simply could not prevent the reversal of the carriage; her powers may be weaker than the reader is lead to believe. That begs the question of how exactly the carriage maintained its form – and I believe I have the answer.

“You see, Saint, the pumpkin was not the only transformed subject that night. There were also mice who became human attendants to the future-princess.” Misraaks’s tone is of barely-restrained excitement. He is reaching his earth-shattering conclusion at last.

But he is also reaching his physical limits, too; Saint can see the Kell start to flag where he stands. For his sake, Saint says, “Go on.”

In spite of his exhaustion, Misraaks rushes over to Saint’s chair and lowers himself so that he is eye-level with the Titan. “From the very beginning, Cinder-Ella’s strange mice behaved much the same as humans, albeit smaller and furry. They would have possessed the ability to read a clock, and so could their human vessels.

“But a carriage? It is an inanimate object. It would have needed some other way to perceive time, some other conscience to possess it. Therefore…”

In triumph, Misraaks declares, “The pumpkin has chronoception!”

Unable to restrain himself any longer, Saint blurts out, “No, it does not! It is a fruit!”

The room falls deathly quiet. Neither of them move for a handful of seconds. Misraaks is looking at Saint as though he is only just noticing that the Titan is in his workshop, and perhaps he should not be in it after all.

Saint takes a deep breath. Misraaks is very much like Osiris in that the two hate being corrected, or challenged. It must be a scientist thing. (Or, Saint admits to himself, an old man thing. He is… the same.)

“It was plucked from its garden,” he explains carefully, hoping to mollify whatever is brewing behind Misraaks’s stormy gaze. “So it is no longer alive. Even if it had understood what midnight was –”

He sees how the gears are visibly turning in Misraaks’s head as the Eliksni struggles to come up with a retort. How could he have spent so many passionate hours unraveling this mystery, only for Saint, who is no scholar at all, to rip it all up? No; no, he’s considered all of the evidence, he believes he is in the right, and he just has to prove it!

Saint patiently waits to be proven wrong. And then the Kell of Light narrows his uppermost eyes in a great revelation, and exclaims, “What if it were Vex?”

The absurdity of Misraaks’s response knocks the wind out of Saint. He bursts into raucous laughter, and Misraaks wheels backward, affronted.

“Misraaks!” Saint gasps, clutching his stomach. He has to move to the floor; the chair is threatening to give out beneath him. “No, my friend – is just a tale.” He coughs, “This retelling was written— written long before humanity encountered the Vex. I doubt the author was thinking of time-travelling robots.”

In response, Misraaks wilts like a stalk bearing a heavy droplet of rain; it appears that he very much wanted the author to be thinking of time-travelling robots.

“...I see,” he grunts, crossing his primary arms. He has joined a wheezing Saint on the floor. “Eido insisted as much, but…”

Saint, who had started to pick himself back up, laughs even harder. This time, Misraaks laughs with him.

“You did not want to concede victory to your daughter!” Saint accuses lightly, shaking a finger.

“You are correct – I wanted to believe the answer was more fantastical than it being a simple story,” Misraaks admits, chuckling. He glances over his shoulder at his evidence board and shakes his head, as if waking up from a long dream. “Thank you for indulging me, Saint. It has been… a difficult time, and reading is a welcome distraction. So, too, is companionship. Was there something that you needed?”

The cheer drains from Saint – from the reminder of why he’d come, and the fact that Misraaks is experiencing hardships of his own. He hesitates, and replies, “I need a moment to gather my thoughts. In the mean time, I would like to know what has been troubling you, if that is okay.”

“...I see.” Something shutters behind Misraaks’s eyes. The Kell exhales softly. “There are… a myriad of things plaguing my mind,” he begins gruffly, “but chief among them is this – this feeling of overwhelming guilt. Have you been to the H.E.L.M at all this past week?”

“I have not,” Saint answers.

Somehow Misraaks looks far older than the energetic Splicer who was decrypting human fairytales just a minute ago. “Then, are you aware of Eris Morn’s operation? Of the Crown of Sorrow, placed in the wing where House Light had once set up?”

“A bit.”

“The Crown, it is… a vile artifact connected to the Lunar Pyramid, drawing upon the agony of all who tread near it.” The words sound like they are ripped out of Misraaks’s unwilling mouth.

“I see. I know very little of Eris’s movements these days,” Saint replies, apologetically. He doesn’t add that it’s by design: He wants nothing to do with the Crown, or the Derelict Leviathan.

“It spoke to me,” Misraaks mutters, fiddling with his Splicer gauntlet. He is desperately avoiding Saint’s inquisitive look. Does he fear that Saint will judge him? “It fed on my suffering. It summoned the voices of those I’d betrayed as the Captain of Death. Kith and kin whose lives I cut short for my own selfish reasons. I –”

He shudders. “I… I do not wish to say more at this time. Forgive me.”

“My friend, there is nothing to be sorry about.” Saint is silent. He’s still uncertain about norms regarding comfort for the Eliksni; they don’t seem to enjoy touching from those outside of their immediate circle of loved ones. Which is a shame, because Saint is great at hugs.

For his part, Misraaks draws strength from the sincerity of one’s words and deeds. So the best thing Saint can do right now is to be patient and open with the Kell, and allow him to reach out when he is ready to talk. Arid platitudes will avail him not.

Saint smiles, and it is tinged with slyness. He asks, “Are you going to offer me what you were drinking?”

Misraaks blinks – top eyes first, bottom eyes second. Saint juts his chin toward the workbench where the mystery mug rests, still flanked by towering books. “What I was– Oh!” The Kell snorts. “It is medicine, a concoction derived from yaviirsi figs. I learned it from my mother. You would not like the taste, Saint.”

Figs, eh? Saint wonders how they compare to Earth’s. “What are you taking it for, then?”

“It keeps one awake, and increases their productivity. But it can also lead them to have… hrm.” He says a phrase that Saint’s unfamiliar with, and at the Titan’s blank look, he tries to elaborate in Common: “Echo-thoughts. Ones that may spiral out of control.”

Echo-thoughts… Perhaps these could be reoccurring thoughts? It’s a stimulant, then – and Misraaks does not take well to it.

Saint rubs his jaw. He wonders if there are other, safer remedies to buoy Misraaks through the his ordeal with the Crown. He makes a mental note to ask House Light’s herbalist in the morning, see if she’s missing any ingredients Saint could hunt down.

“Now, you must tell Misraaks what has happened to you,” says the Kell, straightening up. “Is it about Osiris?”

Steady breaths. Saint nods, and gives Misraaks a quick summary – the flooding, the figure in the shower, the recording. His descriptions are brief, and his tone is clipped; he does his best not to get upset repeating Savathûn’s words, but his expression gives him away.

“Before I left my home, I called Ikora, asked if she was sure that Savathûn was dead. She was surprised, and assured me that she’d gone to inspect the remains just this morning.” Saint stares at the floor. “I asked Ikora to go again, and she did. The body is still there. All is as it should be.”

According to the Vanguard, that is, sings the creeping paranoia in Saint’s brain. He balls his hands into trembling fists, willing her to shut up.

“I have a favor to ask,” he says in a rush. If Saint keeps talking, then he can’t hear his cursed thoughts.

Misraaks holds his primary hands out when Saint produces Osiris’s recorder. The Kell takes it from him, showing the utmost care as he inspects it. “This is the same machine you mentioned?” he inquires.

“It is.” Saint’s chest tightens with overwhelming emotion, and he has to look away to collect himself.

He has… difficulties parting with Osiris’s things, even though he trusts Misraaks to keep it safe. When the investigation into the Warlock’s disappearance began, Saint cooperated fully: answering questions with pure honestly, allowing the Hidden to comb through his home, and handing over everything they asked for – everything except this recorder. Instead, Saint and Geppetto provided them with audio transcripts for each entry Osiris had made.

It’s his only possession that has Osiris’s voice. His real voice. Saint couldn’t let it go.

Looking back now, it was utterly childish for him to keep the recorder, though the Hidden were eventually satisfied by the transcripts – they did not feel the recorder had yielded any pertinent info. Saint had not hindered the investigation by clinging to it. It was fine.

But, as he stares at the little machine in Misraaks’s hands, he wonders: Would they have found Savathûn’s recording, if I handed it over?

It’s impossible to say; Saint’s listened to it a dozen times since Savathûn’s flight to her throne world, and not once did he hear anything out of the ordinary. If he’d had, he would have gone straight to the Hidden!

What the hell is going on?

Saint makes a somber request: He wants Misraaks to critically examine the recorder for any telltale signs of tampering. Perhaps the shower turning itself on and the “intruder” he’d seen, if they existed at all, were related.

If this is all a twisted prank, he wants to know who’s behind it, because Savathûn is dead.

“This may be beneath you,” Saint hesitates, “as it is not Vex tech, but...”

He struggles to come up with a good excuse for why he didn’t go to the Vanguard. Any reasonable person would want to know. “Geppetto and I tried to play back the Witch Queen’s message, but it was… gone. It erased itself.”

He looks pleadingly at his friend – his newest, and dearest friend, for whom he has the highest regard – and admits, “I doubt I will be taken seriously by anyone else.”

Saint braces himself for a snide remark, a cackle, anything at all from that wretched Queen, but his mind is wonderfully, wholly his own. That, or his heart is whirring too loudly.

Misraaks rumbles behind his mask. “Aiding a trusted ally is not beneath me,” he replies, deeply grave, and proud. “And I do take you seriously. I will help you, Saint.”

He turns away and strides over to his workbench, placing the recorder on the only spot free of papers and books. One of his lower hands produces a datapad while he scans the recorder with his gauntlet. “I shall need a day or two,” he tells Saint over his shoulder. “Tracking the individual responsible will occupy the majority of my work. I will contact you when I have more information, you have my word.”

Saint can see just enough of the glare of the screen to spy a digital schematic of the recorder. Watching the Kell handle the machine with such respect has him starting to relax for the first time today, when Misraaks suddenly pipes back up, “There is something else. Something that is bothering me about your tale.”

“Yes?” Saint asks, warily.

Misraaks glances over his shoulder and says, “I could be misunderstanding what you said, but… To be clear, you have not given up on Osiris. Is that right?”

“I have not given up on him,” he tells Misraaks.

“Yet when the Witch Queen stated that you were in denial about his prognosis, it pained you deeply. As though she spoke the truth, for once.”

There’s no reply.

“...To be certain” – Misraaks believes that the silence is Saint waiting for him to continue – “it is not cowardice to consider every possible outcome for Osiris, and plan accordingly. It is not abandoning your partner.”

This is the conversation Saint never wanted to have with anyone – not his father, not Geppetto, not Misraaks. Not even with Osiris, who he should have discussed this with.

That regret gives him the last push he needs to open up about it at last. But it is a push that brings him closer to the precipice.

“Misraaks,” Saint rasps, his eyes dimming. The Kell stops what he is doing, and gives Saint his full attention. “Guardians do not sicken, and our bodies do not age. When we die our final deaths, we rarely go slowly, or quietly.”

His heart aches with memories of Marin, Tallulah, Andal, Wei Ning, Cayde, and many, many others. So many of them died brutally. So many of them died alone. “We are shot, torn to shreds, erased from reality. Many times, there is nothing left of us to bury. The ones we leave behind eventually move on. We support each other through these losses, of course. We have been losing each other for as long as we have been alive.”

He hears Misraaks come back, hears him take a seat next to Saint. “I know some Guardians that have lost so much, they are numb to it. In some ways, I am, too. But…”

Saint falters, trailing off. He tries again. “But grieving someone who is still alive, is…”

He can’t do it; he can’t make his voice stop shaking, but he can’t stop talking, either. The floodgates have opened – all of Saint’s torment comes spilling out of him. “What do I do if my love is both with me, and gone?” he demands, staring at his useless hands. “How do I seek for help for something that has no solution?”

And then, in an anguish so deep, he’s forgotten what it means to feel anything else: “What am I being brave for?”

Misraaks is silent. He doesn’t say for yourself, which would be the ‘right’ response – the response that Saint doesn’t want to hear. Nor does he say for Osiris or for the City, which is what Saint has told himself again and again, to no end.

Perhaps Misraaks is silent because he has asked himself this question many times, and is no closer to answering it.

But even if the Kell had an answer ready for him, Saint would be too distraught to believe it. It would fall on deaf processors. He is so exhausted by his own misery, and the misery of the world around him. It’s like he’s wading through an endless sea, looking for a guiding light that never appears.

It’s a long time before he speaks again, in a low, drained voice; Saint only knows it’s him talking because Misraaks turns to look at him. It sounds like it’s coming from somewhere else entirely. “Osiris is not all I have,” he allows, because it’s true. He has Geppetto; he has Misraaks. He has people who love him, who he loves in return. Without them, he is nothing. “But he is… the softest part of me. The most vulnerable. I would die a thousand deaths so long as he is left alone.”

There is movement from the corner of his eye sockets: A large, three-fingered hand clumsily covers his own. He has enough energy in him to be surprised; he looks at the hand blankly, confused about how it got there, and what it’s doing.

Slowly, Misraaks’s lower left hand begins to rub Saint’s back with the awkwardness of a person who knows that this is the right thing to do, but has never done it before, and hopes you will forgive him for it. At the same time, his four eyes are shining with concern and determination.

The message is clear: He won’t let Saint drown. He will pull him back up, again and again. Together, they will find land.

And when the Exo’s heavy heart has burst from sorrow, and again threatens to drown him from the inside, he will fight his way back up to the surface, and take Misraaks’s hand.

Night comes and goes. Misraaks is content to pass the time in companionable silence, for he treasures the moments where one simply is. To him, there are few things more sacred.

Miraculously, Saint falls asleep at some point slumped over the workbench, the recorder inches away from his hand. He wakes with the Kell’s cape blanketing him, and a faraway Misraaks calling out – in a tone that is half encouraging, half threatening – “If I bake you some eggplant…”

Saint chuckles, though it sounds more like a wheeze. “...Fine.”

Eggplant is not the most appetizing meal for breakfast, but Saint is pleased that he can take the rest of it home for later. He hasn’t felt like cooking lately.

As he eats, he checks his messages from Geppetto, thanking her for staying with Osiris the previous night and apologizing for worrying her. He assures her that all is well, that he is feeling fine enough to visit the hospital before he goes home.

Halfway across the Eliksni Quarter and heading towards the exit, Saint has a terrible realization. He sprints after Misraaks’s vanishing form, calling out to him.

“I would like you to skip the last message on the recorder. Is there a way for you to listen to it without… listening to it?” Saint pants, his eyes darting to the side in embarrassment.

Misraaks cocks his head, puzzled by the request. “Why, yes, there is a way. But may I ask the reason?”

The violet light in Saint’s throat blooms into a soft rose color. He doesn’t normally think of himself as a prude, but he’d rather keep this little memory to himself: Osiris’s palms gliding beneath the front of Saint’s soaked shirt – not seeking to pull it off all the way, but to ball the material up into his collar and yank the Exo closer, tethering him.

Even with the shower water as background noise, the pair were loud enough in their lovemaking that anyone half listening to the audio could put two and two together of what was going on, who it was going into, and how hard it was going into him.

“...It is private,” Saint coughs, looking pointedly at his friend.

Misraaks’s keen eyes sharply narrow – he is smirking behind his rebreather. “Ah. I see.”

Saint resumes his duties in the Tower the very next day, with no indication that he had spent the previous night as a complete wreck, passed out on his friend’s desk.

He also resumes his impromptu babysitting job, which is less of an official job and more of an understanding between him and all the parents who live within three blocks of his home.

“Your mother is back from her call, my dear.” Saint bends a knee to secure Leda’s backpack, smiling a little at her Nova Bomb keychain.

“Have you got everything you need?” he inquires, giving her another look-over before patting her head. “Your notebook? Your frog?”

“Yes, Mr. Fourteen.” Leda holds up a battered plush as proof. One of its eyes is missing — the result of a high-speed Sparrow chase through the Black Garden, he was gravely told.

Fariba comes bounding up the path then, skidding to an abrupt stop at the porch and leaning over, hands on her knees. She still looks less frantic than she had three hours ago. “I’m so sorry for just dumping her on you, Saint. Normally my wife picks her up from school, but she’s stationed on Mars, and I’ve just been reassigned–”

She swipes the perspiration from her forehead with the back of her sleeve, leaving a dark trail of oil in its wake. Saint beams at her.

“It was no trouble at all,” he assures Fariba, sympathetic to her plight. It’s not the first time an acquaintance has handed him their kid, mortal terror writ plain upon their face, pleading for Saint to watch them for just a little while. The red planet’s reemergence has shaken up a lot of Tower personnel, mentally and professionally; everyone’s scrambling to get up to speed on what they can learn of the Golden Age, where to go from here, how they can possibly recover Io, Titan and Mercury, and so on, and so forth. It's not just a concern for the Guardians.

He only hopes the family has a more permanent solution in place to babysitting Leda: She deserves a normal childhood, too. “Things happen. Your little one was very good. We learned how to make birdfeed today.”

“They love rice as much as we do,” Leda happily informs her mother, shaking a small pouch. Fariba kisses her daughter’s brow, laughing.

The pair wave at Saint as they depart for home. He heaves a sigh of relief.

“Wait a sec, mommy.” Leda gently tugs her arm out of her mother’s grip before back to Saint. The Titan exchanges a look of bemusement with Fariba and shrugs: Is fine. He meets the child halfway.

“Mr. Fourteen,” she whispers, pressing a finger to her lips. Shh.

Saint does a show of glancing around for pesky eavesdroppers and kneeling until he is only two heads taller than his young neighbor. “Osiris is trying to surprise you, but he’s doing a bad job at it,” says Leda, wrinkling her nose. “I could see him moving around upstairs.”

Stunned, his throat light flickering uselessly, Saint twists sharply around to stare through the open door to his home. Of course children tell stories, but Leda is not like that. She knows that Osiris is very sick, and–

Osiris?

Saint barrels up the stairs, crying out his partner’s name.

“Osiris!” Saint yells, ripping his communicator out of his pocket to dial the hospital. Why hadn’t anyone called him?

Geppetto hastens out of the living room, her eye wide with confusion. “What’s going on?” she demands. “I didn’t hear anyone come in, Brother. Who told you that Osiris is home?”

He falters at the top of the stairs. There was no movement in any of the rooms, no sign that anything was amiss, and Geppetto has been in the house all day. She definitely would have noticed someone entering.

“I… Leda said…” Saint trails off, his expression flattening.

Every time he gets a glimpse of false hope – when he thinks he hears Osiris saying his name, or spots him in the corner of the Bazaar – it devastates him for so long afterward. It happens more than he’d like to admit to his therapist.

Geppetto floats to him, brimming with sorrow. “No one else has come inside,” she repeats softly. “I’m sorry, but Leda is mistaken.”

Saint nods, dully, willing himself to think about something else. He sits heavily on the step, staring out the foyer windows. From his vantage point he can see storm clouds gathering outside.

That’s good. It hasn’t rained in a while. The pigeons will have an easier time looking for worms.

“Sit with me?” he asks Geppetto, cupping his hands for her to perch. She wiggles her appendages upward in a smile, bobbing in agreement.

Just as she descends into his open palms, she is struck by a crimson bolt and goes skidding across the floor. Saint grips the guard rail hard enough to bend it as he hauls himself up, shouting, “Geppetto!”

The front door slams shut with his cry, and the wind begins to howl along as rain pounds the windows. Saint feels a gust of air behind him. He dives on top of Geppetto, shielding her with his body.

Saint whispers hoarsely, “Little sun, can you hear me? Say something.” Her iris is stuttering, skipping frames, alternating wildly between blue and red. Her Light, though, is still strong and comforting.

“Oh, she’s fine. Worry about yourself for once.”

He jerks his head up.

“Although,” the Nightmare considers, crossing his arms in an achingly familiar way, “it may be fair to point out that you’re thinking of nothing but yourself these days.”

Saint curls Geppetto to his breast, and pushes himself up with one hand. He gazes in horror upon the warped, smoky visage of his beloved.

He’s– he’s seen this phantom before. The figure in the shower. It was a Nightmare all along. It was Darkness and torment made manifest, and Saint had let it rot in wait for him.

He had been a fool to think he could escape the Crown of Sorrow’s influence by staying on Earth.

The creature sneers at him. There’s no doubt he’s thinking the same thing. “No tears or sweet nothings for me?” he demands.

Saint’s mind is assailed by the waves of pure agony and rage emanating from the phantom, clouding his head with cruel, hateful thoughts. The Nightmare presses, “Moved on already, have we? Were you not just shouting my name a moment ago?”

The Titan shakes it off and sits up, still gripping Geppetto tightly to his heart. He snaps, “You are not Osiris. I care not for what you have to say. Leave. Leave! Get out of my sight, you pathetic monster!”

“You are the last person that can tell me who I am,” the Nightmare snarls.

Can Saint even attack it? No, he recalls, grimacing; they’re immune to Guardian armaments. His and Geppetto’s best hope is to keep the phantom talking, keep him right where Saint can see him, until help can arrive.

He goes for his communicator – and it, like Geppetto, is torn from his hand, flung down the stairs.

“So now you want me gone, is that it? You’ve grown tired of keeping me around to stroke your ego? Have I become too much of a burden for you?”

Umbral ice gathers around Saint’s legs and midsection, and anchors him to the floor. He tries to break it, then melt it, but Solar Light refuses to gather in his hands. The Darkness is so heavy, it’s choking his hold on the Light entirely.

Enraged, the Nightmare howls, “You WILL listen to me. I WILL be heard!”

Saint stops his struggling, and he does listen. There’s something about the pain in the phantom’s voice… It keeps insisting that it is Osiris, and its hatred for Saint cannot just be the Titan’s own self-loathing and guilt.

Could there be truth in what it’s saying? Had Saint been right about Osiris’s mind appearing to be elsewhere, separated from his body?

What if… what if this really is him? What if he was corrupted by Saint’s cowardice?

The Stasis crystals have now enveloped Geppetto. They creep higher and higher, slowing only once they have reached Saint’s shoulders. After all, the Nightmare needs Saint to witness him.

Osiris’s phantom drifts closer to him, before raising his shaky hands to his own face. “I guarded my ruined heart when my first friend sacrificed herself to save me. I gathered the scraps of my dignity as the Witch Queen and her worm burrowed into me, desecrating my body and blackening my soul. I stayed true to my convictions even as my own mouth sung lies to the very people I swore to protect, ushering them to their doom. I held fast to what was left of my sanity as I screamed for someone, anyone at all to hear me, to save me, and was met with silence.”

He is inches away from Saint’s face. His voice carries an ocean of tears. “I died again and again and again as I watched my partner fall under the spell of the fiend that wore my face, used my voice, mimicked my mannerisms so well that he could not tell discern the ruse for what it was – and when he did suspect, he did NOTHING!”

“I,” Saint gasps, his heart tearing into pieces, his chest burning.

“I wanted to reach back to him,” the Nightmare sobs, “to be held by him, for I could still feel his touch upon my skin. It was the only solace I had. But oh, I could never enjoy it for long – no, no, could I, when I knew it her that he dreamed of!

“And you think that you know despair? You think that you know me?”

From the moment Eris bound herself to the Crown of Sorrow, and hundreds upon hundreds of Guardians answered the call to defeat Calus, Saint dreaded the notion of meeting his own Nightmare. Yet, now that he has – now that he is forced into accepting the miserable creature that was wrought from his own grief – Saint cannot help but gaze in wretched fondness at the Nightmare’s wispy features, and hanging on to every word that is growled at him.

Day after day he’s played out the most mundane scenarios in his mind: him and Osiris, doing anything and nothing at all, and to be offered this pale imitation is… cathartic, in a way he was unprepared for.

Saint misses Osiris so much that his heart constantly feels fit to bursting, and each breath he draws feels stolen, meant for his lover instead.

He resents the way this thing makes him feel, but he yearns for what it reminds him of, too. He is only a man.

No. Not only that. You are my Guardian, too.

Geppetto’s weak voice brushes the edges of his conscience, re-establishing entry into their synthoneural link. And through that link, Saint can feel his Ghost funneling all her non-essential power to her core, warming her shell.

That burning that he felt, it was her, his little sun – she’s trying to melt the ice!

Saint keeps his eyes locked with the Nightmare’s, but his heart is with Geppetto.

“You wish to hasten my end? To have me silenced for good this time?”

The phantom holds his arms out to the sides and laughs, all traces of vulnerability gone from him. “Make me,” he goads.

The yearning is over. Saint bursts out from the ice, and tackles the Nightmare of Osiris off the balcony.

Saint’s last thought before he hits the bottom is that the creature in his arms is more solid than he’d expected. The Darkness that composes his form has coalesced into something not unlike soft, yielding flesh – albeit flesh that can slough off and dissipate. He had thought the Nightmares were nothing more than smoke.

What is this thing?

He lands, and the resounding crash from his sheer girth reverberates through the house like a wrecking ball. It hurts like hell, too.

And the Nightmare is gone.

Damn it.

His communicator pings insistently him from a few feet away. Saint slowly crawls toward it on his stomach. He hits the answer button, drops the machine next to him with a grunt, and rolls over. Diagnostics frantically scroll across his vision as his systems run through emergency first aid.

Upstairs, Geppetto groggily bobs into view. He tries to wave her over, but his arm falls back to his side. “Do not waste your Light on me, Sister,” he slurs.

Ugh. He’s definitely fallen harder and higher than that. Is he getting old, or…?

“Saint? This is Misraaks. I am afraid I have bad news.”

From within his small crater, Saint mutters, “What.”

“I am… unable to locate the source of that disturbing message with the technology currently at my disposal. But make no mistake: Whoever delivered it to you is cruel and dangerous, and we will find them!”

“Oh,” Saint sighs, his eyes flickering. “I did that already. But thank you.”

He can Misraaks scrambling on the other end, dislodging items from his overflowing workbench. “You did… what?”

Geppetto, Saint’s brave, sweet Ghost, and his best friend, descends on him in a flurry of appendages. She’s saying that Saint’s emitting dangerous levels of Darkness energy, or insanity, or… yes. His head is a too fuzzy to concentrate on her speech. “I tell later.”

The morning brings relief in the form of a torrential downpour.

Saint eschewed sleep in favor of coaxing the Nightmare out of hiding, while Geppetto contacted Eris. But to their dismay, no amount of begging, bargaining, or threatening would convince the creature to show his face. It seems more likely that they are to wait until the Nightmare graces them with his presence on his own.

Saint sits at the table with his head in his hands, crushed by the weight of his turbulent emotions. He doesn’t want to admit that he’s trapped between wanting the Nightmare destroyed, and wanting “Osiris” to stay.

He knows objectively that it’s not Osiris, but a creature that is closer to himself: a psychic imprint of his own trauma. This knowledge should repulse him, should see him redouble his efforts to kill it.

Instead, it only reinforces his loneliness.

Around noon, someone knocks at the door. Guardian and Ghost stare at it with harried, accusing eyes.

Boldly, Geppetto starts, “I will ans–”

Saint storms over and wrenches it open so hard it almost flies off its hinges, half convinced that it’s another ploy by the Nightmare to upset him. He’s shocked to see that it’s Eris Morn standing alone on his porch, determined, and drenched to the bone.

“Eris!” The Titan hurriedly ushers her inside, apologizing for making her wait in the cold. Meanwhile, Geppetto transmats a towel over her and urges Eris to come closer to the fireplace.

“I thought it best to continue our conversation in person, given the unusual nature of this Nightmare,” Eris intones, unmoved by all the fussing. “Hello, Saint, Geppetto.”

She glances at Saint, taking in his haggard appearance and the flickering of his eyes from exhaustion. “I have brought the necessary materials to craft you a Nightmare Harvester. Before I begin the ritual, I will need to survey your home. We must ensure that the Nightmare cannot escape and wreak its havoc upon the City.”

“Thank you, Eris. I will assist in any way I can.” Saint gives her an appraising look as well, though for a different reason. Yes, she’s roughly the same height as Osiris. “A moment. I will be right back.”

He leaves Eris to unpack her things before returning to the living room with some dry clothes: a black shirt, sarouel pants, and Saint’s old grey hoodie. Just in case she’s still cold.

Eris seems perplexed by this offering, but inclines her head in thanks, and goes to change.

While she’s gone, Saint clears some space on the floor for her to work, knowing from experience that she will refuse to sit at a table. Geppetto floats over the small field kit that Eris had unrolled, along with her satchel. Within the kit is a sterile collection of dissection tools, a cross-pein hammer with ingots of unknown origin, a small clay tablet, glowing adderstones, a strip of blackthorn bark, and a handful of polyethylene canisters.

Saint doesn’t dare touch Eris’s satchel without permission, doing his very best to ignore the disembodied hissing from one of the pockets. He’s accustomed to the odd experiment taking place in his living room at all hours of the day, and with all a manner of strange samples. So long as it doesn’t sing, he’s fine.

He keeps reminding himself of this: he’s fine. The Nightmares were conjured with Hive magic, and if that is what is required to banish them, so be it. There are very few people that he trusts as much as he trusts Eris, and Saint’s principles are not so inflexible that he will refuse her assistance on the basis of her powers. Eris is more than what she survived.

“I am finished with my preparations,” announces Eris from the foyer. Saint looks up from a shimmering chunk of osmium. To his amusement, the hoodie looks more like a robe on her.

She takes a seat on the rug, opposite of Saint. The Ahamkara bone is nowhere in sight. “We will need a suitable tithe for the Crown of Sorrow: a symbol of your commitment to the binding ritual,” she explains gravely. “It may be anything, though for our purposes, I suggest an item tied to Osiris.”

Saint relinquishes his old, mostly-repaired teacup, placing it gently before Eris.

“Very good,” she says, and offers him the tiniest smile. He returns it, a touch nervous. “I will call you when I am ready.”

Eris calls to his vanishing back, “You may wish to open a window. The creeping ichor has the tendency to smell like bloated corpses of Acolytes roasting in the Sun.”

“It is time.”

The storm outside has not yet relented. In the center of the darkened living room sits Saint and Eris, the pair bathed in the light of three soulfire braziers. “Listen to me carefully, Saint,” she warns, narrowing her eyes. “Whatever you hear or see during the ritual is to be ignored. Stay vigilant, my friend. It will be over quickly.”

“I understand,” Saint grounds out. He loosens his jaw. “I do.”

Eris holds his gaze for a moment longer, and then lets go of him, trusting that he will listen. She holds the Harvester aloft with both hands. “Song of Sathona, your words are mine to command. Vorlog. Aiat.”

Saint concentrates on the sound of her voice, rather than on the words themselves. Sathona’s name precedes a stab in his chest, but he hurls the memory of the Witch Queen to the side.

Now is not the time to dwell on that creature. He must not think of her. He must not think of anything at all.

Not even me.

Another stab of pain – this one straight through the chest. Unbowed, Saint glares at the floor, and wills himself not to turn around. There is nothing behind him. The cold fingers that brush his throat are not real.

“...find harmony in binding flesh.”

Eris’s body twitches violently, a marionette jerked from all sides by unseen hands. Saint watches in horror as she is lifted from the ground, rising higher and higher until she can almost touch the ceiling. Still, she keeps a tight grip on the Harvester. Still, she chants. “It burdens…”

And I am the burden, the Nightmare whispers. His icy breath grazes the back of Saint’s neck. A lifeless husk you keep out of pure sentiment. I am the lover who will never return, no matter how long you wait at the window with a light to guide me. I am nothing, and you are everything that ruined me.

“It burdens…”

Bind yourself to me, Saint, and then what will you do? Will you kill me again? Will you say it’s for the greater good this time?

“No,” Saint whispers, shaking. “Never.”

Unbearable agony radiates from the psionic wound carved in his heart. Waves and waves of torment are sapping his strength, driving him to the floor. He can just barely hear Eris, but he knows she’s out there somewhere, and reaches for her. A different hand reaches back.

“It burdens…”

How long did it take for you to act? demands the Nightmare, bringing Saint’s palm to his ephemeral cheek. Searing fire and biting ice alternate beneath the Titan’s fingertips. Did you ever love me, or the idea of me?

“It…” Eris’s voice has lost its hypnotic cadence. Her breathing is labored; she struggles through the incantation.

–he feels Sagira’s empty shell crashing to the dust; he tastes his own frantic cries as he’s trapped in his own body, begging someone, anyone to help; he hears knives carving out his innards, hears his ribcage into a cradle, building an altar to a parasite that sups on his flesh and screams for more; he sees the scent of death, that sickly sweet ozone wafting from the plasma burn in Lakshmi-2’s chest; he–

“STOP!”

Suddenly, the ceiling bulb overhead goes nuclear – it thrums with uncontrollable energy, shining so brightly that all are blinded. Every light fixture in the house rapidly flashes once, twice, thrice. Geppetto yells their names, but her cry is drowned out by the crack of thunder, and by the cacophony of tremors ripping through the house.

The ceiling light explodes. The Nightmare Harvester is torn out of a clammy hand, narrowly beheading Saint as it lodges itself in the wall. Eris crashes to the ground on a sea of glass and porcelain.

***

For the second time in just a couple of days, Saint finds himself picking up the broken pieces of his sanity and throwing them in the trash.

“I am alright, Saint,” Eris insists, pressing a cold compress to two of her eyes. Physically, that is true; the omnigel has already healed the cuts on her head, arms and back, and dulled her pain to a minor annoyance. “A little sore, but alright. I’ve had worse falls on the Moon. This was merely a setback.”

Saint rolls her shirt down and tosses a bloody rag into the pile of garbage he’ll incinerate later. It’s a testament to how bleak his mindset currently is, that the idea of setting things on fire won’t cheer him up. “What do you consider a complete failure, then?”

“If we hadn’t tried at all, that would have been a failure.”

He exhales. “That is… true.”

Eris follows Saint at a languid pace to the dark kitchen, carrying the Ahamkara bone in one hand, and a candle in the other. Throughout the house she’s drawn runes to keep the Nightmare at bay as she and Saint recover.

“This is only a theory,” she cautions him, taking a seat at the table, “but given its unparalleled ability to affect the physical world, what you experienced during the binding ritual, and your acute exposure to Savathûn, I am beginning to suspect the phantom haunting you is a remnant of the Witch Queen’s magic that lingered upon you after her death. A cursed touchmark, of sorts. If I am correct, that would explain why it has only manifested now due to the Crown’s influence.”

She places the candle in front of her and turns her attention to the Ahamkara bone, her grim face awash in its sickly glow. “During the ritual, I was able to sense the faintest presence of another’s Light in the room. At first I thought it was Geppetto, or a Guardian that had entered unannounced. But the Light was… corrupted – almost beyond recognition. Not unlike the Light found in Savathûn’s apothecary.”

Saint doesn’t know what to say, so he says nothing at all.

It’s… it’s all so maddening. After everything that has happened, everything that the Guardians have accomplished these last few months, all of the progress that Saint has made in his own life, Savathûn’s grip on his soul has barely loosened at all.

In some ways, Saint feels he’s worse off now than he had been in the aftermath of the ritual that excised the Witch Queen’s worm. Can one damn ritual go right for once?

“Can I make you some tea?” he mumbles. “I can still see fine.”

Eris hesitates, studying his defeated posture with obvious concern. “I would appreciate that. Will you have some as well?”

“Maybe later.”

Eris murmurs thank you when Saint hands her a glass. She blows gently on it before bringing it to her lips, her green eyes slipping shut from the simple pleasure of a warm drink. She continues, “As for why this Nightmare is bound to your dwelling, rather than the depths of the Leviathan, or the twisting halls of the Scarlet Keep...”

Puzzled by Saint’s retreat, she asks, “What are you doing?”

Across from Eris, slouched over the sink, Saint is rinsing his friend’s blood out of the pieces of his old, twice-shattered teacup. Maybe he should just throw these in the trash as well, he thinks bitterly. Maybe he should stop trying to fix what is clearly meant to stay broken.

The thought fills him with breathtaking heartache. He grips the edges of the counter like he’s going to be sick, watching the crimson swirl down the drain.

Saint has had this damn cup for so long. It’s not just a memento – it’s one of the few possessions he took with him when he departed for the Infinite Forest. It’s outlived his friends, his father, his old home.

But now, Saint can’t look at it without picturing Eris bleeding on his floor, or reliving those glimpses into Osiris’s memories.

(That’s what happened, wasn’t it? The Nightmare had gifted Saint a little taste of the agony that Osiris endured as a prisoner in his own body, all while Saint had been inches away from him.)

Saint takes a deep breath, wraps the shards in a towel, and leaves them on the counter for now. “Can we go for a walk once you are finished, Eris, please? I need to get out of here. Just for a bit.”

But, he promises silently, casting his eyes in the direction of where he last saw the Nightmare, I will come back to you soon.

In the City, the post-rain humidity sometimes makes it feel like one is wading through soup the instant they step outdoors. Saint, thankfully, doesn’t have to worry about sweating. He sticks his hands in his jacket and watches as the fog rolls off the asphalt in thick waves. Eris puts up her hood.

They walk a couple of blocks around the neighborhood. Saint points out a few of the families he’s acquainted with – “I was friends with their great-grandfather”, “They have a dog who likes to chase after my shield”, “Their little boy wants to be an architect” – and Eris responds to each with an interested hum, but no comment. He wonders what she’s distracted by.

She does not leave him wondering for too long. While Saint wracks his brains for something safe they could talk about, she says rather suddenly, “I visited Osiris before I arrived to your home,” almost causing Saint to slip in a puddle.

He quickly looks down at her. “You did?” he asks, eagerly. “How…”

He deflates. Why had he gotten excited? If there was a change, he’d know about it. “How… did he appear?”

But Eris answers him with candidness, as if it were a question that could have any number of answers, instead of the oft-repeated ‘same as always’. “He does not look to be in pain, and was sleeping soundly when I got there.”

He does not look to be in pain. Good. “I wish–” He takes a breath. “I wish I knew what makes him toss and turn whenever I sit by him. Does he hear me, I wonder? Does he know that I am there?”

“I’m afraid I can’t say yes or no with any degree of certitude.” Eris carefully touches his elbow. “There is so much we don’t know about his condition,” she admits, turning her face toward the street. “But… I would not be surprised if he does hear you. Osiris is more resilient than he has been given credit for as of late. He’ll be furious when he learns just how long he has been abed. On the day he wakes up, he will demand to be let out of the hospital before he is even able to walk.”

The image makes Saint smile. “If he is told no, he will climb out the window and escape.”

Eris’s laugh is soft and vanishing, like mist.

The silence that follows them as they continue their journey beyond the neighborhood is not entirely comfortable – they are friendly, but not close – but it’s getting there.

“Eris,” he begins, at the same time that Eris says, “I would like to – ah.”

They exchange looks of amusement. “You go first,” Saint encourages, pausing at an elementary school crosswalk. No one’s around at 2 in the morning, but it’s a good habit to wait for the light. Especially when you are idolized by the small children in your community.

“...I had been wondering,” she says, turning her bright gaze upon him, “how you first felt when you returned to the Tower. How you were able to adjust to City life after so much time spent in the Forest. What gave you strength, and what gave you pause.”

The sign flashes. Saint wrangles his thoughts into some semblance of order as they cross. “It was like… it was… a lot. I felt a lot.”

He sheepishly rubs the back of his neck. “I know that is not helpful,” Saint laughs.

“It is,” Eris assures him. She copies him by sticking her hands in the hoodie’s front pockets. Saint has already decided that she may have it. “There was a great deal of celebration, I remember.”

“There was,” he chuckles. Looking back, it was the most surreal day of his life. He had never seen so many people in one place – and they were all looking at him.

Saint’s smile fades as he makes a throat-clearing noise. “It was not all good, though. That same day, I learned that my father had died, and that many others died with him. That, I think, was harder to accept than my own death and time spent away. I still wake up sometimes thinking that I will go see him at his office. Then, there were the days where I could not believe that it was all… real. I kept expecting people to turn into Vex, and start shooting at me.” He attacked Osiris for that very reason.

He scuffs the pavement with his boot. Plenty of people have asked him about his first few weeks back, but no one has ever been as easy to talk to as Eris. “Osiris was there for me through it all. At first, he was very quiet and distant, very guilty. But soon, he was back to being a pain in my ass. I needed that. I appreciated those who were patient with me when I struggled to find my way around, too, but his… hrm. His disrespect was refreshing. Kept me humble,” Saint laughs. “There was the time –”

He stops. “Ah, I am talking so much. Why do you ask, Eris?”

“Finish your tale,” she answers mysteriously, “and I will reveal the ‘why’ to you later.”

Huh. Alright, if she’s certain. Saint tips his chin up, eyes on the Moon. His tone softens. “I have always known that I loved him,” he admits shyly, “but for a very long time, I did not want to do anything about it. I was happy being close to him. And I think he felt the same. Or maybe… that is what we told ourselves, because we were afraid of what would happen if things changed.” He coughs. “But that is all… hypothetical.”

The corner of Eris’s mouth twitches. “I see.”

“One time,” he continues, grinning now too, “before Mercury, before I died – I got home to a very interesting message. I had had a terrible day. I cannot remember what happened, but I do remember how distressed I was, how everything felt like it was falling apart for me. Well, Osiris has never been very good at comforting people face to face, so he left me a voicemail.”

Saint snorts. He recalls his own stunned expression listening to that message, how hard he’d laughed when Osiris’s tone abruptly shifted from sophisticated Vanguard-Commander to schoolyard bully. “He had cut a 3 minute-long promo calling me out for moping, challenging me to fight him later in the Crucible if I was not too much of a coward. But it was… it was sweet, too, in a way, the other things he was saying. How he insisted that I not give up on myself, and how he believed in me so strongly. How he wanted for me to see what he saw in me. And I… I fell in love again, but this time, I could not be satisfied with keeping it to myself.”

Eris’s face is attempting to convey multiple expressions at once, but the most recognizable one is confusion. Saint can understand why – it’s maybe not the most romantic story, but he has not told those yet. “Forgive me, Saint, but…”

She does single-digit air quotes. “‘Cut a promo’? What is that?”

“Oh!” The Titan hastily checks that there’s no ‘do not loiter’ sign before he coolly leans up against a restaurant window. “It is when a wrestler is promoting themself to or insulting their opponent, to hype up the audience. Sometimes, they also cut a promo about their origin story.”

Now the Hunter is smirking at him in disbelief. “There is storytelling in wrestling? It is more than hurling beer and plasteel chairs at one another?”

Saint’s eyes light up even brighter than usual. He launches excitedly into the story of Kang Sohee, Alcyona, and Jackdaw-5 – better known as the tag team FULLCHOKE.

In their youth, Sohee and Alcyona had been devoted Vanguard agents until they’d failed to save a mortal Exo, Idylla-4, from an Ahamkara. Unbeknownst to Idylla and to each other, the Titans had secretly been in love with Idylla, and the guilt over her death dissolved their friendship for good.

Or so it had seemed.

By sheer coincidence, both Sohee and Alcyona became pro wrestlers. They faced off against each other time and again, their animosity fuelled by years of self-hatred and guilt. One day, a newcomer arrived to challenge the pair to an impromptu match: the mysterious Jackdaw-5, a tiny Striker who hid her face from view. The Titans’ long-standing feud was quickly derailed by this wrestler who could not be defeated, even when she fought one to two.

Then, just two years ago – after Thundercrashing into the ring – Jackdaw tore off her flimsy mask, and revealed herself to be the reincarnation of their beloved Idylla. “The Traveler brought me back to save humanity, and that includes the two of you idiots!” she shouted to Sohee and Alcyona. “So stop fighting each other, and fight WITH ME!”

“I have no idea if any of it is real,” Saint confesses, to a fascinated Eris. He concludes his tale just as they arrive back home, feeling lighter than when they’d left. “Most pro wrestler backstories are fabrications. But it is very compelling, hrm? Half of the audience burst into tears when Jackdaw was unmasked.”

“Did you, Saint?”

He unlocks the front door for Eris, and gently nudges an offering bowl out of the way of their footsteps. “Uh… no. Well. Yes, I cried a little.”

She locks eyes with him – three to two – and wonders aloud, “Does one need to watch a century’s worth of matches to glean the story, or could they simply jump in?”

Eris brushes tiny bits of glass from the couch before taking a seat and folding her legs beneath her. She begins whittling thin squares out of rowan wood, an array of beads and feathers fanned out before her on the coffee table.

“What are you doing?” Saint inquires, plopping down next to her.

“I am a practitioner of apotropaic magic,” she answers, studying one of the pieces she’d carved. Satisfied with its make, she offers it to Saint. “The charms you see on my armaments are enchanted for protection against the Hive. Though they cannot render one wholly immune, they can shield the wearer from the worst of the Hive’s influence.”

Saint examines the wooden piece with Eris’s insignia. At the same time, he plucks out another glass shard that is sticking to his thigh.

“Like the hamsa?” he asks, referring to the hand-shaped amulet that wards against evil. There used to be one on the wall in the kitchen; after Osiris was rescued, Saint placed it in his hospital room to watch over him.

“Yes, much like it.” Eris pauses, puts her tools down, and looks at him. Looks through him, it feels more like. “Earlier, you spoke to me of the difficulties you endured post-resurrection. How you were adrift for some time before Osiris led you to shore.”

“That is… yes. That is exactly what it felt like.” Why is it difficult to meet her eyes all of a sudden?

“Similarly, I struggled for many years after I had emerged from the Hellmouth. My entire world had shattered. My body was now alien to me, as were my thoughts. I was completely, devastastingly alone. And so,” she continues heavily, “I became resilient out of necessity. I surrendered the burden of a soft heart for a knife instead.”

Eris considers the carving knife in her lap. She rotates it between her fingers – not a Hunter’s twirl, but adjacent. “I survived. I won. But what was left of me would soon prove to be inadequate for the life I found myself desperately craving – a renewed connection to the galaxy. To the friends I had left behind. To Ikora, and Asher. To Queen Mara.”

“If I had wanted to be left well and truly alone,” Eris goes on, “where nothing would ever hurt me again, I could have done it. I can still do it. I know how. But that is not my way.”

She grips the handle, and stares at the blade. “Our young Guardian showed me that.”

Saint has never had Eris directly discuss her past with him. All he knows are the heavily redacted reports from the Hidden, rumors from his Trials aspirants, and bits of stilted conversation from Lord Shaxx.

In Eris, he sees a kindred soul: Someone who loved so deeply, but was so afraid to be loved in return. Someone who had gone through hell to overcome it, for themself, and for–

Saint is thunderstruck by his own foolishness. He stares at the unadorned charm in his hand.

His Nightmare – that manifestation of his guilt, sentience gifted by Savathûn, fueled by Osiris’s pain – is still trapped in that hell. And the more Saint denies the uglier parts of his grief (the ones that are every bit as authentic as his ‘proper’, polite suffering), the more twisted his Nightmare becomes.

Again and again, Saint has systematically torn himself to shreds for the crime of feeling and fearing what it would do to him. Is it any wonder that his Nightmare proclaims his love for Osiris to be fabricated?

His mind races with ideas. He thinks he knows what he must do to grant the Nightmare his rest. Eris can–

Eris holds out a palm, and Saint has to blink away his daydreams before returning the charm to her. She gives him a tiny smile. He returns that, too.

“I no longer want to be alone,” she murmurs, more to herself. “I wish to share the fullness of who I am – including all of my uncharitable thoughts, quick temper, and hatred for small talk – with everyone. I wish for them to experience that same joy and comfort in loving another person, without fear of bearing their hearts. And to that end, I must see that they are protected.”

She works quickly, and soon, Saint is presented with a necklace of his very own. In between onyx beads, Eris has strung that familiar square charm. But instead of her own symbol adorning the middle, there is a new one – a watchful eye haloed by a sunburst, with two feathers encircling it. “This will not banish the Nightmare, Saint. Later, we will formulate a plan to do just that. But it should give you the strength you need to confront it.”

“By what means did you enchant it?” he inquires in awe, dangling it before his eyes. “I did not see you casting a spell.”

Eris covers his hand with her own. There is such strength in it. She answers, “With the deepest of sentiments: affection for a new, old friend; belief in his ability to triumph over his foes; hope that he may find the closure he seeks; and a promise to help guide him back, should he ever lose his way.”

Saint’s heart swells too big for his chest. He puts the necklace on, and leaps to his feet. “May I hug you?” he asks.

Eyeing his massive arms with no small amount of uncertainty, Eris debates silently with herself before nodding at last. “I have not been embraced in some time,” she warns. “Please, forgive any awkwardness on my part.”

“Do not worry. I will do all the hugging.” And Saint scoops her up.

Eris was right about the awkwardness: At first, she lets her arms hang stiffly at her sides, her hands balled into fists. Then, once her heart rate has slowed, she loosens them and tentatively winds her arms around Saint’s neck. Then, she relaxes.

“This is… nice,” she mutters, sounding shocked. “...Thank you.”

He holds her close, resting his cheek against her short, fluffy hair. He does not say anything when he hears Eris sniffle discreetly, or exhaling a shaky breath. He will let her pull away when she is ready.

A minute passes. Then another. There is no indication that Eris is uncomfortable, and Saint is perfectly okay with long hugs, but he worries that–

Oh. Oh. Her little feet can’t reach the floor. How silly of him.

“We are going to watch wrestling together sometime,” he promises cheerfully, gingerly letting her down. “Can I invite Misraaks, the Kell of House Light? I know you two have not met, but I think he will have interesting things to say about plot.”

With renewed confidence, a brighter outlook, and a tentative plan in case things go awry, Saint feels that he’s ready to at last put his Nightmare to rest.

He has spent the entire night practicing what he would say with Eris. It will not be a conventional severance ritual, she warned him.

Saint must ask: “What is a ‘conventional’ severance ritual like, Eris?”

Eris pauses in her notation. She had been about to write a protocol for it, he guesses. “...You make a good point.”

Alone, Saint enters the bedroom, the place where’d he first encountered the Nightmare as he slept. In his right hand, he holds a large piece of his broken teacup: an offering.

They must treat this particular severance as less like a battle of wills, and more of a request for the Nightmare’s understanding.

Next, he sits on the floor, laying before the porcelain in a square strip of green cloth. He studies the embroidered incantation: a request.

Eris claims she’d woven it with a needle broken off a Thrall’s rib. Saint touches the frayed edges, and hears an emotion he has yet to experience, but hopes he may one day learn of it.

Finally, he lifts his chin and says to the empty air, “I am given.” An answer for a question you cannot ask.

The temperature of the room drops to single digits. Saint pays no mind to the sensation of something crawling over his body, whisper-singing.

Crowned by nothingness and adorned with a lover’s regrets, the Nightmare is arrived.

Saint is surprised to discover that he is relieved by the entity’s presence. Comforted, even. To no one’s surprise, the Nightmare of Osiris does not return those feelings.

“Is it time, then?” he sighs, shaking his ephemeral head. “You seek to excise me from your heart, but you have yet to realize that I am the whole of it.”

“You are,” Saint agrees. Eris makes a noise of encouragement on his private comm. “But, as you said so before, I do not know you. If you are my heart, I want to hear you.”

So far, so good. The whispers have grown louder, more insistent, but Saint refuses to heed them; the only dialogue that matters is the one between him and the Nightmare.

Then he makes a mistake: He stands up, and approaches the Nightmare without being instructed to do so.

Thankfully, if there is some sort of all-encompassing decorum that one most follow for unconventional severance rituals, then Nightmares do not adhere to it as strongly as Saint was led to believe. The phantom crosses his arms, unimpressed by Saint’s initiative. “And you will do this by…?”

“Osiris.” His name is hushed, adoring. Oh, how Saint longs to address the real Osiris like that again. But right now, in this space between what-may-be and what-can-not-be, this is Osiris, the only Osiris that Saint can reach.

He needs this. Saint needs him.

He beckons to the phantom, smiling brightly. “My bird, there is something that I have longed to tell you, but could never find the right words.”

Saint shuts off his eyes. “I have them now,” he says. “I am ready. Are you?”

It’s the Nightmare’s turn to make a mistake: He moves in closer.

Had Saint been armed with the Harvester (or one of those huge scythes the young ones liked to swing back and forth), he could have trapped the phantom at that moment. But he would not have been able to give a proper confession, and he would never know what secret the Nightmare withheld from him.

Saint takes both of the Nightmare’s hands into his own. He gazes at that unfathomable expression, at the featureless eyes.

“You know that I have loved you for nearly all of my life,” he tells this Osiris. “You know that you have changed me for the better, and that meeting you was the best thing that ever happened to me.” The phantom is silent. “But what you may not know is that without you, there can be no Saint-14. At all.”

His hands explore the Nightmare’s arms. They brush his shoulders. One hooks a finger in his spectral scarf and tugs it down, revealing a rude, soft mouth. That other hand gently strokes his cheek.

“The Traveler, the people of the Last City, they make me feel like a hero,” Saint says quietly. “But Osiris, only you make me feel like a man.”

He kisses the Nightmare, and everything that he knows before his eyes. He is remembering something he had never forgotten.

Saint sprinted through the Infinite Forest, ignoring the dozens of Vex who, confused by the sight of him running away his enemies, shot at him anyway.

He had finally caught up with the Reflection that had evaded him for over a dozen simulations. He grabbed this manifestation of Osiris’s Light irreverently by the arms, and forced him to look back at Saint. The Reflection lifted his chin in defiance.

“Osiris will not be disturbed from his work,” he said. “Release me.”

“I want to talk.”

“I do not. Release me.” He planted his palms on Saint’s cuirass, and tried to push free. “If you kill me, there are others.”

“I am not going to kill you,” Saint grunted, rolling his eyes. The Reflection relaxed infinitesmally. “I want to send a message to Osiris.”

Skeptical, the Reflection repeated, “He will not be disturbed–”

Saint shook him. “Does Osiris know where you are?”

“Yes.”

“He sees and feels all that you do?” Saint demanded. “Everything you experience, you share with him?”

“Yes.”

He transmatted his helmet away. “Then tell him this.”

Saint’s mind is yanked sharply in another direction.

Elsewhere, in simulation 42135.7, Osiris jolted when he felt something press against his mouth, cheek, and lower back. The sensation was so alien to him, a man who had not been touched by a human in two hundred years. He reached out to the Reflection responsible for the confusing data, and demanded an explanation.

When their minds met, and two became one, Osiris was overcome with an ecstasy so powerful that he collapsed onto his hands and knees. For days afterward, his skin would burn in those same places. He could not stop touching his bottom lip, could not stop imagining it between gentle jaws that could rip the bulkhead off a jumpship.

For one weak, hungry moment, he considered the worst that could happen if he were to meet with Saint in the flesh. He already knew the answer, of course:

Submission. Saint was the only force in the universe that could compel Osiris to go back to the City. He was the only person that Osiris would give anything to have. And that is why Osiris must run, and Saint must give chase.

He collapsed the simulation behind him, and fled. The Reflection would keep his secret.

When Saint’s visuals finally reboot, while his head is swimming with visions and questions and now Eris’s shouting, he finds himself face to face not with a corrupted Reflection of Osiris.

The Reflection’s body is every bit as radiant as Saint remembers it, but it is fading fast, growing weaker, and weaker. He is dying. Heart in his throat, Saint reaches for the Reflection once more… and his hands go right through him.

“I am given,” he mutters, sinking to the floor, dazed. “I am… forgiven. I forgive you. Do you… do you forgive yourself, as well?”

“Yes,” Saint answers, grief-stricken. “I do.” He kneels by the Reflection, willing him to hold on as long as he can. Saint has so much more he wants to say to him. He wants the Reflection to know that he's sorry, that he will do better, that the Witness’s forces will be stopped, that Calus will be stopped, that Osiris–

“I… will wait for you.” The Reflection curls his fading hand against Saint's cheek despite the inability to touch him. Though it is difficult to tell for certain with the dimming Light obscuring his features, Saint thinks the Reflection might be happy. “So will he.”

He leaves Saint grasping fruitlessly at small, perfect particles of Light that melt into his palm. Saint kneels there for a long time, letting the sorrow wash over him, pressing a kiss to his palm.

Four days later, Saint is reaching his limits: “I need to tell you something. I think the nurse is spying on me.”

“I think you are paranoid,” Geppetto soothes.

“I think he thinks I am fussy,” Saint admits. “I always fix the blanket when he leaves. I do not like how he tucks Osiris in, or how he fluffs his pillows, or--”

He pauses. “He is right. I am fussy.”

He’s also content – or close enough to it, for once. Saint sits on Osiris’s right side and holds his hand, rubbing tender circles over timeworn knuckles with his thumb. Osiris’s brow twitches, ever so slightly.

“There you are again, my bird,” Saint murmurs, squeezing his hand. “I hope you are dreaming.”

I hope I can dream with you again soon.

“As for me, I have been… not my best self, these past few weeks. Worse than you could imagine. So many things I wish I had not said and done,” he sighs. He kisses Osiris’s knuckles. “But I was not alone. I never am,” he clarifies, smiling at Geppetto.

“And I am… I am getting better at accepting that it is okay to not do well, but it is bad if that is all I have been doing. I know you would –”

Saint chokes. Stay in the present. Do not catastrophize. Eris’s words. He takes a moment to center himself, and starts over again. “I know you do not like me beating myself up for what is outside of my control. I just… I wish I had control over what will happen to you.”

It’s so easy to say these things that he will do to get better. It’s even harder to actually do them. And hardest of all to believe that they will work.

But he can do it. He just needs time. To be soft with himself, as Misraaks would say.

Saint tells Osiris about his desire to get out of the house more when he isn’t working (and not just because he has to repair so much of it, oops). He mentions his friends; he remarks how thoughtful it is that Misraaks always seems to cook for Saint on the days that the Exo cannot even bring himself to eat. “Out of everyone that I have met while you sleep, I am excited most of all for you to meet him,” he says, proudly.

“Eido, his daughter, is a wonderful young lady. She is very brave, very kind, and very smart. I love visiting her and seeing her new projects. I think you will like her very much. She has read more of your books than I have. …Sorry. I will finish them soon, I promise.

“You and Eris have always gotten along, and now, she is my good friend, too. She says that as soon as you awaken, the two of you will hunt. She did not say what you are going to be hunting, but I have… ideas.” Saint kisses Osiris’s hand again, before adding seriously, “Please be careful when you go, if I cannot join. I will make sure you have biggest gun possible to blow up anything in your way.”

He gently lays Osiris’s hand flat on his chest. Saint’s visit will be ending shortly, to his disappointment; the doctor routinely checks in on Osiris around this time.

“Do you remember shirt someone threw at you during Guardian Games? You stuffed it into the dresser and forgot about it. I think you were going to use it as a cleaning rag?” Saint looks thoughtfully out the window. “Anyway, I let Eris wear it twice, but she had a hoodie over it both times. The second time, we were watching TV with Misraaks – he does not like TV, usually, he does not like sitting still for too long, but he made an exception – we actually read what it said: ‘There are two types of people in the world: 1) Those who notice the Golden Gun.’ And that is it.”

Saint cracks up, again. It still makes him laugh, no matter how many times he tells it to other people. And he has told so many other people. Probably the… same people who own the shirt, he thinks, a little embarrassed. “Eris… laughed! For so long! So it is her shirt now. I will get you ridiculous Warlock shirt next year to make up – not that you will wear it, either.”

He falls quiet. There is so much more he wants to say, but...

“We will come back soon, Osiris,” Geppetto promises him, bumping his cheek affectionately. She drifts toward the door.

Saint gazes for a little while longer at his partner’s sleeping face. He wants…

He wants so much. He wants to be here when Osiris opens his eyes. And when Osiris opens his eyes, they can talk. And they will talk until Saint is shooed out the door by the nurse who definitely finds him to be fussy, or until Osiris needs a break. Then, they can go from there, with Osiris taking Saint’s hand.

In addition to his duties as the Lighthouse keeper for the Trials of Osiris, Saint is a mentor to Lights both New and Old. There is no topic under the sun for which his opinion hasn’t been requested. He cherishes this trust placed in him, honors it with the gravitas it is owed, because it is the people of the Last City who helped make him who he is. He is the reflection of their purest love.

And because the people of the Last City have such boundless love, it means their suffering is all the more debilitating.

Though he continues to ultimately remain detached from what’s happening out on the Derelict Leviathan, Saint can’t turn a blind eye to the agony it has inflicted on the souls of so many Guardians. Those who return from that horrible ship will often carry looks of acute pain in their eyes. They come to him with questions, but not about the Light, or guns, or what Saint’s favorite bar happens to be. Now they want to know these things: How do I get a handle on my grief? How do I go on after losing someone I cared about?

This is what Saint tells them: The most difficult lesson for me was that sometimes, you simply have no control over whether you will have good days, or bad days. The good days can even make the bad ones feel worse. You might ask yourself, ‘Why can I not be happy like yesterday? I have no right to be sad.’ And you might feel guilty when you are happy; you think that grief means you always have to suffer, or you are somehow ‘betraying’ your feelings. That is not true. You can be happy because you are you, not because you must earn it. Recognize this, and be soft with yourself. And: Your relationship with the one you love will continue forever – it has only taken a new form. And as you are growing and changing without them by your side, your memories of them can grant you new understanding of the time you spent together. In this way, they are growing with you.

It’s the last bit of advice that Saint will continue struggling to apply to his own life. He still has Osiris, and he is determined to keep it that way for as long as he draws breath. But Saint is growing without him, and he yearns to share what he has learned with the man he loves. This pain will linger for some time, he knows.

He holds that pain close to his heart, and listens.

What new things will Saint have to tell Osiris when he has awakened?

Two weeks after Saint was rescued from the Infinite Forest, Osiris finally asked to see him. They talked late into the night and early into the next day, perched together on a balcony like they used to do in the old Tower. It was the most Saint had spoken in years, and it was the most contrite he’d ever seen Osiris. In between breaths, Saint listened to his beloved City dozing below them. Its sleepy hum was a balm for his heart as they exchanged stories.

Around 0615, Saint nodded off. He jolted at the sound of Osiris’s voice coming from the kitchen, informing Saint that he would be departing for Mercury in a few hours.

“I thought you were going to meet with Aunor Mahal,” he replied, frowning. He braced his forearms against the counter and watched Osiris hunt around for something. “Are you not under investi –”

An indignant Osiris glanced up from a box labeled MISCELLANEOUS, divine rage blazing in his eyes. He hooked two mismatched teacups on the fingers of one hand, and balanced a battered silver tray in the other. “We settled for a conference at a later date. I impressed upon her my commitment to stopping the Red Legion, as well as my refusal to be cowed by the Praxics. I won’t stand by and watch those Flayers meddle with my Sundial,” he snarled. Saint thought he spotted a lick of flame in the Warlock’s mouth.

Miraculously, the tray’s contents remained intact when Osiris set it down harshly on the countertop. “Their feeble understanding of its inner workings alone is an affront to–”

Osiris wrestled with himself for a moment, ultimately deciding that it wasn’t worth continuing that train of thought. His shoulders dropped; his face softened, ever so slightly; his eyes met Saint’s again.

“I will call you again once my task is finished,” he concluded, a tentative smile on his lips. “In the mean time, I know half the City is lining up to see you.”

A concession.

Saint nodded without reply, and took his tea without tasting. He studied the wood grain of the table as he drank, struggling to make sense of his whirlwind of emotions. Disappointment was the most obvious of them all, but alongside it rode resentment, and dead last, brittle acceptance. Protecting humanity from the Red Legion trumped all other concerns; he did not begrudge Osiris his duty, yet…

He washed his empty cup and hunted for the jacket he’d tossed, finding it draped nicely over the back of the couch. A voice halted his advance toward the exit.

“Did you… need anything before I left?” Osiris tried, hovering uncertainly in the foyer. He looked was hoping for an excuse to say something, but what that something was, Saint hadn’t a clue.

So instead he hazarded a smile, and the words tumbled out before he could stop them. “I suppose I want to know if you… will come back.”

He didn’t bother to expand upon what he meant, for the question on its face was enough. Saint knew Osiris would still make visits to the Tower for Vanguard operations and to say hello – but was that it? Were things ultimately going to stay the same between them, with Saint still kept back at arm’s length?

Osiris might not have changed after all these years apart, but Saint had. And there was no going back to the way things were before.

Frankly, he wouldn’t go back even if he could.

The truth was, Saint wasn’t content any more by remaining in the dark about Osiris’s true intentions. He wanted to know more mundane details from the man’s day-to-day. He wanted to get more than the odd transmission every few months. He wanted to feel more than daring touches to his cheek.

He wanted to offer up his heart in its entirety, and have his love accepted – better yet, reciprocated.

Centuries later, Saint was ready to admit that Osiris was so deeply woven into his life, he couldn’t picture happiness without him.

He kept his gaze on the door as he waited for a reply. Then he pretended to look for nonexistent keys. Then he felt very stupid.

Saint had almost rescinded his question by the time Osiris walked over, stopping just short of bumping into the Titan. He reached up to take Saint’s face between his hands, and the Exo waited patiently for him to cough and pull back. But Osiris did not; those warm hands slowly kept brushing over Saint’s plating until his fingers had entwined around the nape.

Saint didn’t think about it. He’d be a fool to. He ducked in for the kiss before his brain had fully caught up to him, his glowing eyes stuttering in surprise. They could laugh about this later, of course, but… even though he’d imagined this hundreds of times – and only a handful of moments ago! – Saint just…

“Yes,” Osiris whispered, soft as downy feathers. He bumped their hard heads together. “For you, I will always come back.”