Chapter Text
II.
There is a maw, large and vast and all consuming. Inside the maw there are thousands of rows of teeth. The teeth are not teeth. The teeth are knives. The knives are teeth.
It consumes.
Asteroids. Planets. Stars. Nebulae. Galaxies.
It is a vacuum, cleaning and shredding the universe and its laws into dust. The knives cut the dust so fine there is no more dust.
The knives are a law.
The law is death.
It offers gifts, temptations, promises of something grander. It fattens the food. It is ever hungry.
It is never sated.
There is Earth. Small and blue and green and so very beautiful.
The maw ceases consuming, it watches, it feeds. It lets it ripen.
It feasts.
Osiris wakes in a sweat, clutching at his heart as he feels it pound against his chest. ||Run.||
“Osiris?” Sagira’s eye is bright in the night, illuminating his face. He sits up and crawls out of bed, slipping on his boots and robes, ignoring Sagira. ||Run.||
“Osiris.”
“I have to get out of here.” There’s a panicked urgency in his voice as he pulls his gauntlets over his hands.
Sagira floats in front of his face, “Oh no you don’t. You promised Ikora you would stay a week here.”
“I can’t. This place is suffocating.”
Osiris pushes past her and does not hear when Sagira opens a line to Saint.
Only when Saint’s voice drifts in the air, “on my way”, does he pause.
“What did you do?” His voice is sharp and cutting, his eyes wild. ||Run run run.||
Sagira floats around in front of his face again, “I called Saint over.”
“Why?”
“You’re panicking, Osiris.”
“I’m not panicking.”
“Yes, you are. Saint can calm you down better than anyone… You need help.”
“I don’t need help. I need to-”
||RUN.||
When he pushes past Sagira and opens the door he stops, Saint is standing in the doorway, his hand raised to knock. He is not wearing any of his armor, and his clothes look like they were thrown on haphazardly. “Osiris,” he places a hand on Osiris’s shoulder, then gestures to the bed. “Sit.”
“No.”
“Okay.” Saint proceeds to pick him up by the shoulders and carry him over to the bed.
“Put me down, Saint! Put me down! I have to go, I have to get out of here.” He flails, hitting a hand against Saint’s arms. When flesh collides with metal he winces, drawing his hands back.
Saint sits on the bed and pulls Osiris into a tight embracing, applying pressure all around his body. “Shh. Breathe.”
When Osiris draws in shaky breaths something in him… breaks.
His halting breaths are accompanied by silent tears. His shoulders shake. ||Knowing why he has to run.||
Through it, Saint is ever present. The warmth radiating from his chest clashes with the cold metal of his arms. It’s enough to pull him into the present, his mind slowing down.
Eventually the tears subside and his breathing evens out. He does not say anything, though. Instead, he listens to the machinery running below Saint’s skin. (How it reminds him of the music of the Vex.)
“Do you want to talk of it?” Saint finally asks.
He shakes his head.
“Okay.”
Osiris feels guilty. Guilty that he’s making ||everyone|| Saint wait so long, guilty that the words he wants to say tangle in his throat ||and how he chokes on them.|| Guilty about what he did to bring ||them back|| him home. The things he used, the deals he bargained.
Most of all, he regrets ||coming|| leaving in the first place. If he stayed in line, bit his tongue and waited , Saint would have never been sent off to fetch him. Saint would never have gotten lost in the forest. He would have never allowed ||them|| him to get lost ||in darkness.||
He made his choices. As did Saint. ||And there’s no turning that back.||
Osiris’s gloved hands find purchase on Saint’s shirt and he curls his head into the crook of his neck.
After a moment, Osiris speaks, “The Darkness has eyes on Earth again.”
“We have long known this.”
“No, not...” Osiris sighs, frustrated. “I don’t know how to explain it. It’s… feeding us. Fattening us for consumption. Sowing its seeds of discourse into humanity. At least… that’s what the Traveler showed me.”
“The Traveler… So you are-”
“It would seem so…” ||Speak.|| He moves to pull his gloves off his hands and set them aside. Saint watches him do so before he pulls Osiris down to lay on his side. Osiris lets him, taking comfort in his presence. In his touch.
“Hm…” Saint says.
Osiris can hear the sleep in his voice, and he can feel himself start to drift as well.
“When I woke I felt I had to flee. That I had to get as far away from here as possible and fast.”
“No,” Saint says as he pulls Osiris impossibly close, “I will not allow you to run again. No longer.”
He won’t want to leave. ||One day he will. He always will.|| In his dreams he is confused, frightened, hurting, but here in Saint’s arms he is safe. He lets his weary eyes close. He says very quietly: “I’m sorry, Saint.”
When Osiris wakes he is wrapped snugly in Saint’s arms.
It was perhaps the first night in a long time that he’s slept without any dreams. Often he had them, even before this… Speaker business. Many of them were not particularly pleasant. Dreams of darkness, all engulfing and suffocating. Dreams of sameness, monotony and no autonomy. Dreams of the point of light he reaches for so desperately.
However, last night, he dreamed of nothing. Sweet nothing. Just the warmth of Saint.
He knows he can’t stay like this forever, curled up in his embrace, comfortable, calm. This is why he didn’t want this. He didn’t want this because he knew he wouldn’t want to let this go. Knew that he wouldn’t want to leave.
And he doesn’t.
He wants to remain here in the safety of this room, in the warmth of Saint’s Light.
But he can’t.
He moves, carefully so as not to wake Saint, out of his arms. The clothes he accidentally left on from last night have left marks in his skin and a vague discomfort. He sits on the edge of the bed now as he watches Saint sleep.
Osiris is aware, of course, of the dreams Exos experience. Dreams of violence and an unending war. Saint has never talked about them with him in detail. He wonders what he sees in those dreams. Who he fights. What he fights.
He hesitates for a moment, before he bends and kisses the cool metal of Saint’s cheek. It’s brief, and chaste, and he immediately gets up afterwards.
Sagira is watching him silently.
He throws her a look before he leaves the small room.
Once outside Sagira brushes up against his head. “What was-”
“Not a word.”
Osiris sits cross-legged in the center of a circle composed of Warlocks. Ikora sits directly in front of him. His eyes are open, in contrast to their closed ones.
There are several guardianless ghosts, their blue eyes blinking in the dark, watching him. He does not bring them up.
A couple of the Warlocks he recognizes work directly under Ikora. They do not matter. What matters is why he’s here.
“Perhaps they are lies from the Darkness. The Exile has been away from the Traveler for too long. Whispers of the Dark have corrupted him,” one says.
This is a study.
“My work dictates I study the Darkness to understand our enemy, I do not use it. Would I sit before you were that the case?”
“This could be a trap, set by you to remove us from power.”
“If I were interested in usurping the Vanguard the tower would be rubble by now.”
The Warlock quiets.
The next one speaks. “Dreams of madness that disguises itself as visions from the Traveler?”
“If that were so would that explain the abnormalities in my Light? Would that explain the pack of Ghosts that follow me? The headaches with no cure?”
“You have experimented with the enemy’s technology, word of your Ghost possessing another has reached us. This could be the result of a different experiment,” another one adds.
“I experiment with my own Light, but what one of you has not? And my experiments have only gone as far as testing my limits, to see what it can do. Not taking or adding more.”
“Osiris,” Ikora says next, “I want you to dive into meditation, as you normally do. Will you be able to describe to us what you see while you do so?”
“Yes,” Osiris says as he closes his eyes.
He lets the world fall away, distractions no more.
There is darkness.
In that darkness a lone point.
You are the lone point.
You are the lone point wailing against the Darkness.
Many wings of silver fire sprout from your back, Seraph-like, flaming sword in one hand, silver staff in the other.
You know if you die then your children will die. If your children die then you will die. So you dare not tempt death.
You are an angel. You are luminant.
You are alone.
Everything you have forged has been destroyed. Everything you create is consumed.
You are tired.
Your sword flickers in your hand and there is something that screams at you to run. Whether it is your own voice or otherwise you cannot tell.
And so you run. Away.
You will live to fight another day. You will be strong again.
He opens his eyes, pulling himself from the vision, his mind already reeling, connecting what he just saw. There are others in a circle around him, they are only on the edge of his awareness. He focuses inwards again and-
“Osiris.” Cloying words bring him up to the surface once more.
He blinks back into the present, eyes meeting Ikora’s.
“I almost got carried away,” he mutters.
The look she gives him says that’s not the first time and he simply ignores it. He folds his hands in his lap and waits.
The Warlocks sitting around him begin their theories.
“Reminiscent perhaps of his time in Exile.”
“There is no metaphor, Osiris would rather run off to chase his own wants and needs than defend humanity.”
“He has lost all sense of himself as a Guardian.”
“Perhaps the Traveler is telling us of his true nature.”
Osiris grimaces. ||Wrong wrong wrong.||
They aren’t correct. ||They are wrong.|| He shakes his head.
“No, none of those are... right.”
“ Right? How?” a Praxic Warlock asks.
“A feeling,” his nose wrinkles in disgust as soon as the words leave his mouth. He never wanted ||to lose his voice|| this. “I believe that this vision is the Traveler’s attempt to explain to me why it came here…”
He pauses. This whole time he has questioned that very same thing. Why would it come here if it knew it was going to be chased? Why would it lead them to a Golden Age only to fall silent after the Collapse?
He knew, to a degree, that the Traveler was ||robbed|| injured during the Collapse. That in a way, it was ||diminished|| killed. But is that what it’s trying to convey to him? That it fought long and hard against the Darkness, only to be ||silenced|| cut down?
“It has fought the Darkness since before there was time,” Osiris chooses his words carefully, his words slowed, “and it failed during the Collapse. Using what remained, it crafted our Ghosts. Through us it will be strong again. We are the lone point that beats back the night. But that is entirely up to us. It is our ultimate decision, not some destiny preordained by the Traveler.”
He stands, then, “I have a headache now, and I would like to rest.”
He leaves, hearing the faint whispers of the Warlocks.
It’s midnight when Osiris breaks into Zavala’s office.
In another life this might’ve become his after the Red War.
“I still don’t think this is a good idea,” Sagira whispers as she looks around, scanning over all the books and such before stopping in front of knitting needles and yarn. “Huh, I didn’t know he knits.”
“Focus, Sagira.”
“Right. The mask. Are you going to tell me why you’re stealing it instead of just asking for it?”
“Zavala is a headstrong and sentimental man, he would not so easily hand it over. Would think I’m desecrating his grave .”
“Your lack of self awareness sometimes is astounding.”
Osiris simply ignores her comment.
“Here it is,” he says as he carefully lifts the glass case the mask is under.
“Don’t you think Zavala’s gonna notice it’s gone?”
“I will have it returned by morning.”
Sagira makes a doubtful noise.
Osiris carefully pulls the mask out, its broken and damaged state not beyond his ability to repair. He supposes the main difference is that it’s special. Already he can feel a current of light flowing just beneath its surface.
“You were never truly broken, were you?” he says to it.
There is no response- not that he was expecting one.
His mentor never told him how he crafted the thing, never told him what it was really for. What little he was able to sparse was learned by paying attention to the Speaker’s words, to read between the lines.
He wonders, briefly, if the Speaker would find his predicament as ironic as he does. Or if he would despise it, as much as he does. All their arguments about the Traveler, all the petty shots for what? To protect their egos?
The man is dead now, though, so that is something he will never know.
Well, this could be something they both agree on.
Osiris is not fit to be a Speaker. ||How long he has gone without voice. How long his cries have been unheard.||
He leaves Zavala’s office, a shattered mask in his hands.
Osiris spends the night infusing solar light into the mask to meld it back together. Whatever the Speaker did to make it in the first place wasn’t with solar light, but it’s the closest he’ll be able to get.
He stops his work when he hears a knock at his door.
“Sagira.”
“On it.” Sagira floats past him. He hears the door unlock and slide open, heavy footsteps from behind. Those he’s familiar with.
He does not look up from his work, “I apologize for leaving without a word this morning if that is what you’re here for, Saint.”
“Ah… I knew you would. That is not why I am here.”
He glances over his shoulder. The pack of Ghosts that have been not-so-discreetly following him all day are hovering around Saint. “They were floating there outside your door.”
Osiris tries not to sigh and fails.
“We have nothing to do,” one says. This one he is familiar with. It’s the one that often hovered around the Speaker.
Osiris stops his work, hiding it behind him as he turns around from his spot on the floor. He gestures for it to approach. “I remember you…” he says gently.
(Distantly he can feel an almost jealousy boiling underneath Sagira.)
The Ghost nods, “The Speaker.”
“Yes… I take it you are all here because you want something to do. You have been lost.”
They all nod in agreement.
Osiris looks up, warily, to Saint.
The look on Saint’s face is one of absolute adoration and wonder and, he thinks, a hint of smugness.
Enjoying this?
“I have nothing for you to do for me tonight, I will consider it in the morning when I’m not busy.”
They stay unmoving, blinking.
“I would appreciate some privacy.” He says, impatient.
“Oh! Okay, of course, Speaker.” They leave him and Saint and their two ghosts to themselves.
A knot forms in his stomach at the title.
Saint is chuckling.
“You find this hilarious.”
“I find it ironic, yes.”
“The Speaker would not appreciate this either.”
“No,” Saint says slowly, “you were a nightmare of a student. Or… so he told me.”
“Father Speaker often said that your voracious quest for knowledge was unsettling and that he could not keep up,” says Geppetto.
Sagira snorts.
Osiris’s lips turn upwards ever so slightly. “Please, by all means, insult me and my voracious quest for knowledge . It is not as though I was correct in my theories and studies.”
“Your ego is still too big for your small frame to contain,” Saint laughs.
“That’s why he wears all the feathers, gotta store it somewhere.”
Osiris gasps, “Sagira! Betrayed by my own Ghost…”
They all laugh. It feels good. It feels like home. ||Protect it. Keep it safe. Be greedy with it.||
His smile fades.
There it is again.
That voice.
It sounds like his. It is not his. He knows it is not his because he knows himself.
||He knows whose it is.||
Saint glances over Osiris’s shoulder, his own smile falling. “Osiris…”
“It is the Speaker’s mask, yes.” He picks the mask up and turns it in his hands, thumbs absently running over the jagged lines where he used his solar light to fuse it back together.
Saint is quiet for a moment, Osiris waits.
“Does it… work?”
“I don’t know.” He admits.
“Have you tried?”
“No, I just finished mending it. And I’m not sure if I fixed it correctly. Nor am I completely certain on what it does .”
“Well, if something goes terribly wrong we are here on standby.”
Osiris thins his lips. Truthfully he wasn’t sure if he was going to put it on. Perhaps mending it was an act of catharsis, metaphorical to mending his relationship with his ex-mentor, to whom he can no longer speak to. Who is dead, and with whom he never had any closure with.
Or it was an act of repairing how he viewed the Traveler. How disillusioned with the constant fighting, with not knowing why he was fighting, he was.
The Traveler is benevolent.
The Traveler is sentient.
The Traveler will save us.
The Traveler will leave us.
These four tenets he knew from the Speaker so many years ago, and yet it comes unfettered and unobscured by time and human memory to his mind.
He takes a steadying breath and holds the mask just over his face.
He pushes it on.
Nothing happens.
He blinks. Did he do this wrong? Did he break it by using solar light, by repairing it incorrectly?
Saint sits staring at him expectant.
He furrows his brows and pulls it off.
“And?”
“Nothing.”
“Perhaps the Traveler has nothing to say right now.”
Osiris considers this, and he wonders… wonders if the Traveler never truly had anything to say in the first place. Perhaps it does not offer guidance, not because it can’t, but because it won’t. It has always been their choices, from the very beginning. He doesn’t want to disappoint Saint, he’s always had such unwavering faith in the Traveler, in the Light. Osiris has not. Osiris saw it as a point of contention, saw it as an alien force that never thought of the consequences of its actions. That it acted simply because it could.
He doesn’t know anymore. The Traveler, for a large portion of his life, has been dead.
The Traveler is awake now.
||“The best voices - voices that truly matter - never allow themselves to be heard. This lesson is worth learning again and again. Forever.”|| He says in quiet musing.
He can see Saint mulling it over, before he shakes his head. “Strange to hear you say that.”
Osiris blinks. Confused for a moment, until he’s back to himself. He feels as though he’d… left himself for a moment. Not unlike when he focuses on his echoes or reflections.
Saint places a hand on his shoulder. “It is very late, Osiris. You should rest.”
Osiris leans into the touch and nods, only now realizing just how heavy his eyes are.
You stand in a garden. Verdant grass and alien flowers as far as the eye can see.
In the distance you see an old friend.
An old wound.
I turn to greet you.
I wear a mask but you know I smile sadly underneath it.
“Osiris,” I say. “I wondered when you would arrive here.”
You say yes, it has been far too long.
I gesture for you to sit.
You hesitate, as you always do.
But in the end you sit. I can tell you want to argue already.
“Why me?” you say instead.
“You’ve argued against me when no one else dared to,” I say.
You don’t look happy with that answer. “I cannot speak like you do. I cannot sit idly as the world around me falls into chaos. I cannot stand by and preach the messages you want me to.”
“To Speak is not to preach,” I say, infinitely patient to counter your impatience. “I never wanted people to sit idly and listen to what I have to say. Through your actions alone can you speak like I once did. Enact justice through good. Protect the last of our people in the way you always have. You view things on a grand scale, something not many are able to do.”
“My view of the grand scale is what got me exiled. It has put so many lives at risk.”
“Why do you continue to do it, then?”
You are quiet for a moment. “Because no one else will.”
“Yes.”
“But that does not solve my dilemma. If I am to view the bigger picture why is it that my actions have so often led to the detriment of those for whom I care? Why did you never guide me away from such paths and such pain?”
“I tried,” I say, “but you never listened. Such actions have only ever been because of you. There is no one and nothing to blame.”
“Save for myself.”
“If I were a rose would I blame myself for my thorns?”
You consider this. And then you look away.
“Would I blame myself every time someone pricked themself because they were not careful? I would not, because I would know no better.”
“You’re saying I blamed you because I felt like I could not blame myself.”
“You blamed me, and you blamed everyone else for being the fools who cut themselves upon your thorns.”
“All the more reason for you to not choose me, then, is it not?”
“I do not choose who to teach based on interpersonal relationships. I see your potential, I see if you can receive from me, I see how you put your unyielding hope in humanity even when it has turned its back on you. Even when I turned my back on you. I see how you have fought the darkness alone over and over through thousands of lives because you said no. You said I will not yield to it. I will not allow it to take from us again and if it damns me then so be it. You said I have to believe there is hope for us. I have to believe we can prevent more tragedy. You have a spark, Osiris.”
You smile, ever so slightly, and it does not escape me that your little light once told you such a thing.
I reach out, offering a flower, a peace offering. “You wanted answers from me. I never gave them to you. I needed you to be able to stand on your own two feet. I am benevolent. I am sentient. I have saved you. And I will leave you. You must be able to support yourselves for when that inevitability comes.”
You look at me, distressed, but you take the flower nonetheless. “So you are leaving.”
“Eventually. But not today, and I doubt tomorrow.”
“I will not allow you to.”
“I know.”
“I will argue with you, I will complain, I will rage.”
“Good.”
The look you give me is one of understanding. I share the same look.
This is how it has always been between us.
I think it’s better this way. Not just for you, but for me too.
Osiris wakes.
He blinks, the warmth of Saint against his body gives him a rare smile. The soft morning light pouring from the window and the Traveler hanging overhead fills his vision.
There is a flower in his hand.
Someday, he thinks, the Traveler will leave them.
And he will rage against it every step of the way, he will argue with it, he will build and rebuild humanity’s case. Because that is what he knows best.
He knows contradictions and arguments and he knows how to use them.
Osiris sets the delicate flower aside.
That can wait.
For now, he enjoys Saint’s warmth.