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“Show some emotion, old man! That’s my Guardian! That’s your son!”
“I know who he is, Sagira.”
The little Ghost shuttered her optic halfway, trying to give herself the appearance of a glare, but it fell through. “Then act like it for once. You’re talking about Osiris, Speaker. Not just any little Guardian meddling in somebody’s hidden business.”
Silence. Why did she bother waiting for a response? She knew he didn’t care. How could he, if it had gone this far? Maybe he never had. Maybe she had failed to protect Osiris from his one weakness: His own teacher. The one person he looked up to and aspired to be like; the one person he wanted to make proud. That burden would be hers forever, and hers alone.
“He’s not something you can hide away. He can’t be swept under the rug, or put out of sight on the top shelf - you won’t escape him. He has a legacy.”
“Legacy, Ghost? What do you know about legacy.”
“Everything, actually - and don’t patronize me. ‘Ghost’. You know I have a name. Use it while you can, Speaker.” She blinked and turned away briefly before floating towards the open-air window in full view of the Traveler above and the City below. “As a Ghost, legacy is what I do. I build from nothing, and rebuild over and over again. Every time he’s died, I’ve built him up from the ruins of who he was before. Every time he’s died, he’s changed. Grown. Learned. Every single time. You might not think so - but what do you really know of Osiris?”
The Speaker spoke under his breath in response. “That I did not fear him enough in his rebirth.”
Sagira did not hear.
She went on, raising and twirling her spines in excitement as she spoke. “I’m starting to think you never knew him at all. He’s brilliant, you know. I’m really proud of him. All those books he’s written, and his speeches? He’s so great at talking to people, especially about the things he cares about!”
She paused and slowly turned to face him again, and her spines drooped downward as a person’s shoulders roll forward in grief.
“But not you. He felt like he couldn’t talk to you, did you know that? That you wouldn’t listen. I’ve seen his dreams - and shared his nightmares. It’s a Light bond thing. He’s woken up in cold sweats more times than I can count because he dreams of the day that you finally see him for what he is.”
“And what is that, Sagira?”
The Speaker spoke in the most monotone and aggravating way Sagira had ever heard. Funny...she’d never been rubbed wrong by it so deeply before. Anyone else might say he just sounded tired, but to Sagira, his apparent exhaustion was infuriating.
“A hero, I think. The bravest of you all. That much is undeniable. Do I even need to mention Six Fronts?” She stopped in her tracks, and looked down like she was looking at her feet. If Ghosts could really glare, her gaze would be as sharp as a dagger. Her voice, on the other hand, dropped down an octave - she suddenly sounded tired as well, and her tone became dull.
“But,” she began again, still looking down, “his nightmares tell him that you think he’s a monster. Unworthy of his title as Commander or your love.” She lifted her eye to stare at the Speaker’s mask in exhausted defiance. “But what love, really.”
He stood still and silent for a long moment. Sagira reveled in it. Maybe she had crossed a line - that was always fun when you had nothing to lose.
“Love that he imagined, I think. You always cared for Saint more, anyway.”
The Speaker looked up sharply and seemed to meet her gaze. Her optic widened in disbelief.
“You think he doesn’t know that? After all this time? Wow, you really are a lot more dense than I thought. Funny how that works. Yeah, of course he knows that."
"They're brothers—"
She cut him off: "But naturally, you have a favorite son! And his name is not Osiris."
The Speaker turned away with a shake of his head. His shoulders slumped and his hands hung idly by his sides as he stepped towards his bookcase and away from the sunlight that made a silhouette of Sagira. Raising a hand to his mask as though he were pinching the bridge of his nose, the Speaker shook his head again ever so slowly. She would never see, would she? But how could she. He was about to cast out her Guardian, and he could think of very few Ghosts who would be okay with that.
"Tell me about his 'legacy', Sagira. What will he leave behind here?"
"All the things that drive you mad, Speaker." She hesitated. She hadn't meant to sound quite so vicious in that statement. "His books won't burn, his students won't stop learning, his accomplishments and heroism will live on forever in history, and his lifestyle will prevail in those who believe in him. Unlike you." Another pause as she looked away, thinking. "His prophecies...they scare you, don't they?" She stopped again for an answer, and received silence in return, his back still to her. "Well they should," she continued, her voice back to its usual haughtiness now, "because he's right. All of them are true. Every single one. Just wait. You'll see."
"Waiting is the problem, Sagira. Can't you see the man has no patience? No patience for—"
"Dogma! Etiquette! Tradition! Yeah, I know; I've heard it all. Maybe impatience is what we need; did you ever think of that? Maybe we need that change. Staying where we are sure isn't doing a whole lot for anyone. You lead humanity into stagnancy, Speaker! Osiris makes people shuffle their feet a little. So what? What's so bad about that?"
"His methods." He did not face her, but turned his head to look over his shoulder at her instead. Raising a hand as he spoke, he waved it with a flick of his wrist for emphasis, while placing his other against the bookshelf as if to brace himself. "It's his methods, Sagira. He throws away everything we know to follow hunches and take chances that we don't have the supplies or the numbers for. He deploys Guardians into unknown areas to face enemies we don't understand. We cannot fight what we don't know."
"How are we supposed to learn if we don't get out there? Do you really think that makes any sense? How can we fight anything without trying? Warriors are nothing withou—"
"—Without an enemy to fight, yes, I know. I've heard him say it plenty of times to Miss Rey, and not kindly."
Sagira blinked and slowly tilted her chassis up, as someone might lift their chin to look down their nose at something they despise. "...You're squandering the army you've raised. To not send them out to face our enemies is foolish, Speaker. We can't just pretend that we're intimidating. We're fighting aliens. They don't play by our rules."
The Speaker turned his head toward his bookshelf again, and nearly mumbled when he spoke. "You sound too much like him, now."
"Our enemies don't care how pretty we look while we sit under the Traveler and pretend they're not there. They don't care about shiny weapons, they care about bloody ones. Guns with teeth and claws, swords with war paint made from blood. Guardians in masks that look like their nightmares. Don't you see? We have to get out there! We're dead if we sit in the Walls with our fingers in our ears!"
Another whisper. "Too much, too much."
"What?"
"We are not deaf to what Osiris calls for, Sagira." He stood up straight again, raised his head, and squared his shoulders. "No one is; quite the opposite, in fact. If our 'fingers were in our ears', as you say," he finally faced her again, and she retreated a bit from his sudden intensity, "we would not be having this discussion, because Osiris would not have become a problem. If no one could hear him, then we would be well-equipped to deal with what we know."
"But we're not! We're not equipped at all—"
"Because he keeps pushing us further! He sends us deeper into this ravenous system that seeks to consume our Light, and our lives. He shows us there is more that we don’t know."
"How is that a bad thing? He's leading you to greater knowledge, to vital points across the whole solar system that we should reclaim for humanity; we should push the Darkness out of those places! Fight back and take what's ours!"
"How can we reclaim them? That is the question he does not answer aloud. Instead, he sends in fireteams who are vastly unprepared for what awaits them in these new lands. Guardians die when they follow Osiris."
Sagira's voice shook with passion and conviction as well as with fear. "That's not true."
“I cannot let him walk away from all this without consequence. He cannot stand against these charges— Against these facts.” The Speaker stepped forward to his desk and placed his palms down on the smooth wooden surface. “All those Guardians, lost...not to mention the Vault of Glass—”
“Kabr’s fireteam wanted to go on that mission! He didn’t make them do it!”
Sagira flipped her spines in agitation as she snapped, spinning and twirling them quick enough to blur as she considered her next words carefully - or as carefully as one can in the heat of the moment.
“Look, he’s not just some villain— You can’t just erase what he’s done. Yeah, sure, some of it hasn’t been...great, but he is. He is great. You know that, you practically raised him! He was lost when I brought him here, but— But maybe that was my mistake.”
Turning away from the Speaker, she shuttered her optic in a long, slow blink, and rhythmically shifted her chassis from side to side like a boat rocking on an unseen ocean in an attempt to comfort herself. It didn't work.
“Maybe I shouldn’t have come back here. I should have known; with how much Light he held even then, right after his revival...I should have known this Tower would never accept him.”
There was a long moment of heavy silence that weighed on them both before she turned to float towards the Speaker again, though this time her spines quivered less out of anger and more out of pure, unbridled emotion.
“...Put it on me. Give me the blame. It’s my fault for resurrecting him - Tell everyone it’s on me. I’ll take it all. He’s my burden - and my blessing. Not my shame, but I’ll shoulder yours, if that’s what it takes.”
“Sagira—“
“Look, he’s done great things. He’s incredible, even you can see that!”
“I always thought so.” His voice was stern, yet collected in the usual fashion, and it annoyed Sagira to no end.
“So why are you doing this! Why won’t you even hear him—“
The Speaker’s voice grew quieter, but his tone hardened. He shook with soft spoken anger as he faced her directly; his hand swung out to gesture to the City far below his observatory.
“Too many have heard him.”
“He did what he had to do.” Her voice turned cold. “I’ll hold up the weight of him. Forever. But I’m begging you, please - don’t make me.”
The Speaker stood up straighter. Sagira felt his gaze burning into her plating, even from beneath the mask. He squared his shoulders, and she knew it was done.
She began again, more slowly, more deliberately, and dropped her voice lower - she hoped it would make her sound more dangerous. In truth, she couldn’t mask her sadness. She had liked the Speaker, once.
“I don’t care if he’s guilty. He’s good, and bad - but he’s mine. And I’ll follow him anywhere. And by the way: Those Guardians? And all those people you claim are ‘hanging themselves’ on his words? They will, too. We’re not alone. We will never be alone, Speaker. Remember that next time you need us.”
He started to speak in anger, but the little Ghost had already turned away and begun to follow the steps down towards the exit.
“—Sagira. Sagira! Sagira, you— You listen to me right now! I will not make the same mistakes now that my son leaves me. I will fear him enough this time, even as he is dead to this Tower." Despite his desperation to have the last word, the Speaker choked. "And to me."
But she had already left him alone in his observatory. And she wouldn’t come back until he was dead and gone.