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The flowers of Io’s Echo Mesa are indigo smears on the horizon as Vesper Tan's ship soars over the Rupture. She can see the Pyramidion in the distance -- The sight of the alien monolith makes her nervous stomach quake. She signals the transmat, and she lands in a shower of silver, pulling her rifle up to her chest out of habit. Once she is confident the coast is clear, she slings the gun across her back.
Vesper brings out her Ghost, who has been quiet since they left the Tower. Materializing in her palm, the small AI twirls and whirrs in his shell, but says nothing. Vesper sighs and frowns. "Please don't give me the silent treatment," she says.
With a click, her helmet screen lights up, marking the distance between her and Asher Mir.
There is a disapproving pause. "Until recently, I assumed you had better sense," her Ghost says. Somehow, he has managed to arrange his shell plates in a way that drips with sarcasm. He disappears, transmatting himself and the rest of her unnecessary gear to her ship.
"Until recently, I would have agreed with you," Vesper says under her breath. Her Ghost answers with a snort of laughter in her mind.
It isn't far to Asher's remote research station nestled in the fossilized bones of a long-dead beast. Cresting the hill of mustard-colored grass, she can see a small crowd of guardians on her HUD. Vesper removes her helmet so she can feel the gentle wind that rustles the carpet of flowers around her. It blows her hair across her cheeks, carrying hints of magnesium and hyacinth.
Without her helmet, Vesper can hear Asher's pained voice over the din of anxious guardians. They're carrying samples of the local elements and flora for his research, hoping he will gift them treasures in return.
"You are all completely inept and frightfully stupid. Why should I reward such a basic, menial task?" His voice was loud and sharp like a knife. "It's ridiculous morons like you who make this job insufferable." He yanks a handful of phaseglass shards from the hands of a young, human Hunter. In return, he hands the Hunter a new helmet with the Gensym mark inscribed. Vesper knows Asher meticulously crafted and imbued the helmet with light, modifying it to restore this Hunter's health if injured.
Watching the exchange from a short distance, Vesper smiles. Asher's eyes flick up, as if he can sense her presence, but he returns his gaze to the Hunter in an instant. He turns with a jerk to his notebook and marks the amount of materials collected, missing the pleased look on the Hunter's face. The turn is an obvious dismissal, and the Hunter and his fireteam retreat.
As the young guardians leave the small alcove and walk down the hill, the Hunter smiles at Vesper. "Be careful. He's in a mood,” he says, taking off his old helmet, and putting on the new Gensym Knight casque.
"When is he not?" Vesper asks in return, giving him a smile that might be a grimace, and the Hunter laughs. But she knows what he meant. She knows why Asher is upset. There was a message waiting from Asher for her when she returned to the Tower with her fireteam. The message was...unkind.
Asher is angry with her; he has made it very clear how angry he is and that he has no patience for careless, ridiculous stunts. She knows why he is angry. She is angry with herself too.
Vesper has returned from a “successful” mission into the depths of Hive territory on Titan, where she defeated the Hive monster called Savathun's Song and survived...unlike the guardians she meant to save. In her report to the Vanguard, she and field commander Sloane disagreed on what exactly defines success.
Though she is mostly whole and hale, Vesper's scars are not physical. The lost fireteams in the Arcology haunt her, and she hears the voice of Taeko-3 in the still moments when she is alone. Vesper has slept little, and when she does, Praxic fire consumes her in her dreams. Now, she is running on empty. Vesper reminds herself she must be strong, for herself, for the Vanguard, and her fireteam. What are a few bruises and voidburns in comparison to bringing home her friends alive and whole? In an imagined whisper, Taeko's voice accuses her that Vesper's was the only fireteam to come home at all.
In her memory, she sees Charlie's chest heave as he pulls his light into himself. He launches himself upward, striking the ground in an explosion of electricity. Pools of lightning pulse where he lands. Charlie strikes again, and Alyce-13 jumps into the air, void bow at the ready, and lets loose her shadowshot at the mob of thrall. Arrows of pure void light pierce the space around the horde. The joined explosion of void and arc energy rings in Vesper's ears, leaving a gluttonous wake of orbs of light for her taking. As Vesper lifts her hand to the sky and brings down her own lightning in a landfall of sparks, she suspects her fireteam has the same thought that she does... use the light so that the darkness cannot find a way through... feed the light so that no one suffers as Taeko or her fireteam did... make the light so bright that it blinds all who would seek to snuff it out.
Around her, the remaining guardians at Asher’s station are satisfied, and they mill past until Vesper stands alone. Asher turns away from his terminal and wanders into the cave that serves as shelter from the endless, distant combat. Vesper knows he has seen her. His dismissal puts his back to Vesper and, in her mind, she calls him childish, an insufferable, egotistical, high-strung, belligerent bastard. She says none of this aloud.
He retreats further in, away from prying eyes and signals he is done for the day. Inside, he picks up and begins to flip through a thick tome, mechanical fingers that are not his own sliding down the page in a performative gesture of reading.
"Asher, I got your message” Her words are loud in the empty space between them.
He makes a short “hmph,” and the fingers pause their motion on the page.
"Go Away." His harsh tone is accented with a curt nod over his shoulder. When she doesn't move, he adds, "Prior evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, I would have expected you were intelligent enough to understand even the simplest command. And that's beside the point, as I am now ready to proceed in my next experiment, thanks to the gaggle of your fellow guardians who just left. I now have enough materials to potentially extract the synthetic temporal isotopes necessary to create the stable vortex we discussed --"
"You're an ass." Vesper lets the words hang in the air. "You're the smartest person I know, and you're still an ass. And you know as well as I do that expectations are not a valid form of data."
"Irrelevant. Being intelligent of mind and senseless and short-sighted in action are not mutually exclusive," Asher says. He closes the book with a snap but does not turn around. "Proven by your presence on this god-forsaken moon." His words are deliberately cruel and cutting, but Vesper holds fast. "I believe I was clear enough that I did not want to see you." A "yet" hangs in the air, unspoken.
No matter how angry he is, Vesper still wants to press herself to him, wrap her arms around his chest, crush her face into his neck. She knows he smells of dust and ozone and radiolaria and the alien wind. She needs him to comfort her, but Asher does not suffer fools gladly. If he did, Vesper would not love him as she does.
Based on his message, she knows he overheard the idle gossip of guardians about what happened to the other fireteams. But he sent his message after Sloane briefed him and the field contacts about the Hive ritual. Vesper heard the rumors that circulated in the tower, but... reality was so much worse. Asher knows better than anyone that reality is always worse.
She and Asher have never made any promises to one another. The venom in Asher's message surprised her. If he truly didn't care, there would be nothing but indifference. But the terror in his voice, the anger at the thought of something happening to her, the harsh criticism of her intelligence, her leadership -- They were deep cuts, but she has imagined the nightmare of her light stuffed and trapped in a crystal, over and over, and she will not blame him for his fear.
Her limbs shake as she spits electricity from her hands. Lightning spills onto the horde of Acolytes and Knights. She moves against the tide of enemies, watching with satisfaction as they disintegrate. As the swell of light fades away, she sees Alyce dodge and disappear as a knight swings a sword toward her, and Vesper forgets to breathe. The Knight's swing lands hard on the ground, and Alyce reappears in a swift bound, driving her Hunter's knife into its skull. This happens in an instant, and the next moment Vesper is breathing again. The pause is careless, because the monstrous shrieker they're here to destroy is still spitting axion bolts. She takes four hits in the chest and goes down before she knows what’s happened. Her death is quick. There is only blackness before her revival. When she wakes, there is a gasp of air, and she sees her Ghost hovering anxiously above her. There is no chance to rest before Charlie is at her heels, checking in and then turning quickly away from Vesper's Ghost. He shoots cover fire toward the awful eye in a spray of bullets as Alyce prepares her rocket launcher. In the buzz of resurrection, Vesper can only pull at her light to make a healing rift, dropping the swirling well at their feet. The rift feels like a gentle wind, and the thrill of electricity surges through her veins, her nerves on fire.
Now, Vesper stops short, leaving space between her and Asher because she cannot breathe. She tells herself she is safe... she tells herself this over and over, but her mind races, creating terrible scenarios of different failures. The choked sound in her throat catches, because it is too much. Her heart is beating too fast, and she can feel tears trying to escape. The rolling feeling of fear returns, cold in her stomach and hot shame and anger pinches behind her eyes. She looks hopelessly up at the sky, the vast, open valley...
...so different than the cramped, tight hallways of the Archology...
...trying to will her emotions away. She tries to laugh instead, the noise coming out as a wet, hopeless huff.
"Vesper."
Her name on his lips is a prayer, and it draws her to the here and now. She looks away from the sky and looks at Asher instead. He is still turned away from her, his posture taut as a wire ready to snap. He is standing there, alive and whole, and she wants to touch him, feel him... but her feet will not move.
He turns. "Vesper, please, I cannot abide this sentimentality..."
She doesn't know how that sentence is going to end. She'll never find out, because the first thing he sees is fear in her eyes reflecting back at him. The second thing he sees is the dark bruise over her right cheek. It is swollen and discolored, her smooth, lilac skin turned a violent indigo.
A Hive Knight backhands her into a wall, and she stumbles, throwing a wild grenade at the creature and, in some sort of miracle, it lands true.
His eyes fix on the mark, and he frowns.
She notices his gaze and follows his eyes to her cheek. "Minor cuts and bruises," Vesper says, in a soft voice. "Not even worth a healing rift." Her words break the spell she has spun, and she steps closer, trying to judge how much space he wants between them.
"Remarkably, that may be the most ludicrous thing I've ever heard you say," Asher says, but she can see the faint remorse behind his eyes.
Slow, tentative steps bring her into the reach of his arms.
His first overture toward her is a press of his left hand to her bruised cheek. The soft flesh of his palm grips her jaw, and he runs the pad of his thumb over the swollen skin. Vesper winces, and she knows he means to hurt. But she relishes the small reminder that she is present in the moment. In return, she raises her own hand and wraps it around his.
Asher is cautious as he puts the Vex hand on her waist and pulls her closer, chest to chest, in a gentle but firm grip. This is a small victory. (Vesper has told him that she isn't afraid of the Vex construct attached to his shoulder. She suspects his silence meant he did not want to tell her that she should be.)
He leans in, pressing his lips to the skin at her temple, and his warm breath tickles her ear.
"Promises are empty, my dear. They make expectations where there are none, but..." He pauses, and leans back and looks at Vesper, his hand still on her cheek. "Promise me. Promise me you won't take such foolhardy risks like this that scare an old man to his death. I cannot stop you from your duty, but... I have little hope in this world, and without you, there would be none."
Before she can answer, his lips come down on hers in a crash, the Vex arm’s unnatural strength crushing her body close to his. She soaks him up, the lingering void light he can muster caressing her in the scalding way of icy water. She answers by surging up into his kiss. His lips are soft, and she can feel the tingle of the radiolaria that courses in his blood. It stings her as she bites his lower lip and sweeps her tongue over the mark. His lips part, and she pushes further, deepening the kiss. Vesper's light washes over them in a surge of lightning, and the thrill of electricity crackles in her nerves. As they join, the air is charged with static and her senses are overwhelmed by the feeling of her hair standing on end. His touch lights her on fire, driving away thoughts that had been shadows in her mind.
His left hand trails down her jaw and rests on her neck, caressing the tender skin in the v of her collarbone. He pulls away, but only for a moment, turning his attention to the curve of Vesper's neck where it joins the shoulder. He presses the curve of his nose against the soft skin there and kissing it with a feather touch. She can only gasp, face pressed toward the sky and her lips parted.
The soft sound prompts him further, and he makes his own deep mark on her skin, claiming her. This is a gentle assault on her senses, both a request and an apology.
This, this is what she wanted. But... "Wait, wait..." Vesper gasps, because she isn’t ready to let go of her fear, and Asher immediately pulls back. His expression is vague and heated, and for once, Vesper cannot read him. She is still for a moment as she catches her breath, and then presses her forehead against his.
“I am sorry, Asher. Tell me again how foolish I am," she says, gently pulling him close with a hand on the back of his neck.
"You are the most foolish woman I have ever had the pleasure to know," he says, pressing his cheek to hers. "You are well aware of my feeling on trivial and common platitudes, and I have said before that vague, repetitive praise does terrible things to the mind. I believe your previous success has addled your brain."
She laughs, and she can breathe again. He takes his own deep breath, and another... and another, and her own breath comes in tandem. The air around them is quiet, save for their paired breath and the sound of combat far in the distance.
Asher pulls her close as he can, his arms around her in a possessive, proprietary way. He does not have any more say in where she goes or what she does than your average Dreg. She leans into the embrace anyway. They stand together for a moment that feels both like an eternity and no time at all, his chin resting on her head.
After a time, she speaks into his chest, her words muffled in his soft robes. “They were gone, Asher. Light snuffed out. Not even a body to bring back to the tower.”
“The probability you would find them alive was mathematically negative. In any scenario I could theorize, all the variables pointed to failure.” His voice drops low. “When I heard you had gone after the lost fireteams, I thought I lost you too.”
If is possible, he holds her tighter, and her arms wind around his back like vines. When she releases him, she presses her palm against his shoulder where, underneath his layers, the construct joins to flesh.
She hopes he will forgive her for asking, but this is why she came. He has known nothing but loss for so long, and each day marches closer to an inevitable end. He must understand. "How do you bear it?" she asks.
He sighs, the Vex hand pulling her away from his shoulder and holding their joined hands between them. "As I have said before... My arm is nothing you need worry about."
"No, I mean..." Vesper pauses, unsure how to verbalize what she is feeling. Finally... “Are you afraid of death?" The words are whispers, but they resonate like shots fired in the silence that follows. She isn't ashamed of the question, but she hates the look on his face after the words fall out of her mouth.
Asher's eyes are hard as diamonds, and as he looks at Vesper, she can imagine him before he was violated and changed, and he is glorious. She is reminded that he is still a guardian, if diminished. Handsome and fierce, he still has power underneath his scholarly facade. When he speaks, it is with the tone of unquestionable authority he puts on with other guardians.
"Fear is irrelevant. I no longer have the luxury of fear.” He pauses and regards his own transformed Ghost, which hovers at the edge of his vision like a wraith. Turning back to Vesper, he continues. “The cause of my destruction was my overestimation of my own abilities and my underestimation of the tenacity and single-minded purpose of the Vex. This was hubris, and do not think I cannot admit my own failure now. I will keep working on my research until I find a cure for this affliction forced upon me, or I die. It matters little which outcome comes to bear." He pauses again and looks at her a little more kindly, brushing his thumb again over her bruised cheek to wipe away her forgotten tears.
Vesper is silent, and he continues. "When I first met you, I made an assumption based on known facts, that you feared nothing... not the Red Legion, nor death, and certainly not me. Now, what variable has changed? Is it that you believe in your mind that you might have saved those guardians if you would have done something different?" He waits for her to speak.
When she does, Vesper chokes on her words. "I could hear her. Taeko, I mean. When she died, her light shone so bright for one last moment, and then it was... gone. We were only seconds away."
"If you had saved her, what could you have done? Without her sacrifice, how would you have stopped the summoning? Hmm? Taeko was intelligent and brave. I met her once and was pleasantly surprised she could hold more than an idle conversation with me. She was a fantastic scholar and engineer, a fierce Warlock, and a dedicated guardian. Her death is an unfortunate loss, but do not diminish her sacrifice. Because if not her, then who? Would you have sacrificed Charlie, or Alyce? How many more guardians would go down there before someone discovered what had to be done? Would you allow the Hive to summon their next monarch so you would have one less death on your conscience? Or would you have offered up yourself?"
Vesper makes a small sound that means to argue, but he presses on. "I know what you will say, instead of the honest answer to that question. What sort of useless kindness would that be? You cannot dwell on the 'could have beens' or 'if onlys'. And death is merely an inconvenience until it becomes an inevitability.”
"Asher, I'm sorry.”
"An apology is neither necessary nor relevant." He sighs and lets his arm drop away from Vesper.
She reaches down and grabs his cold, metal fingers, which twitch in her grasp.
Asher smiles at her sadly. “I am a selfish old man who wants you to be afraid, because it should not be you who makes the sacrifice."
The wind rustles the flowers outside and then is still. A silence hangs in the air, but not an unkind one. Vesper closes the gap, reaching up to press her lips against his once more. This time, the kiss is gentle, a reassurance pressed into the corner of his mouth. This kiss is a promise, prayer and supplication. It is a question, and the expectation of his answer curls heat low in her belly.
His eyes flash, and in an instant, he lifts her up and wraps her legs around his waist, using the Vex arm's strength to hold her steady. Her startled yelp echoes in the alcove, and he covers her mouth with his own, her surprise muffled by his embrace. He still has raw power within him, though unpracticed for so long. Moments pass as she loses herself in the feeling of his soft lips on hers, the short strands beneath her fingers, and the smooth skin at the base of his neck. His left hand slides between the frayed edges of her robes, reaching for the sliver of skin bared at her waist.
The warmth of his palm pressed flat on her belly distracts her as he whispers something quietly against her lips. She pulls back, her expression dazed. “Asher, what did you say?”
The flush in his cheeks makes him look young, but she envies his otherwise immediate composure, despite her clinging to him for dear life. Asher is a man of science, every moment measured and marked. “I merely said…” he pauses, and he looks away for a moment, mulling his words. “And I will not say it again… but, Vesper, consider this an apology for my earlier behavior and my hastily-written missive. I do trust you, despite my previous indication otherwise”
Vesper knows this isn’t what he said, but it will do for now. She is exhausted and too intoxicated by him to challenge the half-truth. It is closer to a promise than before. She takes comfort in what he doesn’t say, since she does not expect any sort of ineffectual or trivial platitudes from him. Instead, she commits the feeling of his body close to hers to memory. Her gaze is soft and hooded, with the promise of something more if he wants it. “Asher, what did you say earlier?” she asks in a low voice. “That an apology is neither necessary nor relevant?”
He huffs, and his palm slides up her belly and around her ribcage, grazing the underside of her breast. “Clearly, you were paying attention. I will also revise my earlier judgement regarding your intellectual capacity.” He moves his thumb in idle circles, and the motion makes her inhale sharply. “Can you tell me, Vesper, if would you like to continue to review the conversation, or would you prefer to move on?”
She answers by leaning forward and kissing him again, her teeth grazing his bottom lip. She holds tight to his neck and slowly releases her legs from his waist. Asher shifts the hand supporting her thighs to her back, pressing her chest to his and steadying her until her feet touch the floor. For the moment, she is in control.
She breathes him in, and for the first time since they left the Archology, she is not afraid.