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Qui se ultro morti offerant, facilius reperiuntur, quam qui dolorem patienter ferant. [Translation: It is easier to find men who will volunteer to die than men who will endure pain with patience.] - attributed to Julius Cæsar
Vesper sat in the cockpit of her ship in orbit around Jupiter and wondered if, knowing what she knew now, she could have… would have... done things differently. Vesper had gone to ground, and normally, Io was her refuge. But refuge was impossible when her conscience was the quarry; she couldn’t hide from what she’s done. Revenge became poison in her veins, and it ate at everything she touched.
She was hiding, in this hollow, empty space she’d found in her chest, and letting her emotions burn.
Kilo had kept her relatively undisturbed since she’d left the Tower, and her Ghost had made it abundantly clear to her fireteam and to Ikora that she wasn’t fit for duty. What remained of the Vanguard gave her space.
Vesper suspected they were barely holding themselves together as it was.
The brief time she’d been back to the Tower had been too painful, and she’d left almost as soon as she was able. She’d not even said goodbye to Charlie or Dani, just picked up her belongings and left, still seething…
After seeing the look of betrayal on the Commander’s face and the raw grief of Ikora… they’d all lost a friend and a fireteam member. Why did it hurt so much for her?
So much time the last few weeks had been filled with fury… she’d boiled over, put bullets into barons, put a bullet between the eyes of Uldren Sov…
... Eyes that looked just like hers.
Now, all the fury and anger had simmered into shame.
She sat, staring blankly at the stars. She remembered her naivete and the sheer pride she’d felt when she’d destroyed the Genesis Mind. It had been an offering for Asher, a gift of desire and fealty and worth. She’d wanted nothing more than to hurt the thing that hurt him. She wondered if Asher had felt this this bitter taste of vengeance and not had the heart to tell her.
She sat in her ship, letting the stars whirl around her. The relentless ache in her chest would not go away. This is how she knows two wrongs don’t make a right, and hiding will not undo what she’s done.
Uldren Sov deserved better. He’d been manipulated. She’d known that.
She sees his eyes in the reflection of her own in the mirror bright glass of the cockpit...
and yet…
Cayde deserved better. His death was stupid, and senseless … And not (entirely) Uldren’s fault.
She needed everyone to stop saying that it wasn’t on her conscience. Of course it was. She was guilty. Ikora was guilty. Zavala was guilty…
Even Cayde was guilty.
...The moment of white-hot rage she’d felt as she watched her friend fall through the air riding the flaming debris like a stallion would haunt her forever.
It was unfair to him, but Vesper had lost the ability to see death as just another weapon in her arsenal long ago. She didn’t gamble her life at whim anymore, and she hated the back and forth of death and resurrection.
She shivered at the remembrance and Kilo stirred at her shoulder. He’d hardly moved in hours, and his optics stayed dimmed. Kilo mourned for his own friend. Sundance was not just collateral damage, she was the unluckiest victim. She wondered too if her Ghost had wanted justice or vengeance in the end.
... He’d asked her that, hadn’t he?
And vengeance she had wrought.
She pitied Uldren, in the end, but it hadn’t stopped her from pulling the trigger...
She wondered what, if anything, would have.
Vesper understood Asher’s fear for her so much better now; fear of your own death and fear of the death of a loved one were two different things.
The silence was broken as the ship’s comm crackled to life. She hit the ignore button, harder than she probably should have. She had absolutely no patience for sympathy or grief.
The flashing light indicating a transmission went dark, and then resumed flashing. When it crackled again, she let it run, and in the static silence she could hear Asher clearing his throat.
Her hand hovered over the disconnect.
“Are you satisfied in your quest for vengeance then?” He asked, and his graveled voice was loud in the empty silence of the cockpit. “Or will you ignore me from the safety of your geosynchronous orbit until I perish?”
She moved her hand away. There was a long pause.
“No.” Her voice cracked. “Asher, I…” her words sat in her throat and choked her. “Satisfied would not be the word I would use.”
Asher laughed, and it was cold and bitter, until it turned into a dry, wicked cough. When he stopped, a silence hung in the air like a thundercloud.
Vesper brought her knees up to her chest and pressed her forehead to them, letting her guilt and fear escape as tears. Knowing and understanding something as simple as the truth were two different things also.
Over the speaker, Asher cleared his throat again. “I suspect you are currently flogging yourself over what you cannot change now. However, personal experience tells me that you cannot continue brooding forever.”
His only answer was the sound of her robes shifting as she moved and the barely audible intake of breath as she swallowed her grief. She wanted to run. She just wasn’t sure where she wanted to run to or how far she should go. Or where she would be welcome.
On her shoulder, Kilo’s optic slowly lit up, and flicked his shell. The small AI lifted up and hovered, looking at his guardian with a solemn pause, and then flying over to the controls. “Asher, I’m bringing her down,” the AI said quietly, “Just be there.”
“Understood.” The comm went off with a click.
Vesper’s boots hit the ground and she found herself standing in a familiar spot. This was where she had stood when the Traveler had spoke to her.
Her mind flashed back to visions she’d had, and the anger and terror she had felt as the shock wave of the Traveler’s energy knocked her back, again and again, and she stepped back in the moment as if echoing those footprints.
Then, she’d screamed in undiluted rage, as the force of pure, uncontrolled energy shot from her hand in a laser focused, enormous beam of arc light for the first time… This was no stormtrance; it was driven by pure chaos.
Even now, thinking about it made lightning crackle around her fists.
“Attunement of Control, bah!” Turning, she could see Asher standing in the safety of the overhang, his sniper rifle leaning against the stone beside him. “Ikora’s naming conventions are mediocre and outdated. You have as little control over those powers right now as I have over the transformation of my arm.”
Vesper knew those who expected Asher to stay in the Rupture weren’t… wrong, per se … but he wasn’t completely helpless. She had found that with the right impetus, Asher would venture out beyond his comfort zone. Fear was a powerful motivator, and that ran in both directions.
When she didn’t answer, he slung the rifle over his shoulder, made a quick and furtive check of his surroundings, and strode forward to meet her. As he approached, Vesper remained motionless, keeping her hands at her sides, trying to keep her emotions in check.
Kilo darted over her shoulder and snapped his optic at Asher, getting his attention. The small robot flew up and forward sharply, and Asher paused, a few meters away. “You’d better stay there for a second… just to be on the safe side.”
Asher nodded at the tiny robot, just a sharp dip of his chin, and stepped back. There was a crack of thunder, and the smell of lightning, far away. A sudden, strong well of arc energy pooled and flooded around her, and then it was gone with a whisper.
“Is your overwrought and flashy display of theatrics done, or should I retreat all the way to the Rupture and return later?” he asked, gesturing to the circular impression in the dirt that the wave had made.
She looked at him sharply, and he raised an eyebrow in return. They stood in silence for a moment, until she turned away. Looking down, she stared blankly at her boots, noting the grime and blood that stained them. The rustle of the grass under Asher’s steps was a soft whisper that grew louder as he approached. Finally, the tops of his boots came into her field of vision as he stepped into her personal space.
She looked up to find him staring down at her. His expression mirrored the one he’d given her the first time she’d met him -- anxious and frustrated, but determinedly fierce.
“It’s incredibly distracting to have to play fetch and carry myself when my assistant has abandoned me on her own quest for retribution,” he said, pulling her close. “Have you any idea how irritating it is to try and explain the quantum matrix of the Vex continuum to the common rabble that idiot Commander sends me?”
Vesper’s laugh came out more as a sob, and she wrapped her arms around his chest. He winced as she unknowingly pressed against the raw, aching skin beneath his chest armor where the transformation had reached, and she backed up, startled.
“How far?” She asked, stepping backward further to look at his face. He answered with a hard look, and stepped forward to bring her within arm’s reach again.
“Since I saw you last, the radiolarian transformation has progressed 7 centimeters beyond my arm in all directions.” He sounded clinical and detached as he listed his symptoms, as if he was listing the account of a mission report. “I have limited flexibility, and mobility of the clavicle and scapula has decreased by seven degrees as the flesh around the joint has started to keratinize And the radiolarian fluid has reached my right lung.”
At that moment, Vesper’s gut felt like it was filled with tar, and she wanted to throw up. Her anger flared again, but this time, it was directed inward. All this time she’d been consumed with her rage and revenge; all this time she’d wasted.
… A flash of memory came back to her, one she’d let dissipate in the first hazy days of her voluntary rampage. In her mind, she could hear Failsafe’s innocent grief, the AI unable to contain her emotions. The noise she’d made had fueled Vesper’s anger in the moment, but now… now she wished more than anything that she could wail and scream. Instead, her regret lived in her throat, choking her…
Asher’s fingers gripped her shoulder and the sharp pain of it brought her back to the moment. He pulled her into his chest again, and the Vex arm twisted around her waist. He pressed her close, strong and firm against him, and his hand slipped up over her shoulders and up, coming to rest at the nape of her neck.
“Guardians are ill equipped for grief, my dear,” he whispered, lips at the crown of her head. “You’ve experienced loss in a greater quantity than most in a very short time period. It was years between my rebirth and the first true death of a teammate. And I am always the first to forget how young you are.”
He held her close for a moment and then let her step back. Vesper drank him in, trying to memorize every swirl of light under his skin, every crease at his eyes, the curl of his hair at his temples.
First Alyce… then Cayde… Vesper wondered if she would survive when she lost him too.
The press of the Traveler’s light grew strong, and Vesper could feel Asher struggling with to draw out his light. Out of habit, she pressed back, and suddenly a rift appeared below them, its soft and gentle whisper radiating light at her feet. It was warm, and she wanted to sink into it and fall into its abyss. While Vesper knew it held absolutely no benefit to Asher, it unlocked something inside her, and she fell to her knees.
It started with a sob. A choking, rasping horrid sob.
She could barely recognize it as grief anymore. It was a monster that crawled out of her chest and up her throat and through her teeth. The splinters of rage dissolved, and left open wounds in their place.
Kilo hovered at the field of her vision, silent, and in the corner of her mind, she could feel how relieved the tiny robot was. Somewhere, down beneath the raw, undiluted emotions was a beacon - a place where she’d stowed away the soft, tender parts of herself.
Her face was a mess of snot and wet, and she hiccuped and stuttered through her sobs as the well held for far longer than it should have. When it did finally dissolve with a pop, she sat cross legged on the ground, half crying still, but mostly breathing heavily.
“I’m sorry,” she said, when she could speak again, to no one in particular. Asher walked over and offered her his left hand, and planted his feet so he could pull her up. She took it, and the forward momentum brought her against his chest.
“I know,” was all he said.