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Eris watches her strangely, like this is the first time since Mare Imbrium that she’s really looked, has been able to catch her eye. Until now it’s almost as if Eris hasn’t seen the change in her, or maybe she just didn’t want to admit that it’s happened. Not Mare Imbrium, because Eris had been at Mare Imbrium and seen the terror laid bare before her and cut it open with crackling knives. No— it’s like Eris is just now seeing the horror and the anger and the retribution of the aftermath, the toll it’s taking on her.
Eriana feels warmth pulling at her fingers and then realizes it’s not warmth, it’s flame. She’s stuck her hand into her memories and gotten burned for it. It’s not like she doesn’t know, by now— how many nights has she woken up screaming? How many has she not bothered going to sleep at all?
Her Ghost emanates sorrow but curls inwards like a withering laurel, like she knows it’ll do no good to send it Eriana’s way. Eriana has dreamt of the Crypt seven times since Mare Imbrium and every time she has burned away when Wei’s face comes through the blur of snow. The sword or rifle or anger she’s carrying has never done her any good. Every time she knows that even if she shot or stabbed or clawed it wouldn’t do anything anyway. Nothing fair could have killed Wei Ning, and Eriana won’t cheat to do it again.
She blinks one-two-three as she realizes Eris is speaking to her, brows drawn together as she repeats, “—going to the memorial, they wanted to know if you were still attending—?”
“Yes,” Eriana says before she can make herself refuse. “I— The Firebreak asked me to act as their guest of honor. I will attend with them if the Praxic Fire has no objections.”
She will even if the Praxic Fire has every objection, because her Seal means nothing to her in the face of the dead. The Firebreak are ashamed to be living, she knows, and so it is right for her to mourn among them.
“Alright,” Eris says, and reaches down to grasp at Eriana’s hand with her own. She ignores the burning even though Eriana knows that she’s overheated, because Eris will always suffer if it benefits those she loves, Eriana and Sai and Omar and the birds fluttering on the balcony. “I’ll see you there tomorrow. Sai said she’s open if you want to run patrols with her.”
“Alright,” Eriana parrots, and tries to relight the colors in her jaw, the ones that have been dead for two weeks. “Thank you. For—” dealing with me, she thinks. For what you have done and will do. “Everything.”
Eris nods and turns to leave, heading for the Hunter Hall. Eriana swings back the opposite way, towards the library where she has spent almost every day for the past month— before the Moon, and after. She sits on the opposite side of where she used to drag Wei to study, because the last book she’d been reading still lies open on the table.
She turns her head away and does not look up from her work for thirteen hours.
---
It’s four in the morning when she stands, leaves the library in silence. She goes to the hangar, finds her jumpship, keys in the coordinates to Old Russia. Laurel hangs uselessly above her, subsumed in guilt and worry, wordless.
Eriana touches down and walks the six miles to the Cosmodrome wall. She climbs the rusting mass, finds a spot where the ground below is clear, and jumps.
---
She sees nothing until the fifty-fourth attempt.
---
Wei drives a sword through her stomach. She is smiling, the same grin that she always has had has in the Crucible. There is blood on her teeth.
Eriana screams in a language she does not understand. She has three eyes and she is monstrous and hulking and now the sword is through Wei’s gut—
---
She is with the Wizard again. She is torturing it again but every time she hurts it she burns, and it hurts worse than anything she’s ever known but she keeps doing it, needs to keep doing it, and over time the pain fades until nothing but pleasure is in its place, and the Wizard is gone where did she go—
---
Crota kills her.
---
She can kill Crota, but to reach him she must kill everyone at Mare Imbrium, must kill Eris and Vell and Wei—
---
Eriana is standing over Wei’s broken body. Her chestplate is caved open, Crota’s sword still pinning her to the dusty ground. The blood seeps out around her, luminescent green. Her eyes are blank.
Wei smiles up at her. “This love is war,” she says, mouth unmoving.
---
When she wakes up on the cold ground, Laurel hovers over her. “The ceremony is in two hours,” she says. It is the first thing she’s said since.
Eriana stands, begins the journey back to her jumpship. She has seen everything she needs, and nothing she wanted.
---
She puts her ceremonial robes on, and her bond, and all the medals she’s won in service of the Praxic Order. All except the one the survivors of the Great Disaster earned, because she is unsure she survived; even if she did, she deserves no award for it.
The Firebreak left her a seat in the front row, which she despises even as she takes it. She has nothing to see here, nothing to say to anyone that matters. Everything is ashes.
The Titans around her barely take up two rows of seating— the only ones left alive, she knows, and ashamed of it. She understands, even as she knows she must be living for her vengeance to take root. They are not concerned with vengeance; every death was earned, and so they were unworthy of the greatest sacrifice.
Eriana would give anything in the universe for unworthiness, then.
The ceremony is quiet, and the Vanguard speak with the detached sentiment of those that have lost nothing but the battle. Eriana wishes she could rage against them, could see them burn if only for a life, only for an instant before they returned in a mockery of what she’s lost.
A member of the Praxic Order speaks, and she comprehends none of it. There is polite clapping, and tears, and the memorial is concluded. The mourning is ending, and with its end the Great Disaster will pass into history.
Eriana does not think about how she cannot live in a universe where Wei Ning is history.
She thinks about vengeance, and plans, and dreams.
---
“Wei,” she says. This is how she knows she is dreaming: Wei is here.
“I know what you’re going to do,” Wei tells her. “Don’t do it. You’ll never survive it.”
“I have to,” she says, and wishes she did not sound so helpless. “I’ll avenge you— everyone that was killed. Someone must.”
Wei smiles. Her eyes are blank. “It will not be you,” she says, “but this is love.”