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rachis i
Jolyon tracks his well-worn path from Rheasilvia to the Mists, listening idly to comms reporting high Guardian influx to the Dreaming City. The talking is tense— a few Corsairs are set to die today, and it’s just a matter of waiting.
A voice like chimes comes through the channel, with a static warble. “The Guardian is here in the City. And, ah, she’s brought someone with her.”
Jolyon has seen the Guardian before, a silent Warlock with Petra— he’s never felt the need to set up an introduction. Trouble always seems to follow the Guardian with deicide under her belt. Jolyon already knows to stay at a distance.
“Who?” asks another voice.
There’s silence. Then, “I don't think I need to tell you who it is."
Jolyon clicks the comm off after that.
rachis ii
He reaches his Dvalian home with some difficulty, fingers aching with the strain of the free climb. “Home” is a loose term. If one could call a split in the cliff face wide and long enough to fit two-and-a-half bodies belly-down, and just tall enough to kiss the craggy ceiling with his fingertips, then yeah. Home.
He nestles in. He tosses his pack to the far wall, unclips his Supremacy from his back, and sits down with a tired huff.
He looks out at the Mists. It’s like this, every first week— if he just lets his sight go hazy, then the Dreaming City becomes what it used to be. Light comes down from the sky portal separating the City from the Shore, and if he tilts his head a fraction of a muscle twitch, he can catch the shimmer of the cloaking mechanism in the atmosphere. The heavy mist glitters in the light and parts in the breeze.
All hush, no excitement, no cyclical tragedy. Not that he prefers the quiet. Jolyon has learned through these eight cycles (he does the math quickly, and it is eight) that quiet means he has time to think and… wish.
He’s not stupid. Wishes got them here in the first place. But, the thoughts take a gentle form, and he lets them tread lightly— the cool bite of the wind, the nudge of a body next to his, calling out a distance.
He asks a question he doesn’t mean to: Has Jolyon come across… him before?
The problem, when you watch someone so closely and for so long, is that you know how they move, how their legs carry them, how they tilt their head and position their arms at their side. It wouldn’t take a dramatic reveal, hair tousling in the wind as he takes off his helmet.
Jolyon would just know. And he hates that it's true.
Still, he misses having a friend at his side. Not for the first time, but it’s rare for him to feel it with such honest yearning. The casual touches, fond exasperation, inside jokes, and laughter to his left. The name escaping Jolyon’s lips with a small smile, curious if his friendly affection could nudge past friendship—
He cuts that ambling memory in half, and hopes nothing has overheard. After all, nothing is louder than the ache that comes from wanting. Or regret.
Far, far below him, he can just make out the stilted, clunky movement of the Scorn. He eyes the long, narrow line of the Supremacy’s barrel.
He sighs. He drags a hand down his face and gets to it.
rachis iii
Time passes in dribbles. He keeps the Supremacy pressed against him, his eye to the scope.
The Guardians are out full-force today, as expected. A group of Titans with their stocky bodies beating whatever they can find into the dirt. A two-man fireteam, a Warlock and a Hunter, zooming around on sparrows and taking their sweet time collecting baryon boughs. Four lone Hunters, each spotting him in time, and pinging a bullet right below his perch to let Jolyon know that they know how a sniper works.
Another two-man, two Warlocks floating through the air, almost languidly, while spraying bullets back towards the ground. A Titan and a Warlock come in from Rheasilvia, hopping off their sparrows and launching themselves directly into the fray.
Their presence doesn’t give him much to do, and it pricks at him, how good they are at annihilation.
There’s a thought, tucked away, that slips past: there’s a Guardian out there who doesn’t know how much he hated them in a past life. The irony isn’t lost on Jolyon.
And the Guardian is with him, of all the flickering Lights he could’ve attached himself to.
He remembers the early warning: The prince is here, with the Guardian. Despite himself, he takes his eye from the scope and does a cursory scan of the Mists. There’s so many Warlocks out in the Mists today— is the Guardian one of them? And if so, is Jolyon looking dead-straight at an old friend?
How would he act now, if Jolyon met him? Maybe he would be met with passing interest— would that hurt? Would they become friends again, given time?
It’s an act of self-care when Jolyon asks himself to shut up.
interlude: stereoscopic
I dreamt of a garden last night.
I was the same man, yet I felt different. The garden grew flowers darker than rust and grass as green as auroras. I picked off a tall blade and tasted it. It tasted like metal. It cut my tongue, and the blood was bitter.
There was a man next to me. Tall, I suppose. I can’t remember what he looked like, except for the way his eyes remained narrowed and distrustful, like he didn’t want to know what he was seeing. But, he was forced to bear witness. And so was I.
I said to, ah, I said to the man: “I’d say we were lucky to find this place, but it was never about luck. We didn’t need it.”
And the man said to me, “You’re right. If we were lucky, we never would have made it out of the Reef.”
There was something, ah, at the center. If the Traveler is the center of the City, then this was the center of this garden. It called me closer, and I followed.
And the man next to me, he said “I don’t like this, I don’t like this. We have to leave. We have to ascend.” Yet, he followed my every step anyway. In my tread, shards of diamonds bloomed into jasmine fractals. They cut his feet, but he tracked me.
I think we might have been friends.
He called a name that I’m not sure was mine.
And I said— I said—
Huh. I can’t remember.
And, you know… That’s all I dreamt.
rachis iv
A target hulks into view from deep within the fog, and he’s never been more thankful for the distraction. An Abomination, oh, less than 1000 meters away. He lines up his next shot right at the head. He steadies himself and takes the—
A Sparrow comes flying from the left, and Jolyon jerks the aim downward into the dirt, narrowly avoiding shooting down the Hunter who hops off midair with some practiced grace.
He huffs out a curse.
The fireteam taunt the Abomination into a slam. He empathizes enough for half-wince when the Abomination’s fists land down on the Hunter, who rolls to the side. The aftershock connects anyway, and it hurls him back a few feet. The Hunter limps for a second before the tell-tale wash of Light signals the Traveler doing its work.
The Hunter does a little impromptu dance, ending in a low bow. An incredulous half-laugh escapes Jolyon.
He’s struck, not for the first time, that this encounter doesn’t matter to them. They won’t remember this later. How could it, when they look death in the face and dare ask it to waltz?
The Warlock floats into his scope and obscures his sight. Jolyon grunts in irritation, taking his eye away and pushing himself up off his belly. The Warlock glints in the sun, even with the distance, raising a cheeky pink rocket launcher. Jolyon barely has warning before the explosions hit— a star-bright blast lights up the Mists for a brief moment.
The Abomination, predictably, vaporizes on contact.
Jolyon blinks hard, massages his eyes. Fucking Guardians.
When he regains full function of his eyes, down the thousand or so meters is the dead giveaway of an unblinking red light. A sniper, trained on him. As far as trends go, Jolyon bets it’s the Hunter, probably, having spotted him now.
The sound of the shot goes off, and the bullet cracks against the stone right below his cave.
Jolyon carefully looks— there he is, that bastard, waving a hand in the air. He sighs and sends a bullet right back into the dirt at the Hunter’s feet. And another one. The Hunter, to his credit, only kicks up a little bit when the impact sprays dirt onto his boots, clearly not expecting a greeting back.
It’s not meant to be threat, and clearly it wasn’t taken as one. As the initial startle wears off, the Hunter throws his head back, as if laughing. There’s something about his movements that sparks a worn memory. It reminds him of—
rachis v
It's like a punch to the sternum, a crack in his costal arches. By the stars, doesn’t that look familiar? The tilt of his head back. The way he puts a hand to his hip, staring up at Jolyon with the blank expression of a helmet, yet he can feel the playful challenge anyway. Like friendly competition, hitting a target a mile away, making bets in the night.
If Jolyon were there, on the ground… whose laugh would he have heard?
Jolyon rolls onto his back, feels the rough texture of stone under his back, the cold beneath his head. He counts to ten and thinks about everything that he knows for sure. There is a star, burning at the center of the Solar system. There’s a half-eaten ration bar in his Supremacy’s case. Uldren Sov, as Jolyon knew him, has been dead for months. For years. For longer than anyone wanted to admit, including him.
He wasn't the same after the Garden, and neither was Jolyon. What is he doing, looking for scraps of someone long abandoned in other people? Didn't he tell Petra that he didn't want to know?
Why does it still ache after so long?
A frustrated sigh escapes him. It’s not worth going mad over the small pieces of Uldren he finds in every little Guardian who flits past. He's never been interested in secrets. This is one he can't touch, for his own sake. It could’ve been just a random Hunter. It could’ve been anyone.
He stays on his back, rubbing his temples and covering his face and letting out half-hearted repetitions of "Get over it!", longer than he wants to admit.
When he rolls back again, hauling the Supremacy snug against his shoulder, the field has almost entirely cleared of Guardians. The Warlock and the Hunter are gone.
“Good riddance,” he mutters to himself, and tries to mean it.