Chapter Text
I.
Osiris has a headache. One would think that after dying and being reforged in light one would never have to deal with headaches again. Yet here he is, nursing a headache that seems to be bordering on a migraine.
“Sagira,” he says softly, not a demand but a request, and up pops his little light from below his feet.
“Again, Osiris? You know, I’m starting to wonder if your age is finally catching up to you.”
He hums in appreciation as he feels the cool balm of light wash over him. “Nonsense.”
“This is your fifth headache this week and the week started just three days ago. And obviously I can’t patch it up if it keeps happening anyways. You should talk to someone about it.”
“Who could I talk to that would know what’s wrong? Who could possibly help me?”
“I don’t know. Ikora? Saint? They’re the closest thing to a support system you have, you know.”
“I don’t think they can help whatever this is.”
Sagira sighs, “Whatever you say, I still think you should talk to someone.”
Osiris dreams he is a bird.
His wings are silver and imbued with light as he coasts along cosmic radiation, using it as an updraft to keep himself aloft.
He’s distinctly aware he is running away from something.
He scans the ground below him, metal forests and hardened mud. The pines prick at his feathers as he maneuvers through them.
Osiris stops when he spots what he knew he was looking for.
A nest of chicks, abandoned and alone and so very afraid.
He slows and observes the chicks for a moment in the air.
He hears the beating wings of something larger, something dangerous, and he makes his decision.
He flies to the nest, pushing the chicks under himself and shielding them with his wings.
The predator claws at him, he does not flinch. He rises, talons scratching at the Thing’s wings, screeching, his razor sharp beak stabbing into it.
It flies away and he collapses over the chicks. They are barely alive. They need food to survive.
He does the only thing he can do.
He offers them his flesh.
“Eat of me and you will survive.” He says.
He’s dragged out of his sleep when his ship lurches.
He blinks, vision blurry as he grabs onto the controls of his ship. “Sagira,” he scolds when he notices they’re close to the city, “I thought I said I have far more pressing matters to handle.”
“Like what? Mercury isn’t safe anymore - not that it ever was - and you’ve been sleeping in this ship more than doing.”
Osiris can’t really come up with a solid argument against that, so he simply scoffs.
Sagira rolls her eye the best she can to show how exasperated she is.
He’s technically still exiled, but that hasn’t stopped him in recent years from visiting. He’s wary, admittedly, of visiting the tower.
In the Infinite Forest, the only sounds he had to deal with was gunfire and the sweet harmony of vex technology humming in his ear. It was consistent and repetitive enough that his brain had learned to ignore.
In the tower, however, there is no such thing. Muffled voices from conversations he’s not part of, the sound of power tools, flags flapping in the wind, chaotic and discordant.
They aren’t sensations he’s used to anymore.
At least, that’s what he tells himself, when his thoughts drift to why he avoids the tower.
The truth behind that excuse is very simple.
He is scared.
When Osiris transmats into the tower’s hangar, he stands, uncertainly, at the edge looking over the city. His gaze turns skyward, to the broken god in their sky. He recalls those… Centuries? Millennia? He’s not really sure anymore how long ago it was for him with time moving differently in the Forest. He remembers how he rebuked that god, how he swore that all the Traveler has brought them was pain.
He wants to be wrong.
His head aches again.
“Osiris?” He hears from behind, and he freezes.
Ah.
That’s another reason he’s been avoiding the tower.
“Saint.” He acknowledges, but he does not turn around.
He hears Saint’s heavy boots hitting the floor as he approaches, then he dares a glance when Saint stands at his side.
Sometimes he forgets how much taller than him Saint is.
“I have to admit when I first came back, I was not expecting the Traveler to look like that. I thought, by the light! Who broke the Traveler?” Saint laughs, rubbing the back of his neck. “I would have to break whoever did it. Come to find out our friend already did.”
“Yes,” Osiris admits, “In my… prophecies, I hadn’t actually expected the Traveler to awaken. It was just one of many possibilities.”
“No. You have a thick head.”
Osiris grunts in annoyance, but he smiles to himself, nonetheless.
“What are you doing here?”
Osiris turns his attention back to the city, “I am… wandering, without purpose. Now that... Everything is happening. I needed a break. The City is as much of a sanctuary for me as it is a home for other guardians.”
“Other guardians…”
“I’m still exiled, Saint.”
Saint lets out a dissatisfied sound, “Ridiculous. Father was too rash in his actions. You were too. But exile was not the right way.”
“I made my choices and he made his. Either way, the City has never felt like a home to me. I’m more useful out there.”
“Will you ever think of a place as home?”
“No,” he says. Not a place, but perhaps a person, he does not say.
“Osiris has a headache,” Sagira interrupts.
Osiris grimaces.
“A headache? This is true?”
“It’s not an issue.”
“I keep healing him but it keeps coming back, so I don’t know what’s up with that.”
“Osiris,” Saint’s tone is scolding and Osiris wants to jump back into his ship and handle this on his own like he does everything.
“ And he’s been having weird dreams. I thought we should stop by Ikora and see if there’s anything that can be done.”
“Osiris, look at me,” Saint places a hand on Osiris’ shoulder, his head tilted slightly to the side.
Osiris looks.
“You will tell me these dreams you are having.”
Osiris does.
They sit in the Gray Pigeon, Saint’s helmet is off, resting by his feet. He’s hunched over, his chin resting on the back of his interlocked hands, a pensive look on his face.
Or… as pensive as an Exo’s face can be.
“Troubling.” He says, breaking the long silence that followed Osiris’ explanation.
“I know.” Osiris says.
“How long?”
“Since the pyramid ships arrived. At least… That’s when the headaches started. The dreams are new.”
“Is it the same dream?”
“No, and yes. Sometimes I dream I am something else but it’s always the same. I find something helpless, I protect them, I sacrifice myself..”
Saint turns his eyes to Sagira, she makes a shrugging motion, “Don't look at me, I’m not the one giving him dreams.”
“That is not what I suggest. Osiris, have you given thought that these could be-”
“Visions? Perish the thought.”
“No, I think Saint has a point. Didn’t the Speaker have lots of headaches?”
Osiris recalls.
“Speaker, I have new reports that—“ he stops mid sentence when he notices that the lights in the Speaker's office are off. And that his mask is off. He quickly averts his eyes and clears his throat only partially embarrassed. “Apologies, is this a bad time?”
The Speaker is still turned away, facing the Traveler through the window. He picks his mask up from his desk and places it on his face before turning around to face Osiris. “No.”
Osiris is quiet for a moment before he speaks, “Something concerns you?”
“You’re better at reading me than I would care to admit, my son.”
“I can help.” Always so quick to help, so quick to busy himself with fixing others problems so he never had to worry about his own.
“I am afraid you cannot,” the Speaker says. He stands from his chair and to the window, arms held behind his back as his head shifts upwards. “I have a headache.”
“A headache?”
“The Traveler… when it sends me visions it leaves me sore.”
Osiris doesn’t respond. His eyes gaze wearily up to that great orb obstructing the view of the rest of the city and the mountains behind. “It doesn’t sound so benevolent if it’s giving you headaches.”
The Speaker chuckles warmly, “you’ve learned much from Felwinter and Nerwin. And yet you know so little of the Traveler, the very thing that Rose you.”
“Existential philosophy was never my strong suit. I see problems happening in the now and I find which path would be best to fix said problems.”
“I see,” he says thoughtfully, “now, what was the news?”
“Absolutely not,” Osiris says in the present. “That’s ludicrous. The Speaker was the last Speaker and as far as I can tell it stayed that way.”
Saint shrugs, “Was only a suggestion.”
“We both studied under the Speaker. You would have the same chance as… being chosen by the Traveler like that as I do, if not more so. You considered him your father.”
“You forget, Osiris. I was father’s blade and shield. You were his pen.”
“We hardly ever agreed about anything, least of all enough to write something down about it.”
“The mind is a muscle, Osiris! Your words. He made you work it.”
Osiris wrings his hands, worrying his bottom lip between his teeth.
Saint’s facial plates lift, a mock smile, “Is this not what you always wanted? Answers from the Traveler?”
“Not like this… I want something concrete, solid evidence, a conversation. Not some one-sided message steeped in metaphor.”
Saint sighs and shakes his head. “Are you not the one who wrote your prophecies steeped in metaphor?”
“That was different.”
“How?”
“Prophecies are tricky things: they change the future they foretell. When a seer shares their knowledge of a coming event—”
“And how is that any different from the Traveler’s visions?”
Osiris is quiet.
“Osi-”
“If the Traveler thinks I’ll start preaching on its behalf I fear it doesn’t know me.”
Saint sighs, again. He places a heavy hand on Osiris’s chest, “Calm.”
Osiris takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. His skull still pounds with pain, but at least he’s not getting too worked up about it anymore.
“Good,” says Saint as he lifts his hand from his chest.
Osiris instinctively reaches for his withdrawing hand but stops just short. Saint pauses, those piercing eyes watching him, gauging him… Waiting for him.
But when Osiris hesitates, when he lets his hand fall back to his side, he can see the disappointment in them before withdrawing entirely.
He shouldn’t have come back here.
He won’t want to go.
“Thank you, Saint.” He ends up saying.
Saint smiles and nods. “Remember, Osiris. This is just a thought. Do not take it for fact.”
“When have I ever taken something at face value?”
Saint chuckles, low and rich, “Good point.”
Osiris stands then, pulling his headdress under his arm, “I should go speak to Ikora about this. Ask her opinion.”
“Unbelievable, you never listened to anyone before.”
Osiris smiles, “I’ve been making an effort to try.”
“Times truly have changed.”
“They have… I’ll…” He pauses, he finds himself stopped at the gangplank of the Gray Pigeon. (He doesn’t want to go.)
“Go,” Saint says, seeing the hesitation in Osiris’ eyes, “I will always be here, my fiery bird.”
His heart does funny things when Saint calls him that, but he nods and slides his helmet onto his head and walks away.
Osiris blinks and he’s in the city. He looks around, not quite sure what exactly he’s supposed to be looking for.
“There you are, my fiery bird!” He hears from behind, and before he can react he’s being scooped up into Saint’s arms and lifted into the air.
“Saint!” He cries out in surprise.
Saint lets out a boisterous laugh and sets him down, patting a heavy hand on his head.
Saint’s not wearing his armor, and neither is he now that he thinks about it.
“Come, look, my new friend has crafted me something beautiful.” Saint grab’s Osiris’ hand and he feels his heart skip a beat as he follows closely behind.
“Saint, I don’t have time for this, I have to…” Osiris falters. He has to what?
“Nonsense, we have all the time in the world.” When Saint stops he gestures towards an Eliksni, the size of a captain, but lacking the armor.
Osiris blinks, and then he remembers this is unsurprising.
“Saint Four Teen asked me to make this.” They say, and they sound as though they still struggle with earth tongue.
Saint lets go of Osiris’s hand and takes his wrist instead, holding his hand out for him.
The Eliksni drops an object into his hand and he stares at it. It’s a carving of the Young Wolf exchanging the traditional Eliksni display of armistice with an Eliksni Kell.
“In celebration of our union.” The Eliksni says.
“Yes, I intend on giving it to the Young Wolf.”
Osiris falters.
That’s not right. That hasn’t happened yet… Yet? Will it happen?
Osiris notices that there are no more walls surrounding the city. He looks up, eyes focusing on the god in the sky.
He reaches.
Osiris wakes, he feels hot all over.
“Thank the Light, you’re awake.”
Ikora… Oh, that’s right. He was heading to speak to Ikora. But… “What happened?”
Sagira floats into his field of view, “You passed out when we were on our way down to visit Ikora.”
“Passed out?” He feels sluggish, feverish even.
“I’ve scanned you over and over again but I couldn’t find anything wrong,” the optimism falters in Sagira’s voice. It makes him wary.
“Neither could Ophiuchus.” Ikora says. He feels no better under her concerned gaze.
“A vision,” he blurts, “I had a vision. Another one.”
“Vision?”
“We just got back from talking to Saint. He’s been having headaches I can’t fix and weird dreams.” Sagira doesn’t mention what they talked about with Saint. Good, he’d prefer Ikora not to get any ideas of this Speaker nonsense.
“It’s not an issue.”
“Osiris! This is an issue! What if you pass out in the field?”
Sagira doesn’t say anything to the insinuation, and Osiris almost wants to hiss traitor at her for agreeing with Ikora. But he finds himself also agreeing.
He doesn’t like asking for help.
“We’ll have to keep an eye on your condition.”
“My condition,” repeats bitterly.
Ikora shoots him a glare. He relents and rests his head against the pillow his head is laid under.
Sagira floats near his head, cocking to the side. “I don’t wanna be that person but you should probably tell Ikora.”
“Tell me what?”
Osiris sighs. “The visions… I have reason to believe they’re from the Traveler. The evidence isn’t concrete yet but…”
“Many guardians have admitted to receiving visions from the Traveler after Ghaul woke it, myself included. I’m surprised you haven’t had any until now.”
“These are different.”
Ikora regards him, then she folds her hands in her lap, “I’m listening.”
“They’re… they’re… It’s like it’s trying to talk to me. The first few I’ve had I was a bird, I found something to protect, I fought a predator, and then I sacrificed myself.”
Ikora lets him continue.
“Then- then the one I just had now. It… it was different. More concrete, there were no metaphors. It felt like something I could clearly grasp yet just out of reach. Humanity and Eliksni, working together, walls of the city no longer existed. It was… peaceful.”
Ikora furrows her brows, “A prophecy?”
“I don’t think so,” he sighs. “It felt more like… a what if.”
Ikora considers this, then she stands, placing a hand on his shoulder. “You should continue to rest, Osiris. Keep me updated if you have any more. I need to consult with others.”
Osiris grumbles to himself, but nods nonetheless. He’s used to being the one running experiments and monitoring situations, not being the one monitored.
He hears metal shuffling and he glances over to the small table next to the bed. “Sagira.”
His headdress swoops in the air.
He smiles, exasperated, “Sagira…”
“This thing’s so heavy.”
“Then set it back down.”
She swerves in the air, the feathers of his headdress flailing everywhere. “Look at me, I’m the Great Osiris, I prophesied our doom before it came true and now I’m the Traveler’s favorite.”
Osiris rolls his eyes, annoyed but not without a fond smile playing at his lips.
“I’m going to go to Saint like this.”
He reaches out to try and snatch the thing away from her, which she dodges in the air, the helmet slipping down over her eye, “You will do no such thing.”
“Ugh, I’m sick of you constantly dancing around it. Do you know how unbearable it is to watch?”
“You’re exaggerating.”
“ My fiery bord,” Sagira says with her best Saint-14 impression. “You must hold bord very gently, very softly.”
“Stop.”
“Bord in this case is you, by the way.”
“Sagira.”
“I’m gonna send him your poetry.”
“Don’t you dare.”
“What was that one you wrote about the candle and the dark receding? Didn’t you write that after Saint came back?”
Osiris falls quiet. Sagira gasps. “You did! He was the candle, wasn’t he, Osiris?”
“I’m not going to answer that.”
“Oh, I’m definitely sending him that one then.”
Osiris finally grabs the headdress off Sagira and sets it aside. He then proceeds to snatch Sagira out of the air, holding her in his hand, “You will not send that one to him.”
She rolls her eye. “You’re no fun, you know that?”
“So I’ve heard.” He lets go of her and winces when he feels another headache come on. He closes his eyes, the brightness of the room almost too much to bear.
Sagira watches him, then says quietly, “Another?”
He nods, “If this is the Traveler sending me these visions it should be more streamlined. The headaches feel unnecessary at this point.”
“Maybe trying to block it out is only making it worse.”
“I’m not trying to block it out.”
“I don’t know, not like you’ve had a complicated relationship with the Traveler in the past.”
“You’re not helping, Sagira.”
“Sorry,” her Light expands as she takes to washing healing light over him. “Oh… that’s weird.”
Osiris cracks one eye open, “What is it?”
“Hmm,” she says.
“Sagira, what is it?”
“Your Light is… different, somehow. I can’t really explain it.”
“Different how? Bad?”
“No… more like… like there’s two?”
“Two?” Osiris sits up, reaching to the desk and opening its drawers in search of a terminal.
“Wait what are you doing?”
He finds what he’s searching for and pulls it out of its place. “We need to record this. Write everything down.”
“I mean, I could be wrong…”
“Have you ever been wrong about our own Light?”
“Good point.”
Ikora glances from her books when she gets a ping on one of the terminals left haphazardly on the table. She picks it up to look at what the alert is.
>BANNED USER, “THEPHOENIX” ATTEMPTED LOGIN FROM VANGUARD INFIRMARY.
Ikora sighs, “Osiris…”
When Osiris dreams he is an audience of one, watching two people dance together. There is nothing special about the way they dance, nothing notable, just a simple waltz.
The shorter of the two, dressed in white, lets out a frustrated grunt when the music repeats and their steps remain the same.
“What’s wrong?” The other one sings with a pleasant smile. They wear all black.
“I’m tired of this,” says the one in white whose eye is a star.
“This?” Back and forth. One-two one-two.
“The same routine. The same music. How long have we done this now?”
Side to side. “As long as we need.”
“I want something new.”
The one in black grins. Their smile is all knives. “Like what?”
Osiris is startled awake when he feels a gentle prodding in his soul.
“What-” he starts, but cuts himself off when he sees Ikora, her Ghost floating over him as he scans him. Sagira stays in her place near the table.
“That’s weird.” Ophiuchus says.
“For some reason every time I hear that it doesn’t make me feel any better.”
“Sagira was right, it’s like there are two Lights.”
“See! That’s weird!” Sagira says.
Ikora thins her lips, her eyes turning to the terminal in her hand. “How odd…”
“Except it’s more like this second Light is… trying to absorb the first one. Or merging with it, it’s hard to tell the difference.”
Osiris stares, his brows drawn tight. “What?”
Ophiuchus ignores him. “The Speaker never allowed anyone to do deep scans like this, and something like this has never been recorded.”
Osiris sighs resigned to his fate of his questions being ignored. “I had another vision.”
Ikora stops looking at the readings, and finally looks to him. “Osiris… you have to start seriously considering what this means.”
Osiris frowns. “I… don’t want it to be what I think it is.”
Ikora sets the terminal aside, choosing to sit on the side of his bed. “You’re so used to chasing answers about the Traveler that now you’re so close to it you won’t know what to do with yourself.”
Osiris does not respond; instead, he looks pointedly away. He hates when she reads him so easily. It reminds him of when he was still her teacher, when she could place what was on his mind that day to an almost eerie degree.
“This is a good thing, Osiris,” she says.
“How? Every day I wake up and I have a headache from the god in the sky who I’m hardly on good terms with, as well as dreams that border on nightmares half the time.”
“These are uncertain times. People need certainty, and it’s something you can provide. The fact that the Traveler is trying to communicate with you at all proves that it won’t leave when we need it the most.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I don’t,” Ikora admits, “and you don’t know that it will.”
Osiris has seen the Eliksni, he’s seen what came of them when the Traveler left them. He worries what will happen to them should the Traveler leave. Will they become scavengers? Losing all sense of their culture, of their companionship and honor and infinite optimism. Will they desperately cling to their own dying world in hopes it can be revived?
Or will they scatter into the stars, chasing the Traveler for all of time?
He has to consider an alternative to Ikora’s words, that this is not a blessing, but rather a curse in disguise. That this is the Traveler’s manifesto before it runs, to explain why it will run, and why they will tear themselves apart afterwards.
His mind goes back to the vision, to the dance. The same steps, the same routine. Is the routine that the Darkness chases the Light across the stars? Is it that the Traveler will then flee?
He doesn’t know. He woke up before he could know.
Osiris sits up, “Even if the Traveler is sending me these visions I can’t stay here and… preach. I am far more useful out there. We both know this, Ikora.”
Ikora frowns and looks away. He can only imagine what’s going through her head. Either she understands that he’s right, or she’s calling him a stubborn old fool in her head. (Both are correct.) “I agree,” she says, “but, you’re going to stay here for at least a week so we can monitor you better.”
“A week?”
“A week.”
A week is a long time to be gone when so much is happening in their small world. A sharp pain in his head reminds him of why he’s here in the first place.
“Fine,” he concedes.
Ikora nods and stands. “You’re fine to go. Sagira?”
Sagira turns to look at Ikora.
Ikora smiles. “Don’t let him sneak away.”
“Yes ma’am,” Sagira says with a laugh in her voice.
Osiris grumbles to himself.