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"You realise these don't count as cookies, right?"
Eris' eyes turned towards the Awoken man at the oven. "If they are not, then why do they share the same ingredients as the chocolate chip kind?"
Nyx raised an incredulous brow. "Chocolate chip cookies don't have oatmeal or raisins in them. Comparing them to oatmeal raisin cookies is like..." his hand waved in the air as if sifting through it for the right words, "comparing a hot dog to a hamburger."
"Are they not both made of meat and served on buns?" Eris posed, tilting her head.
Why did she always have a good argument? "I mean...yeah," Nyx sighed, "but entirely different kinds of meat." The oven dinged, diverting Nyx's attention momentarily. With an overly festive oven mitt, he pulled down the door and took hold of the tray within. He wore a grimace as he looked over the neat rows of lumpy, bumpy, raisin spotted abominations before bringing the tray to a rest on the oven's surface. "See? Come look at this. Come look at the misshapen, sugarless terror we're about to unleash on the world. I mean we're just helping Savathûn at this point."
"Are we not doing that already by being here instead of the front lines?"
Nyx looked to his right to find that Eris was no longer seated at the dining room table, but positioned like a statue at his side. Once a Hunter, he thought, always a Hunter. Her posture was as stiff as her words; their light banter was now over, Nyx knew. His eyes searched hers as much as they could with the three glowing orbs still concealed behind their wrapping. There was a time when Nyx would have said they were hard to read, but that was centuries ago. A cocktail of frustration and worry (or perhaps paranoia) pulsated behind her Hive sight. He could relate, but...
"Maybe," he said with a small shrug. "But I'll be damned if I let Savathûn or Psion assassins or even Hive worm gods make me stop living. I mean...Crota, Oryx, Ghaul, Eramis, Taniks like three times, Xol. Decent track record of stopping the big bads' plans in their tracks, wouldn't you say?"
"Your glibness and overconfidence will be the death of you, Nyx Vel."
"Not if these Oatmeal Raisin cookies get to me first. You see that? That one's moving."
"If Savathûn is allowed to see her machinations through to fruition, Nyx, cookies will be the least of your concerns. Of all our concerns." Her ever present companion hovered just inches above her palm as she stepped away from the Awoken man, drawing closer to the window. She cast a long, lingering stare at the cityscape that rolled out around them from Nyx's apartment. "The City may be allowed to sleep, Nyx. The people may have the luxury of taking time to celebrate Dawnings and Solstices and Festivals of the Lost. But the Hive will not rest. Nor will Savathûn. They will plot and scheme and grow evermore in power until nothing is left of humanity, save the bones of countless dead. A mausoleum upon which they will celebrate."
Silence hung in the air now. It would take only a few steps to reach her in his small apartment, but Eris was already millions of miles away. She was back on the moon amongst the lingering spectres of painful memories or deep in the snows of Europa, learning to weave the Darkness as easily as she once did the Light. This wasn't an unfamiliar conversation to either of them. Anytime Nyx suggested they try and take a weekend or a day or even an afternoon off to just breathe, Eris would would only ever agree begrudgingly. He had hoped she would eventually warm up to the idea and see its merits, but the tension in her was almost tangible every time. Even now, she was a string pulled too taut and frayed too thin while the weight of inaction ate away at her. Nyx could surmise why; he knew the former Hunter well enough for her silence to speak to him as if it were loud and articulate. He understood, in all honesty. He may not have lost his whole fireteam as she had, but he had lost his best friend and field partner. It was only a few years ago, but Nyx could still remember--still feel that scornful rage that burned in his veins. He didn't eat or sleep or rest until he kept his word to Prince Uldren Sov and gave him a new hole to breathe out of. What Eris must still feel, even with Crota long dead, while the Hive and their gods still draw breath...
He looked at Eris for a long moment, his hip balanced on the edge of the kitchen counter. She hadn't moved since she stepped away. Not to return to her seat at the table, preparing Dawning gift boxes, nor to the door to leave. They both felt the pull in two directions. The desire to fulfill the other's needs and the pressing need to fulfill their own.
Nyx pulled the sparkling Dawning mitt from his hand and let it come to a fall next to the tray of camouflaged cookies. His hands busied themselves with clicking off switches and turning dials until the oven powered down. The sound drew Eris from her quiet introspection. Her pale, full lips parted, momentarily at a loss. "Nyx...I am sorry that--" she began, turning to face the Awoken Hunter across the room. For a moment, Nyx thought she might have prepared more to say--but as her tensed shoulders laxed, he knew the words died in her chest. “It is as I have said...as we both have said. Savathûn. The Darkness. The Hive. It is a war that must be fought in its entirety before we can ever hope for a moment of peace.”
“I know,” said Nyx, softly and with a nod.
“You and I, we,” she paused, considering, “We are long lived beings. The pace of mortality need not apply to us. When the time comes that the war is finally over...perhaps then…”
Though her words were kind, they both knew that there would never be an end to these conflicts. So long as the Traveller existed, there would always be another battle to be fought. It was wishful thinking that they would both make it to that finish line someday. Though Eris was no less powerful now than she was with her Light, her next death would be her last. And Nyx? Well. As Cayde once put it, it was only a matter of time until he tried to kill a god he didn’t have a big enough gun for.
Even still. Even knowing that what had grown between them over the course of centuries would only ever be a dream to keep them going? He loved her. And wouldn’t stop. Even if it was only this.
“You don’t owe me an explanation, Eris,” Nyx said with a slow shake of his head. “Much as I’d like to drum up some graphs and pie charts on why taking time to breathe is important--I know our work is more important.”
Another wouldn’t have noticed the ghost of a smile that crossed her lips. The hidden curls at the corners of them. The relief of being understood.
With that, armour materialised over Nyx’s limbs, encasing him (and his sweater with a rather humorous, knitted recreation of Zavala surrounded by sparkling lights) in black plating and sturdy leathers. As his short cloak fell behind his back, he reached to transmat his helmet over his features, but found himself interrupted by “-A moment, Nyx.”
He paused, letting his hands fall away from his jawline. She must’ve noted the confusion on his face as she wasted no time in continuing. “Perhaps...there is time for us to share,” she took hesitant steps across the tiles of the kitchen towards where the Hunter stood opposite her. “Just one.”
Nyx arched a brow and looked down at the tray of oatmeal raisin pucks of disappointment before offering her a smirk. “Oh that’s...yeah no, I’m good, you can have a whole one to yourself.”
Eris drew closer, her footsteps stopping only once her toes nearly met Nyx’s. Heat bloomed in his chest and rushed up his neck at the proximity while his brain spun like a particularly clumsy hamster on a wheel trying to piece together what was happening. Her free hand gently took hold of the side of his chest plate, as if using it as a support while she stood up on the toes of her boots. “I was not talking about the cookies.”
His dimly glowing amber eyes fixed on hers as she drew up to him--they narrowed as hers closed and widened in realisation as her cool lips met his own. For just a moment, he imagined that distant future where they could just exist in each other's company. That unobtainable dream. He wrapped his arms around her and returned the kiss in equal measure, hoping it wouldn't be their last.