Chapter Text
Gaze falling into the dark abyss below Phobos, he can feel its tug. The endless midnight, unfurling into infinity. It is worse than nothing. His research suggested that Darkness was nothing but a force of nature. It behaves that way; but this? He realizes he was wrong about the Vex being the more serious of the threats. He would choose Vex convergence over this any day. It is not logical, but the Vex did not bear down upon him like this. This… This crushing Cimmerian shade. He is breathing, but it does not register.
||Run.|| He is being pulled in two directions, he is standing still. The Voice That Is Not His breaks his gaze from the hypnotic dark.
Deft hands pull at circuitry harshly, moving them and refitting them and rewiring them. (The pull of the deep. The flight of sky.)
||Run.||
This need to run is more powerful than the need to fight.
“Sooo,” Sagira’s voice draws him to the present as a beam of light runs over his work in progress, “being back at the Tower’s been nice.”
Osiris responds by grunting, sparks flying around him as he uses solar to solder two metal plates together. Remnants of the Cabal base, given a new and better purpose. (Just as he did so with Vex technology, so too does he with this. He wonders if it comes with being a lightbearer. To take something broken and reforge it.)
“You know, I have a question.”
“Not right now, Sagira.”
“I’m gonna ask anyway.”
He sighs.
“Why did you want to leave the tower this time?”
Osiris pauses and pulls himself out from under his work. He sits up and looks at Sagira’s blinking iris. “What makes you think I was leaving for a reason other than this?”
Sagira moves her shell, her spikes almost diagonal in thought. “Well, it’s just that you kind of have everything going for you right now. A partner, two young Lights that see you as a father, you’ve got the Vanguard’s support. Even the people in the City appreciate your works now.”
“And?”
“You always seem intent on leaving when you have it good,” her voice is soft when she says it, and he can tell there’s concern in her tone.
He doesn’t like it when she gets like this. Worried about him. She shouldn’t have to worry about him, no one should. He can handle his own. He always has. Osiris pushes himself back under, focusing his mind back on his work. He hears Sagira sigh.
“I don’t do it on purpose,” he says after a moment.
“Maybe I should call you out more.'' The amused lilt in Sagira’s voice is back, and though he does not smile, he is relieved to hear it once more.
Arc and solar dance between his fingers, melting away the impurities and raised metal, powering up the amalgamation of human and cabal technology. The scanner flares to life and he pulls himself out from the inside of the mechanism, brushing off his hands after getting to his feet.
Sagira scans it, “Well, it looks like it will work.”
“Of course it will. I built it.”
“We have to work on your humbleness more.”
Data starts pouring in, lines of it rolling past and making it difficult to parse what exactly is being read.
||Run.||
Osiris’s breath hitches as the voice returns.
||Run. Run. Run.||
He wishes the Traveler wasn’t so insistent on sending him its thoughts. His head starts to ache.
||Do you know what you're doing?||
“Of course I do,” he spits out loud.
Sagira turns to look at him.
He heaves a sigh. “The Traveler’s thoughts are hard to separate from my own at times... Let us start our attempt to understand what all of this means.”
She stares at him for a moment longer, before nodding, “Right. Lead the way, O’ Great One .”