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The cafeteria is where she first sees him. Techeuns and Corsairs have gone the way of Eliksni or Cabal – no longer rare enough they get gawked at for just existing; at this point it’s just another Tuesday. Truthfully, she wouldn’t have even noticed if Kal hadn’t whistled low under his breath, jerking his chin at the tall man holding a long rifle tailing the procession. Broad shoulders, long hair tied back out of his face, strong jaw, sharp nose— that fit a fair number of the Awoken puttering around the Tower, but the sniper rifle, the uniform—
Amanda pumps coins into the vending machine and keeps half an eye on him until the group touring turns a corner and he’s gone. “They make ‘em any taller and we’re going to have to doubletime it on the door retrofit.”
The Tower staff is partway through the retrofit on doors at the bottom to begin with, the Cabal too massive to get through the dinky ones on the first floor, barely fitting inside the normal elevators. It’s the kind of change that’s good, though, the kind of work that’s necessary, making people feel like somewhere is home. It’s worth doing, even if it feels like it takes forever.
Soda in hand, Amanda waves goodbye to the Guardian who’d whistled and heads back into the Hangar.
She’s elbows deep in the guts of a sparrow when she notices him again, their little tour coming through the hangar. The tour guide gives the normal introduction and she thinks she waves at the right point, but the man is staring at her now, face unreadable. It’s not— she wouldn’t call it a bad stare, but it’s pretty damn close to the one she’s giving him.
Recognition, but not animosity.
Some part of her wonders what he knows about her – as far as she knows, nothing to do with the Tower would draw his attention like that. No, it’s probably Crow, and that means there are precious few options for who this is. It was one thing to know there was a chance they would someday interact – the universe isn’t that big, but it was something else entirely to have Jolyon Till a few yards away, looking at her like he knows her.
Nothing to do but wait it out, so when the party leaves, Amanda counts down the minutes until she sees him coming down the stairs. It’s less all of him and more the material of his boots as they pause a few feet away from the tip of her nose where she’s buried underneath a sparrow, laying on a rolling cart. Amanda cranes her neck just a touch to peek up a little further, confirming the boots, the smooth, sleek lines of his outfit.
“Just a sec,” she calls from underneath and watches his boots move as he presumably starts inspecting the sparrow a little more closely from above. With a nudge of her foot, she sends herself out the end opposite and hefts herself up with a grunt, looking up, up. With all these tall people around she’s used to it, craning her neck up to look at Zavala or Saint, or hell, Mithrax. Crow never mentioned you were so tall. “Hiya. Where do they let y’all loose after the tour these days?”
Jolyon doesn’t seem to anticipate that question out of all of the possible options, pausing a moment before answering. “The opposite end of the Tower.”
Hell, even his voice is nice. Amanda wipes her hand down the best she can with one of the rags stuffed in a loop of her belt, and then shoves her mostly clean hand out at him to shake. Tower bazaar is as good a place as any – Ikora’s close enough she can keep an ear on newcomers in the bazaar.
Part of her wants to lead into the normal line of conversation she leans on when someone visits – did you find your way here alright, buncha twists and turns there, Tower’s a maze, yep– but it seems like Jolyon made his way straight here without any issues. Jolyon’s hand curves around hers carefully; it’s a firm handshake but not a testing one, the way some guys try to push hard to see what it’ll take to get a reaction.
What’s the best subject to start with when you’re pretty sure you’re face to face with your not-boyfriend’s not-ex-boyfriend?
“Are you hungry?” Amanda asks, beaming up at him with all the relentless cheer she can muster. Food’s the universal friend maker, and she would really, really like to be friends. “I could do some lunch. Tower Bazaar’s got some good options, but go two streets down outside the Tower and there’s even more.”
There’s an art to talking to people — she’s not good at extremely political talk, at subterfuge, but being disarming? Ruthlessly charming? She can do that all day. Jolyon seems to shake himself out a bit, like a bird with his feathers ruffled. “I– sure. I haven’t eaten yet.”
Amanda nods decisively, dipping her hands into the open jar of the thick paste-like grit to remove any lingering oil. She heads over to the tiny sink rigged up to the Tower’s pipes to rinse them off, splashing her face with cool water a few times. Jolyon keeps a careful eye on their surroundings – does the same thing Crow and most of the other Guardians do, scanning the room, marking entry and exit points, back to a wall the whole time. Hypervigilance isn’t limited to just the Guardians these days.
Mostly freshened up, Amanda scrounges around on her desk for her wallet and then snags it and a spare knife from the table to shove into her belt. Her chin jerks to the exit out of the hangar. “Let’s mosey.”
The conversation is easier than she expects; Jolyon isn’t standoffish, nor is he hard to talk to. From what Crow’d mentioned, Jolyon was the guy Uldren was off with the most often, adventuring together, back when Uldren was Uldren. Halfway through lunch, Jolyon shifts back in his seat — no more royal guard perfect posture. He leans back, stretches a leg out, looks casual. He doesn’t bring up Uldren, or Queen Mara, or even Crow, and Amanda gives him that grace for the time being; she might not know everything, but the bits she does know mean she’s not exactly eager to bring up sore subjects to rub his nose in them.
They talk about the Tower, about current events, and then shift to the projects she’s working on. Jolyon, she discovers, is like her. Likes to tinker, get his hands dirty tearing something down and then building it back together again into something bigger, brighter, better.
It’s only once she’s dropped him back off at the building where most of the Awoken are staying during temporary visits that she realizes they’d never really introduced themselves.
The turning point – where instead of an idle appearance every few days, Jolyon became a semi-permanent fixture in the Hangar – happens a little after three weeks of visits.
Jolyon slinks into the Hangar sporting a black eye and a purpled split lip and the sight is so startling after weeks of fresh-faced Guardians Amanda nearly drops the wrench in hand. He’s not a Guardian – doesn’t get to take the easy route of a Ghost and a rezzed healing. The Awoken have all kinds of fancy things to heal, but instead of going to where they’re set up in the Tower, he’d– come here.
Amanda takes him off to the kitchen, grabs two bags of frozen corn, and pries the story (mostly unremarkable; he’d ducked out of one spot of danger only to catch a fist with his face) out over the next few hours while he ices his face. When he leaves that night, it’s with quiet thanks and a promise that he’ll repay her in the morning, waving off her protests that it wasn't even her corn she’d stolen as an ice pack.
The next morning, Jolyon is there again, face back to near-perfect with only the slightest shadow where a bruise had been, asking if there’s anything he can help with.
The Queen has Jolyon stationed at the Tower as the best midway point for what she needs from him for the foreseeable future, but there’s nothing to fight and less to do when you’re on a visitor’s pass which means the first few times he wanders by after he does whatever he does all day, she puts him to work helping her fix up an old ship, citing Niik stealing her footstool for her projects and Jolyon’s convenient height.
They spend nights together over weeks, crafting and splicing Eliksni and Cabal and Awoken tech together, fighting with the complexities of mixingall that technology together. Niik joins them sometimes, the three of them crouched over an unruly weapon system or ship long into the middle of the night just for the simple joy of making things.
It’s weird – not bad weird, just, weird weird, having someone else in her space like this; she’s had helpers in the Hangar before, mostly training other folks up to get them set on the basics of the ships they work on. And they do that, sure, working on the jobs that come through the queue, the work faster with two sets of hands, but it’s the off-the-books projects they work on that she likes best.
They fix up a Guardian’s ship, affectionately nicknamed The Spear, and move on to inventorying three surprise shipments of supplies from the Drifter, which takes another week. Amanda makes it a third job to introduce Jolyon to every type of food the City has to offer, since the Awoken aren’t allowed to take any sort of payments.
Jolyon hasn’t, so far, brought up Crow at all and Amanda’s had enough time with skittish soldiers to know not to push. Crow isn’t due back for another month minimum and she’d put money down on the idea that there’s a little calendar in the back of Jolyon’s mind counting down, same as hers. She’s no sniper, but she can be patient.
The other Hangar frequenters seem to get used to him as an intermittent fixture; Niik and Jolyon get along, Osiris doing well enough that Saint is back hosting Trials, giving Jolyon a wave when he’s recognized. Eventually, there are more nights than not where Jolyon is not just at the Tower, but actively lingering in Hangar.
Once, the Queen sends him on a mission and Jolyon returns with a box filled to the brim with supplies: Eliksni, Awoken, Cabal, settling it down on the new table she’d dragged in last week for him to start using rather than staying relegated to the corner of her desk.
“Whatcha got?” Amanda asks around the metal wire clenched between her teeth, murmuring thanks when he settles it down and comes to adjust the lamp so she can see the bit she’s soldering a little better. Eliksni with their four hands – she envies them, they don’t ever have to fight with a light source like this. Once the metal melts into place, she tugs the goggles off and digs through the box, eyes wide. It’s pre-inventoried, tagged with all the information she needs. “Jol, I could kiss you. Didn’t they tell you Dawning ain’t til later this year?”
Jolyon doesn’t smile easily – not a full thing, a flash of teeth, a big laugh – but she’s rewarded with a little tug at the corner of his lips as he fishes a capacitor out of the stack and plunks it down onto the desk for her. “I got the feeling the Guardian wouldn’t care to wait on their ship another ten months.”
“Yeah, you’d think Guardians’d be a little more patient with all that time they have, huh?” Amanda shakes her head, already starting to run an inventory of the items on the tablet, allotting them to the various projects she’s got. “How long do I gotcha for?”
Jolyon settles Supremacy in the little corner of the hangar she’s set aside for him and settles his jacket there too, rolling his sleeves up with precise little movements of his fingers until his forearms are bare. “The rest of the week, maybe through the end of the month.”
The unsaid part: he’s going to leave when Crow comes back. Amanda had suspected, but it’s still unclear if this is something that he wants to do or something he’s being ordered to do.
Just the faintest insinuation of a date is the closest they’ve come to talking about Crow in ages, and Amanda chews the inside of her cheek, weighing plans of attack. People are a little like machines, sometimes — learn enough about all the tricky parts of them, and you get a pretty good idea how to loosen that too-tight wire.
“Well. We’re gonna wrap up the rest of these by the end of the week, so if you’re still around I figure I can show you the project I’ve been working on.”
Like he recognizes it for the bait it is and doesn’t care, she’s rewarded with another half-smile. Jolyon’s eyes skim the scattered messes throughout the hangar as he tries to assess what project she’s talking about. He won’t find it unless he goes digging; it’s tucked away under a tarp, half-finished while she waits for parts to come in. “A ship?”
“Sparrow.” Amanda busies herself organizing an already-organized tray of tools and continues with a calculatedly light tone. “For Crow.”
Jolyon — he doesn’t quite flinch, but he does that preternatural stillness thing the Awoken do, then seems to force himself to go back to the task of unloading and filing all the parts and pieces he’d brought. “He doesn’t have one?”
“Oh, he does. Guardians wind up with oodles of ‘em. I wanted a project, and Crow got me thinking. Just, something we’ve been talking about is those smoke bombs hunters have?” Truthfully, Amanda’s not certain just how much Jolyon’s interacted with other Guardians, how much he knows about the different classes and abilities. He nods, delicately hefting an engine out of one of the shelves. “Makes you invisible for a bit. So I thought, well, you get the right kinda diffuser on a sparrow, wire it through the chassis—”
Jolyon’s too-steady gaze is fixed on her, engine forgotten. “You would have to compensate for movement speed, wind, rain—”
“Mhm, and then, the riders— not much good if your sparrow’s invisible but you’re on top like a sore thumb. It’s gonna take a while, but I could use another set of eyes on it.” Amanda beams up at him. “So, you wanna take a look?”
The right tools, applied in the right places, just the right amount of force.
Jolyon seems to settle into himself a little more, the last of the box unloaded. He hefts it up once empty, goes to settle it with the rest of the emptied boxes. Some of the other folks in the Hangar never remember to put their old crates back, but Jolyon always does, scooping up Supremacy along the way. “I’ll bring dinner.”
Unbearably pleased, Amanda gives him a lazy salute and turns back to her project. Only once he’s gone does she realize she didn’t give him a dinner order. She could send him comms, but now she’s kind of curious exactly what he’s going to bring.
Jolyon shows up predictably, promptly at the end of her shift. He puts his gear back in place, settles two heaping takeout bags onto his table for her. A glance shows it’s her favorite place outside the Tower – they’ve only been there once but she orders from there every Tuesday to make up for the utter insanity that comes with the influx of Guardians checking in from their duties with busted gear. He’d asked her about it once, weeks back, and now– he remembered. Even got the extra sauce for her noodles.
It feels important, all of this feels important, but if she calls attention to it she’s half worried that Jolyon’s going to spook like a startled bird, the same way she worried Crow would and then had.
“Let the noodles sit for a bit so they aren’t as crunchy and I’ll show you the Sparrow.” Amanda snags the top box off the stack and pops it open on her way over, kebabs steaming up the goggles hooked around her neck.
Box in one hand, Amanda whips the tarp off with a flourish and watches Jolyon circle it, the food forgotten. It’s rough, boxy metal welded together that she’ll need to detail once she’s finished working on the guts of her. She’d shamelessly stolen inspiration from Radiant Accipiter, Hawkmoon, and the outfit Eva’s designed from him, even if it was hard to see at this stage. Feathers are etched lightly into the folded wings that make up the outer chassis, the whole thing giving the mechanical impression of a very large eagle, or hawk.
“She’s bigger’n most of the other sparrows which means she’s slower, caps out at about 140. Remember that Cabal engine I requisitioned couple’ve weeks ago?” Amanda finishes off one kebab and holds out the next for Jolyon while he’s crouched peering at the engine. To her delight, he takes it, distracted, and then seems surprised when he’s not holding a tool but food instead. “Whatever I use to diffuse those smoke bombs is gonna be a helluva energy sink and I’m compensating for additional weight from a couple Titans, maybe one of the Cabal.”
Amanda crouches next to him and Jolyon takes a considering bite of the kebab. “A rescue sparrow. With invisibility.”
“Mhm,” Amanda uses the stick to point and nearly loses a chunk of meat off the tip. “Focusing that much Light that fast is possible if you’ve got the right gear, which makes her a little limiting if you wanna use her optimally, but Crow’s got this chest piece with a buncha eyes on it. With Glint, it’s a pretty easy switch to pull ‘em all out.”
When Cayde died, Zavala seemed the least moved by it. Pissed Ikora off to no end, but Amanda got it. Zavala put the Titan face on around people who needed it, but any time anyone mentioned Cayde, shared a story about him, he drank it up like a man parched in the desert who finally got some water. Jolyon looks the same way any time she talks about Crow, now that they’ve finally turned that corner.
“Do you mind if I open her up?” Jolyon asks. Gestures with his big, pretty hands all casual-like, and Amanda swallows against a suddenly dry mouth. “I’ll be careful.”
Thing is, he will. Amanda knows that, it’s just when she’d suggested this she hadn’t considered the idea of sitting here eating takeout while Crow’s sort of ex-boyfriend-slash-knight rolled up his sleeves and dug around in the guts of her pet project. There were so many worse ways to spend a night.
Crow needs to get back here, yesterday.
“Be my guest.” Amanda rises up gingerly and heads to her stool, wheeling over to start digging into her noodles. If it’s dinner and a show, she’s committing. “If you’re real careful I’ll let you see my paint chips.”
Jolyon smiles at her. A whole smile, flashing his pearly whites and everything. Amanda abruptly understands exactly what Crow meant when he’d called Jolyon ‘aggressively handsome’ when he smiled. “If I help figure out the invisibility, do I get to help name her?”
Amanda laughs, bright and echoing in the near-empty hangar, digging through her desk until she comes up with the datapad she’s looking for, wheeling over to him. Naming things is the worst part, especially when something isn’t finished. On the datapad are a list of words, features, potential names and synonyms jotted down while she was working. “I think I can be convinced into that.”
The garage is already too quiet with Saint gone again; Amanda hears Osiris is doing better but still bedridden, which means Saint’s still at home more often than not. Jolyon still comes by between intermittent missions for the Queen. They have a thread of contact when he travels – nothing that could get them in trouble if the Vanguard or the Awoken were to dig into their chat logs, but a thread of connection she hadn’t expected.
More than state secrets, it’s just a word game trying to sort out the name of the Sparrow they were working on.
22:30 >> obscured
Veiled << 22:31
04:18 >> shrouded
We agreed ‘cool and mysterious’ not
depressing. Safekeeping << 04:20
04:20 >> Safeguard.
04:20 >> This one?
[ img attached]
That’s the one. Lemme know
how much, i’ll fill the req out for
reimbursement << 04:21
Safeguard isn’t bad << 04:21
Three days before Crow’s due to return home, Amanda convinces Jolyon out for drinks with relatively minimal fuss, enabled when he makes the mistake of pointing out that while he’s in the Tower, he’s generally not on a shift and can spend his free time as he likes. Amanda takes the opening and bulldozes through it, because she loves this city, loves the people in it, and any chance she gets to show it off, she’s going to.
There’s a bar all the pilots and staff tend to frequent, partially because it’s close to the Tower and partially because it’s also run by a mix of people – Eliksni, Cabal, humans, even a few Awoken have shifts there, a sort of dedicated neutral zone for everyone after work. She wouldn’t ever claim all the bars in the city are safe like this, but this one is and it was one of the first she took Crow to.
They settle into a corner at the bar and Amanda bites back the desire to point out this is the same spot that Crow picks when they come here. Sightlines on all the entrances, a quick turn down the hall and an exit out the back if they need to. Jolyon folds himself into the corner once they have their drinks and Amanda gives him a crooked little smile, twirling the umbrella hung over the rim.
Like Crow, Jolyon takes a little loosening up to talk sometimes. This late at night, grease and grit still under their fingernails, Jolyon’s a little less uptight and sinks into the chair across from her, their legs knocking together gently, friendly.
Still – Amanda doesn’t push too hard too fast. Crow’s not a no-go subject, but there’s a little delicacy required when bringing him up. Near the end of the night, when they’re both three glasses down and have given up the pretense of staying a business casual amount of space apart, Jolyon has an arm around the back of the bench and Amanda’s slouched into his side as the bar filled up with each passing hour. A bench meant for four has six, everyone squished in, friendly. An Eliksni, her two bottom arms docked but growing back, sits crammed in next to her, clicking excitedly at whatever the Cabal across from her says.
“So,” Amanda tilts her head up and up and up to look at him; Jolyon gives her another one of those little half-smiles, tearing his attention away from the very engrossing game a few tables across where Amanda’s pretty sure the Guardian is swindling a group at cards. “Feels like we oughta talk about the elephant in the room.”
Jolyon’s eyebrows raise and he absolutely deserves the elbow in his side for it.
“Shut up, you know what I mean and it ain’t the Cabal. Crow’s due back in the next few days, and he’s – Jol, you gotta know he’s going to want to see you.”
“I don’t have to know that,” Jolyon keeps his voice down even with the low roar of their surroundings, enough she has to lean into him a little to make sure she hears it. “He’s not Uldren. Everyone has made it clear he’s not Uldren.”
Truthfully, she’s not sure who everyone is, or what he’s been asking other people about regarding Crow, nor is she sure exactly what kind of information he would have gotten from them.
Amanda’s agreement is slower, more considering. It’s not like this is a state secret or some sort of terribly hidden knowledge. She wishes she could ask Crow what he wants Jolyon to know, but he’s not here; hasn’t answered any of her messages for the last few weeks. “No, he’s not. But the– Savathun, you know what she did to him, right?”
Not to him; he had asked. He wanted it, desperate to get some sort of understanding about the hatred so many of the Guardians had for him. She couldn’t blame him for wanting to know, even if it was an awful sort of thing.
“I’m aware he disobeyed his Queen and spoke to the witch.” Jolyon tips his dregs of his beer back and forth and watches the bubbles spill upward. “She gave him memories back, but the Queen isn’t certain how many of the memories are true.”
Oh, hell, she hadn’t even considered what would happen if Savathun had given him back his memories, but given him false ones. It hadn’t even been a consideration – the base memories were likely bad enough, were bad enough, from the way Crow had gone distant and withdrawn, leaving the Tower as soon as possible.
“I… I get the feeling she didn’t need to give him fake ones to accomplish what she wanted,” Amanda hedges gently. “I think everything she gave him back about you was… well, it didn’t seem too off to me.”
Joylon looks down at her steadily, eyes a dim glow against the dingy dive bar lighting. “He talked about me.”
It’s not a question, it’s confirmation – they’ve both mostly put together that they knew about each other, Jolyon from the information received from Petra and the Queen and whatever connections he had, Amanda through Crow and the Vanguard. She hasn’t outright stated that they’d discussed Jolyon, specifically, until now.
“Bits and pieces. I think – for a while, I think he was afraid you must’ve been dead. He looked for your name in the transit logs every time we got more Awoken visiting the City, but only found out you were still alive after Savathun– well.” Amanda smooths condensation away from her glass with a thumb in small circles. “I… Listen, I don’t wanna push on something you don’t wanna talk about, but I think he’d like it, if you came and talked to him. Friendly, familiar faces and all that.”
Jolyon’s a long line of tension against her side, the rest of the room forgotten as she waits for him to decide on what he’s going to say, half-afraid she’s pushed too much and he’s going to excuse himself.
“Queen Mara ordered that we– that I stay away from him,” Jolyon says finally. “This was before he got any memories back. She should’ve known he’d…”
That last bit muttered under his breath isn’t for her and Amanda busies herself with taking a long, fortifying drink even if it’s mostly melted ice water at this point. “I get it– and, I mean, I might be wrong here, but I got the impression that Uldren and you were thick as thieves, back in the day.”
The elegant line of Jolyon’s throat works in a long, fierce swallow. “You could say that.”
Amanda shifts against him, shoulder braced under his armpit, nudging him gently. “And I also get the feeling you two cared about each other. Crow sure thought so.”
Jolyon’s eyes close. “We had other obligations that would always come first. I understood.”
“‘Course,” Amanda agrees, flagging down the waiter for another set of drinks. “But Crow’s not a prince anymore, technically. He’s a Guardian. I’m not… Listen, I’m not saying you need to do anything, I’m just saying that maybe he’d like it if you did. Maybe you’d like it if you did. I think he’s got a lot rattling around up in his mind, and someone he cares about, might be–”
Jolyon’s smile is a crooked, awful thing, no humor to it. “I got the impression that you and Crow were–” He pauses. Grimaces at himself. “Involved.”
Hellvua thing to say while they’re crammed into the same space, his arm practically around her. She doesn’t think he’s an idiot, but damned if he’s not dumb in the same way Crow can be sometimes. It’s not her best imitation, but she thinks she pulls off Jolyon’s terribly serious tone and cadence. “We’ve had other obligations that came first. I understood.”
She’s rewarded by Jolyon’s quicksilver smile, a real thing, and dares to push into his space so it’s less smashed together by necessity and more her making room against him as a new set of drinks come and their mostly empty glasses are traded out. “I’m not gonna beat a dead horse, I just thought I should say it out loud, in case you were gonna get in your head about it.”
Jolyon’s hand comes down and settles briefly on her arm and squeezes. She doesn’t think she’s imagining the long, lingering brush of his thumb before he removes it when they have a visitor at their table. One of the Eliksni playing the card game comes back from the bar and passes their table. He’s one that both of them recognize and, when he invites them to play the game with their group, Amanda and Jolyon agree at the same time.
One problem solved and another one pops up, like clockwork.
Crow doesn’t come back. A day of waiting has her antsy, but it’s not altogether unexpected– between another group of Guardians going missing chasing Savathûn, Osiris still ill, Zavala occupied with the alliance and Caiatl— they have a lot going on, is all. After a week she checks in with Ikora who is similarly concerned, but again, there’s a lot going on.
Guardians being late for check-ins isn’t always a reason for concern, especially when they have two more full fireteams of Guardians confirmed missing; she hears whispers that the Corsair have lost numbers, then Jolyon confirms it. They don’t have Guardians to spare going out there, and sending multiple Guardians to go find Crow is also not Ikora’s favorite idea.
“Ikora, send me,” Amanda says before she can talk herself out of it. “I gotta ship. You said it yourself – you can’t spare any more Guardians, but Niik and everyone else have the Hangar if I’m gone for a few weeks. Besides, you said one of the Queen’s Corsairs went missing on Europa?”
Ikora can’t have missed what’s been going on; she doesn’t miss anything and Jolyon hanging out in the Hangar hasn’t been particularly subtle. Part of Amanda is curious if Ikora’d actually say anything, but then she’s never really made a point of her connection to either Crow or Jolyon until now. “I did.”
“I know someone I can ask to come with me. Two birds with one stone.” Ikora gives her a look that makes her feel like she’s a kid again, knowing, and then nods. “If he can’t, I promise I’ll scout and report back.”
Zavala isn’t exceptionally happy about the situation, but they aren’t willing to leave Crow alone if he’s in trouble, and they have limited options. When she broaches the subject to Jolyon, his jaw tenses, but he doesn’t look surprised.
“I just gotta pack, and I’m cleared for leaving by Friday.” Amanda’s smile goes a little rueful, scrubbing a hand through her hair. “Being a Guardian just means you get into more trouble than whoever you were before did, I think.”
“That is a nightmare to consider.” Jolyon raises his eyes to the ceiling and exhales. “I’ll go talk to the Queen.”
Minutes before she’s due to leave, halfway through her pre-flight checks there’s a knock at the hull door. Amanda flicks a switch and spins in the captain’s seat as Jolyon’s head peeks through and then the rest of him follows, bending down enough to fit, a hand curved over Supremacy to keep it from smacking the doorjamb. The hull door closes behind him with a hiss and he straightens once he’s through the smaller entryway, Supremacy slung over his shoulder and a go-bag packed to the brim.
“Cuttin’ it close, huh?” Amanda teases, unbearably pleased.
“It was a long discussion.” Jolyon settles his bag into the spot she indicates for storage, and slings his gun into her weapon rack by the door. He doesn’t need coaxing to take the copilot’s seat the way Crow had at the start, settling himself down into it gracefully.
Jolyon is quiet through the entirety of the pre-flight check. His eyes scan the ships on either side of her, and then the tight space that she’s going to have to navigate to get out; she watches him mark it but he doesn’t say anything else.
“Well, I kept the seat warm for you.” It’s easy, threading the needle between the two ships, hands just as at home around the throttle to her ship as they are on all her tools. If she takes the turns a little tight ducking out of Tower airspace just for the rush, Jolyon doesn’t call her on that either. “Lemme get us outta atmo and I’ll give you the tour.”
The ship she uses for long distances is one of the older models – she’s retrofitted and upgraded most of it but the skeleton of her is all solid old bones. “Bathroom, storage, and shower are all in there. Comms wired throughout, though I turn ‘em on lights only except for emergencies when someone’s sleeping. Galley’s over here, she’s stocked for about two weeks of fresh and another month of rations.”
Jolyon marks all the places she points out with the same attention he’d given her garage space. The trip, just like working together, is remarkably easy. It’s not a terribly long flight which means they alternate use of the bed between checking autopilot. Crow’s things are scattered back there, throughout the rest of the ship. Jolyon never asks about them, but she catches him thumbing over the little sling built above the bed for Glint thoughtfully one night when he’s winding down for his rest.
They play the word association game during periods of downtime. Jolyon, like Amanda, had an entire compartment of his go bag dedicated to bringing everything he needed to work on one of his projects. His is a hand cannon, Reef purple, trimmed in teal, heavier than she expects when she hefts it and tests the grip. Her own is a shield – trying to retrofit the shield generator used on Guardians’ armor with the Cabal tech Empress Caiatl sent over. Something portable Guardians could take with them, the way Phalanxes did.
Maybe they’ll get a chance to use it this trip. When she says that, Jolyon gives her the most long-suffering look in the world and asks if Crow told her anything about their luck in the past.
Europa is the coldest place Amanda has ever been, and there are some miserably cold places on Earth. This is something else entirely, a cold so deep it feels like it settles into her bones, makes her prosthetic ache like a sonuvabitch.
The snowstorm blocks out most of the communications and without Ghosts, they’re limited on how much time they can spend wandering outside without freezing to death. They pick intermittent spots to land, duck outside briefly to try and get a lock on Glint’s signal, rinsing and repeating for the better part of a day before she gets something.
“Jolyon!“ Amanda shouts over the scream of the wind and snow, gesturing to the cave mouth a few meters away. Jolyon starts the arduous process of kicking through the snow to make a path she can follow through until they are down into the depths of the cave where another abandoned Braytech facility lies. Between the two of them, they make short work of the Eliksni on the way down, Amanda frowning at the steady beeping blip on her radar. “It says he’s somewhere in—”
There’s a flicker of sparks near a hallway and a familiar Ghost recompiles into the space across from them. “Glint?”
“Amanda!” Glint doesn’t hesitate – the whumph of him hitting her puffy winter jacket knocks her back, stumbling until she knocks into Jolyon who steadies her with both hands on her arms. “I wasn’t sure anyone would receive the distress call this far down–”
“Hey, hey, s’alright, it’s good to see you,” Amanda soothes, both of her hands coming up to hold Glint against her chest, as close to a hug as she can get. If she weren’t relatively certain she’d lose most of the skin on her face, she’d press a kiss to his shell in relief. “Y’all missed check-in and we’ve– well, there’s a lot going on topside, so we thought we’d bring the check-in to you.”
Glint finally tugs himself back, shell spinning as he scans over Jolyon and his iris widens at the lack of a Ghost with him. “You didn’t bring a Guardian?”Then, before she can respond, “Hello! It’s a pleasure to meet you, I’m Glint. Are you one of the Queen’s friends? Or Ms. Petra?”
Jolyon gets that face some folks get when confronted with approximately four hundred pounds of ruthless enthusiasm in an eight ounce space. “I– sort of. I’m Jolyon.”
Glint waves a tiny fin at him and then spins, hovering in front of Amanda’s face. “Can we go get Crow, now?”
“Yeah, we can go get Crow. I’m sorry it took us so long to get here.” They make their way through the frozen corridors, twisting and turning until Glint leads them to a hallway with a closet at the end. There are ancient boxes stacked there, along with a lump of cloth, frost creeping over all of it. On the walls leading into the hallway there are scorch marks, bullet holes.
Having an idea what she’s going to find isn’t the same thing as coming upon it. Glint activates his little light and the pile of cloth resolves itself into a crumpled shape, broken arms and legs, a puddle of frozen blood underneath. “I didn’t… I didn’t want to risk it unless it was someone we knew, but it’s so cold, I couldn’t move him out of this area and the Light’s too thin this far down for–”
“Glint, it’s alright.” Anger curls hot in her belly and Amanda clenches her jaw underneath the massive scarf wound around her lower face. At her side, Jolyon sucks in a breath audible over the low hum of the electronics in the building. “You did good, we’re gonna get him out of here.”
A Guardian did this to him. Eliksni, Hive, they don’t do this, cruelty for cruelty’s sake, hiding a body so the rez is more difficult. After everything came out, Amanda had hoped – foolishly, maybe– that the Guardians who hated him would realize he wasn’t the same person, was actively trying to be something more, something better. Most of them had, but Crow didn’t exactly share with her every single time someone pulled something. How many times had Crow been late in the past because of something like this?
“Come on,” Amanda finds herself saying over the rush of blood in her ears, incandescently furious. “Help me grab his cloak, Jol.”
Jolyon reaches down and fists his hands in Crow’s cloak with her. It takes two attempts; the blood-soaked material cracks off in their hands the first attempt until they get a better handful and begin the awful, arduous process of dragging him out of the hallway.
The moment they’re out of the dark zone, Glint zooms forward and flares like a miniature sun; the flicker of Light that shivers across her skin is a splash of momentary warmth and where there was once just a pile of frozen flesh, Crow stands, panting. It’s not a surprise when he wobbles and slides to his knees shakily. He stares up at the two of them, hands fisted in the snow, head turning from right to left like he’s not sure who he can believe is here less.
“Amanda?” Crow sounds like he’s gargled half the rocks in this cave for fun. He coughs once, twice, and gives a whole-body shudder. Rezzes after a long period of time seem to be the worst, like the body has to relearn how it works once the Light stitches it back together again.
“Hang on, I gotcha.” Amanda fumbles until she unhitches the frozen-solid water bottle from her belt and presses it into his hands so he can warm it up enough to thaw. Glint dematerializes his helmet long enough for him to take a few long pulls off the bottle, swallowing audibly. When his eyes open, he’s focused on Jolyon’s profile behind her. Jolyon is decidedly not looking at either of them; he has a rifle trained on the sniper lane leading out of the lost sector. “The Vanguard sent you?”
“There’s a lot going on back home. We’ll catch you up on the way back.” Amanda takes the water bottle back and then offers a mittened hand to Crow, hefting him to his feet with a grunt.
She lets him choose if he’s going to go in for the hug – he’s over-sensitive when he’s newly rezzed, the scratch of clothing and armor riding the edge of too much. She gets the impression a lot of new Guardians are, given the spike in customization requests when a Guardian first starts, like the weight and texture of armor and cloth is oppressive so soon after being reformed.
Crow tugs lightly at her hand and Amanda takes the invitation, pulling him the few extra inches against her into a hug mostly muted by their layers of armor and cold protection. Amanda presses cold cheeks into the equally chilled material of his cloak and squeezes him tight. “C’mon, I’ve got hot tea and about six different blankets waiting for you in the back of my ship, unless yours is close.”
“Oh, I don’t think that’s going to work.” Glint flits over, fits himself into the press of Crow’s open palm. “Crow crashed it on the way here. The Eliksni already picked it over.”
Jolyon poorly covers a laugh by clearing his throat, keeping his gun trained on the entrance, a consummate professional.
“Oh-kay then, my ship it is. We might have to camp it out a day or two with this storm, but comms are functional if a little delayed.”
“We were shot down,” Crow mutters, still staring at Jolyon from behind, even as he’s not acknowledged.
“Well, Jolyon and I, we brought enough supplies to wait it out,” Amanda says meaningfully, but doesn’t push the idea of going to Crow’s ship. The last thing they want is to run into another Guardian who might take issue with Crow being here and she has no interest in staying outside in the cold longer than they need to. “C’mon, let’s get out of here.”
The trip back is made quiet by necessity – the snow howls too loud for them to be heard if they just wanted to talk, which means they make their way with minimal shouting to convey when they ought to push versus wait out the brutal snap of the wind. By the time they make it up into the ship, Amanda’s leg aches badly enough it makes her teeth hurt and the press of heat from her ship is almost too much in all her clothing.
Once they’re out of their gear– faces bare, Crow and Jolyon’s cheeks purpled from the cold of the wind where Amanda’s are pink, the boys just sort of stare at each other.
Glint and Amanda may as well not be there. It’s honestly impressive. Amanda whistles quietly at Glint and jerks her chin in the direction of the main cabin, gingerly making her way there to give them some semblance of privacy. A long, slow breath escapes her once she’s finally sitting down, the ache in her prosthetic not easing but no longer the sharp, biting cold as it acclimates to the warmth inside.
In the end she’s not sure what they talk about, but she gives them as much privacy as she can in the limited space of the ship. She and Glint send a message to Ikora, get a few hours of work in on the shield generator, and both of them try their best not to stare when they’re given brief appearances from Jolyon and Crow.
Crow moves around the ship like it’s his space too: he doesn’t ask for permission to use the shower any more, doesn’t double check he’s opening the right closet before he opens it. The two of them linger a little bit longer near the back and then separate. Jolyon ducks through to the cabin and sinks into the seat next to hers bonelessly. A peek over confirms what she suspects—Jolyon looks exhausted, not just physically like he’s been tromping around Europa, but like he’s been wrung out.
The sliding door dividing the small sleeping quarters off from the rest of the ship closes with a quiet snick, the room inside the cabin heated with steam as it escapes the shower. Jolyon smothers a yawn. “He’s getting some rest while we wait out the storm.”
“Alright,” Amanda nudges the table closer between the two chairs and offers him a wrench. “Gimme a hand with this fiddly bit?”
She and Jolyon work through the night, trying to triangulate the missing Corsair with Glint’s added datapoints from their time on Europa with middling levels of success. Once she catches him nodding off once, twice, she nudges him with a gentle hand and is rewarded with a sleepy, long blink like he’s an overlarge cat. “You oughta get some rest, too. Even if it’s just a couple hours. You came straight here after whatever you ran for the Queen, you’ve gotta be running on fumes.”
It’s a testament to how exhausted he must be that he doesn’t argue it, just glances at the closed-off room and then nods to himself, making his way there with slow, heavy footsteps. It doesn’t go poorly– she hears soft conversation, and then the door closes again and neither of them come out. Glint watches all of it with interest, shell spinning back and forth.
“Jolyon is someone he knew before, isn’t he?”
“Mhm, a friend of his from way back. He’s been staying at the Tower the last few months, off and on.” Amanda cuts him a curious look. “I dunno how much you both talked about what happened. I know he was upset, but… Well. He hasn’t talked much about what happened when we’ve been in contact.”
The low whir is the Ghost equivalent of a sigh. “I don’t like how it happened, but Crow wanted to know. He’s still working out what it means, but maybe… Well. Maybe it’s a good thing. He has you, and me, and now he has a friend from back then. I’d always rather have more help than less.”
“You and me both, Glint.”
Eventually, Glint heads back in to sleep with Crow and later still Jolyon rotates out, leaving Crow still sacked out in bed. Glint pops up to join them again, materializing in his little sling by the captain’s seat just as Jolyon gets there.
Jolyon’s voice is low, sleep-rough. “You should get some rest, Holliday.”
“We’re going to be waiting out the storm for another six hours and I think Crow will probably sleep through all of it.” Glint’s iris blinks at her and Amanda stifles a yawn. “You should try to get at least a little.”
Amanda hums so he knows she’s heard him, weighing if she wants to give the thoughts she’s been tumbling around in her head any sort of breath. After a few moments of debate, she gives up. She wants to know. “Someone dragged him in there so he wouldn’t be able to get out any other way, right?”
Jolyon turns, focusing not on her but on Glint.
Glint, faced with both of them staring straight at him, glances back at the closed door where Crow’s asleep, cagey. “We don’t know the Guardian, if that’s what you’re getting at.”
But they’d recognize him. Crow wouldn’t want to do anything about it, even now, but the unfairness and needless cruelty of it sticks like a rock in her boot, digging in. She wants to ask how many times this has happened, but Crow’s dodged the question every time it’s been broached and she won’t go behind his back like that, or put Glint in that position.
Instead, Amanda rubs at sleep gritty eyes and unfolds herself from the pilot’s seat, goes through an abridged version of her nightly routine. The prosthetic she slides off on her way into the bed, settling it against the closet. The door she closes behind her, lights flickering on above the bed.
She’s relatively certain he was awake the moment she opened the door, but it’s not til she shifts her weight onto the mattress that he lifts up the covers for her in invitation. The bunk is big enough for two, three if they were tight. Once, after the other ship crashed and they’d had a particularly shitty mission, they’d crammed four people in the bed, too exhausted to care about sleeping on someone’s elbow. The number of people they’d crammed in the Farm — if anyone had been precious about their space, they would’ve had an even rougher time.
Point is, she and Crow have bunked together more than once. Woken up tangled together in the morning, extricated themselves with quiet apology, but it was just sort of an understood thing with fireteams in general, living in and out of each other’s pockets.
This time, the blankets and pillow smell like Jolyon and Amanda waits until she’s certain Crow’s awake enough to understand her, eyes glowing faintly under the dim handmade fairy lights. “Need anything before I—”
“Holliday, come on.” Crow doesn’t let her finish, scooching back up against the wall after rolling onto his side, yawning even as he lifts the blankets up. Amanda hefts herself up and settles onto her side facing him, curving closer once he tugs the covers up over her shoulders. His fingers linger against her shoulder like he’s torn between wanting to touch her and being too tired to move any more than he has.
For a long moment, they just look at each other under the dim flicker of the lights. She reaches her free hand out in turn, running her fingers up and down the narrow dip of his waist, feels him tremble underneath the press of her fingers. “Can I hug you? The one earlier was good, don’t get me wrong, but all the layers—“
Crow still gets that surprised, pleased look when she asks before initiating most physical contact. “I’m pretty sure hugging while laying down is called cuddling.”
Unbearably fond of him, most of all when he’s being a little shit, Amanda scoots over the last few inches that turn it from proprietary bed sharing to actual, intentioned cuddling. For a guy she gets the feeling didn’t get a whole lot of cuddling experience, he’s good at accepting it. Once given permission, she winds an arm fully around his waist and slides her hand up the back of his shirt to press against bare skin, smiling against his chest when he shivers against her, responsive and warm.
A slick line of metal slips free and puddles in the space between them, a ring threaded on it. Amanda felt it a few times when they were close, seen the outline of it under his shirt but never actually touched it. Gently, she shifts her other arm up and hooks a fingertip in it. Crow hadn’t known where it came from for the longest time. Now, she’s got a good idea who gave it to him. She can almost imagine Jolyon sliding it on, the ring easing home, answering a question Crow hadn’t known who to start asking.
“Amanda?” She feels more than hears him rumble her name, low and quiet in the dim lighting. Glint dips down when Crow reaches out a hand to drag him down with them, renegotiating positions to fit him on the pillow between their heads. “Thank you for coming to get us.”
“Nothing to thank me for. I’d take a road trip with a sort of ex-boyfriend to come get you any time.” After the hell that was the last few days, she thinks it’s going to be hard to fall asleep at first, but the moment they’re actually relaxed in place, Crow breathing soft and steady against the top of her head, her eyelids are unbearably heavy and she’s fighting a losing battle against sleep.
When she wakes, it’s to a steady blinking red light above them, and a politely light knock against the closed door. “The Vanguard contacted you while you were asleep. Non-emergency.”
Crow gently extricates himself so she can sit up in the mess of blankets and swing her leg over the edge of the bed, groping for the prosthetic to fasten it in place and shove the pajamas down over. “I’ll get it. If either of y’all want coffee–“
“I’m fine.” Jolyon’s response is just a hair slower than Crow’s own, and Amanda leaves the two of them to make eyes at each other while she checks the message. They might not want any, but she does, so she putters around the galley while the transmission plays quietly over comms.
It is a non-emergency— Petra’s determined the Corsair they’re trying to track down left Europa, headed to the Tangled Shore, and their ship happens to be the only one without prior obligations outside of this. Amanda tosses up a response signal and shifts the onboard nav while Glint bobs above and helps adjust the optimal path out of Europa’s atmosphere that won’t get them shot at and blown up like Crow’s ship.
Both Jolyon and Crow make their way to the cabin of the ship and Amanda watches with no small amount of amusement as they circle opposite sides of the co-pilot’s seat to sit down and then seem to realize what the other is doing. Crow stills, looking a little too long at the seat. e takes a step away and gestures vaguely in the direction of the bathroom. “I’m going to take a shower.”
“Coffee’s in the galley,” Amanda calls. Only once the shower’s active does Amanda turn to Jolyon, grinning. Call it a good night’s sleep, the idea of leaving this too-cold planet, or just plain giddiness at something going right, but whatever it is Amanda will take it. “I think that could’ve gone much worse.”
It takes less than a full day for them to start working like a well-oiled machine. She and Crow have enough flight time together to navigate the enclosed space around each other and Jolyon slots himself in even easier after the initial hiccup with the copilot’s seat.
They rotate use of the bed; Jolyon spends a good portion of the flight working on his gun while Crow pretzels himself into increasingly contorted positions next to her when the seat is unoccupied, talking over his shoulder to Jolyon. It seems like it’s easier for them to talk like this – not quite looking at each other, just existing in the same space, tentatively feeling out what subjects are safe and what aren’t like the ship is a liminal space.
The Tangled Shore isn’t exactly top of the list of places where Amanda wants to go, especially with Crow after what the Spider did to him, but if everything goes right they’re not going to have to interact with the de facto leader of the Shore at all. Jolyon seems to think they’re on a hunt for confirmation of death, closure, rather than a rescue mission. If she’s being honest, she wants to know what it is the Corsairs were looking into, first on Europa and then on the Shore, but that level of political machination is a bit outside her paygrade.
At least it isn’t Europa.
Stepping out into the arid heat of the Shore, she tilts her head up and enjoys the fact that the air doesn’t actively burn her face with the cold. “This ain’t so bad.”
“Yet,” Jolyon says dryly, and follows Crow out and down the walkway to the latest known transmission of the Corsairs. “Give it a couple hours.”
Three hours later, with a grenade explosion ringing in her ears, Amanda understands why Jolyon had been so wry.
This part of the Shore is a shitshow, at best – Scorn and Fallen fighting each other with no end, the beacon in the far end of an abandoned building. Crow manages to sneak them in with a few well-placed smoke bombs and they infiltrate with minimal issue, good until they reach a point where the bridge in front of them has been blown to smithereens entirely. The other end is nothing but a ragged chunk of slag, the entryway mostly melted.
Too far for either Jolyon or her to even think about jumping, but Crow eyes the distance and grins. “This is the last part of the building – I’ll be in and back out before you know it.”
Amanda eyes the jump; her sparrow could make it, but not with another person and Jolyon doesn’t have one. Crow is arguably the best person to scout it out and if they need to get in there to get him out so Glint can rez him, that’s a problem they’ll face when it comes down to it. “I’m holdin’ you to it.”
“Fifteen minutes,” Crow promises and then takes a running jump off the platform with a whoop that turns into an ooph when he rolls to a stop on the other end.
So, they wait. Jolyon’s better at it than she is, all that sniper’s patience, while she fights the urge to figure out a way to cross the gulch just in case. Glint could transmat her Sparrow if she made it across and bring it back for Jolyon to take if he had to. Not ideal, but workable.
Fourteen minutes later and after a series of muted explosions she’s pretty sure are Crow chucking grenades, Crow appears through the doorway, splattered blue with screeb goo, making the jump across the gulch once more. He passes something to Jolyon that Jolyon pockets, and keeps his hands on his knees a few moments more, panting. “Found them, and what they were looking for. I don’t know what it means, but Petra might. Your Corsair is dead. Also, this place was rigged to explode, so we should–”
Amanda’s already off as they haul ass back out of there, glaring at him over her shoulder. “I would’ve led with that!”
“Well, it’s a pretty generous timer,” Glint hovers in front of them on their way out, flickering down in a silent counter. “The explosion should be pretty localized to the room. Mostly, we’re worried about–”
“We’re going to alert everyone where we are,” Jolyon finishes tersely, scanning their surroundings once they’re out of the cave system and back on the shore proper. “Let’s get higher.”
Blessedly, there is a path leading up to a place that has a clear line of sight; the climb isn’t too bad and Amanda’s leg provides minimal fuss once they’re at the top. Glint whirrs by her ear, unhappy. “That’s a lot of Scorn our whole way back to the ship, even if some of them go investigate the explosion.”
As if on queue, the building buried underground shudders once, twice, and then the ground shakes, part of the cliff face crumbling to pieces down onto unlucky Scorn waiting below. Another set of explosions goes off as a few Screebs are crushed and Crow tosses a smoke bomb down on all of them when heads start turning, looking for them.
Hefting the portable shield generator out of her bag, Amanda settles it up on the open face not blocked off by the cliff, and thumbs the switch. It hums to life with a flicker and settles over them in a curve, a low, metallic rumble thrumming through it.
“Oh! You got it working!” Glint zooms over to inspect it, the generator flashing blue as he scans the internal components. “I remember the fuse was giving you trouble.”
“Got it sorted on the way here.” Satisfied it’s not going to explode, Amanda settles back out of eyeline from their surroundings while Jolyon crawls up to the edge on his belly, Supremacy in hand.
Without needing to be asked, Glint and Amanda both empty out what special ammunition they have, Crow crouched at Jolyon’s other side where a spotter would go. Crow’s chest piece vanishes, replaced by another, this one covered in a series of eyes that move independently. “Clear out as many as we can with the sniper – I’ll have enough smoke bombs to get us to the ship.”
“They’re going to shoot at the ship,” Jolyon points out, shifting slightly to line up a shot. “We’d need to be fast to get out of there.”
“That’s why you brought me,” Amanda pats his ankle lightly and then the retort of the rifle cracks through the air. When she peeks, a Scorn has fallen, its companions looking around. Jolyon lines up the next and when the bullet’s casing ejects from the rifle, Crow catches it like it’s a reflex. For a moment, he stares at the casing then tucks it away, pulling out a scope instead.
Watching them work, she thinks she gets an idea of how Uldren and Jolyon must have been ages ago. Crow murmurs quiet, steady information and Jolyon adjusts, compensates for wind and position and the crack of his rifle echoes through the Shore every few moments. Only when they’re out of ammunition does he look up from the scope, peering down below them where a line of bodies lies.
It’s better. Not good, but not the worst odds she’s ever encountered before and they didn’t have a hunter with invisibility to help them get through it.
“Good enough.” At twin unenthused expressions, Amanda smacks them both on the shoulder on their way down. “Come on, it’ll be fun.”
Above them a shadow crawls across the sky, a massive Eliksni dropship hovering over the explosion zone after dropping out of slipspace. They have a hot second to stare up at it and then she grabs Crow’s arm with one hand, Jolyon’s with the other. “Invisibility– Crow–”
The smoke bomb lands and they scramble down the lip of the cliff, circling around just as a blast impacts the area where they’d been hidden, dirt exploding outward. A series of further blows follow along the path forcing a careful game of leapfrog between smoke bombs, inching their way down.
“There’s a rule,” Jolyon murmurs after the last explosion finishes ringing in their ears and he’s certain they can hear them. They’re more than halfway to the ship at this point, but an unlucky blast from a Scorn rifle skimmed her stomach as they were trying to duck around the ongoing battle; it’s not fatal, but it’s uncomfortable. “The moment someone says something like, this is going to be fun, it is guaranteed not to be fun.”
“Didn’t know Awoken are just as superstitious as Guardians,” Amanda mutters back, all of them sandwiched against an outcropping of rock while a grenade lands and spits plasma a few feet away from them, pulsing. One of them tugs her in closer, sandwiches her between the long lines of Crow and Jolyon on either side, tight enough she can feel and hear them breathing even if she can’t see them. “Promise I’ll start every mission off next time with how much I think it won’t be fun.”
The invisibility bleeds off them faster than it does Crow by a few seconds each time, but they’re well-hidden enough for the time being that it’s not too much of a concern. Crow’s hand lifts to his cowl, presses and holds there a moment like he’s touching a worrystone, the tense lines in his face softening briefly. Amanda doesn’t need to guess, knowing Glint’s hidden there. “I mean, it could be worse.”
Amanda and Jolyon exchange incredibly wearied looks.
“Now you’ve done it,” Amanda whispers, just as another load of Eliksni drop out of a ship a few yards away, a smoke bomb dropped just in the nick of time. Crow grabs at both of them like he’s reassuring himself they’re still there and Amanda squeezes back.
Above them, the rockface they’re hiding behind shakes, dirt and dust filtering down. Some of it slides down the back of her neck and only once they’re invisible again does she bother shaking it out the back of her shirt while they begin their slow leapfrogging through the open plain back to the ship.
Crow leads them to another outcropping just as the invisibility ticks down and they’re stuck waiting again. A hand fumbles, pressing against her arm and then fingers trail down until they’re pressed against the inside of her wrist, tapping out a code in a slow rhythm. It takes a moment to make the translation – Crow had taught her it when they were running flights with the Guardian against the Cabal, but she hadn’t needed to use it much in the last few months.
Now, she takes a moment and shifts her grip to tap out a response and the hand holding her wrist shifts until their fingers are tangled in together tight. The invisibility drops again and she’s looking up at Jolyon holding her hand, not Crow. He gives her a crooked smile before the next smoke bomb. When it lands, they run.
It’s pure, dumb bad luck that a group of Scorn stagger their way into their path. With the hand not gripping Jolyon’s, Amanda clutches her autorifle and doesn’t dare to breathe when they’re this close, the awful chittering and wheezing gasps audible at this distance as they stagger across the field. Another smoke bomb down but the weight of Crow’s body vanishes moments later, a Scorn falling with a puff of tainted ether. She catches a glimpse of him for a brief moment before he fades out of sight again, and another Scorn falls.
“C’mon, time for us to move,” Amanda grits out, using the distraction of Crow’s strikes to push the rest of the way to the ship, slapping her hand against the button to open up. Jolyon ducks in after her, lingering in the doorway with his rifle leveled, utilizing the ammunition they picked up along the way to cover Crow as he dips in and out of the masses making his way back to them. “She’s ready when we are.”
“Crow. Time to go.” Jolyon’s voice doesn’t need to be raised to be tense, echoed between comms and next to her as another Scorn falls. Amanda misses what happens, too busy inputting their location and flight plans to the onboard computer, but she hears it.
Next to her Jolyon sucks in a sharp breath and makes a bitten-off noise like he’s been hit; when she tears her attention away from the computer he’s not bleeding, not injured. She gets it a moment later. Crow, standing in a pool of molten flames, goes to dodge and then just collapses, like his legs are cut out from under him.
He’s too far to make out too much, but her mind fills in the gaps, the scent of burnt flesh and charred armor sharp in her nostrils before she shakes herself out of it and curls her fist into the back of Jolyon’s jacket, shakes him.
“Guardian,” Amanda reminds gently, just as Light flickers through the dim part of the canyon and Crow rises up again, the explosion of Light that follows making the hair on the back of her neck stand up. She can’t see him, but she can hear him, the whizz of void-heated metal combined with the quick bursts of speed as Scorn fall. Crow moves faster than the explosions, a blur of purple and nothing until he blinks into the space in front of Jolyon and puts a hand on the end of the Supremacy, pointing it upward so it’s not leveled at his face.
“Time to go,” Crow grins, a bright flash of teeth and then Amanda pulls the ship up, just as another explosion lands on the ground they’d been parked on. “Two dropships coming in hot, Holliday.”
“I see ‘em. Seatbelts.” The battlefield out there might be where Crow and Jolyon work best, but up here– this is her turf. Crow takes the copilot’s seat without hesitation and Jolyon straps into the extra seats normally folded up to save space just as she twists the throttle, rolling them in a neat maneuver to duck the next set of phaser fire.
Next to her, Crow whoops in excitement as they return fire and one of the ships blossoms into an explosion knocking into the other and then they’re out of there, breaking atmosphere.
“There’s no one on our tail,” Glint tells them happily and then turns his attention over to Jolyon who white-knuckled it the entire time with grim acceptance that there were now two of them, willing to dive headfirst into nightmare situations. “You can let go of the seatbelt now.”
The trip back to the Tower feels like it should be awkward, but it’s not. Amanda sets the ship to autopilot and they crosscheck and repair weapons, bandage injuries, and manage to open up rations rather than cooking anything. Exhausted, no one protests the idea of sharing the same space if it means getting a few hours of rest before they’re back at the Tower. Jolyon takes the furthest space against the wall without needing to be asked, Crow clambering in after him. Amanda takes the spot closest to the doorway, waiting until they’re settled to climb in and restart the whole process of negotiating limbs.
Once they’re in, Glint flickers in above them and Crow lifts a hand up to tug him in close, too, sandwiched in between him and Amanda. One of Jolyon’s legs tangles with theirs, Crow tugging an errant arm around his waist until there’s nothing but the warmth of the blankets and the steady, soft breathing.
The bandages wrapped around her middle itch something fierce, but it’s mostly something she can ignore, focused on piloting them back once they hit Earth’s atmosphere. The moment they’re under the skyline and the massive, floating circle of the Traveler comes into view she lets out a breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding since Crow left.
Next to her, Jolyon’s long limbs are sprawled out in the copilot’s chair, Crow lounging upright between the two of them as she takes them in a slow dip toward the Tower hangar. There’s still a hell of a lot to figure out that she doesn’t even know where to start with, but when she glances over, Jolyon’s looking at Crow like he hangs the fucking moon, and they’ve got a Sparrow to finish building together.
“You’re cleared for landing,” Glint flickers into place over Crow’s shoulder, bumping into him. “Welcome back, Guardian.”
“Home again, home again,” Crow hums as she pulls the turn tight to get settled into her spot at the Hangar.
“Jiggity jig,” Amanda finishes once they’re docked safely, catching each of them by the hand on the way out.