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The visions had gotten less frequent over the years. Cayde wondered sometimes if the Light was slowly burning away the parts of who he’d been, taking information with it, and sometimes he welcomed that. Sometimes, when he was suddenly smacked in the face with something cruel and unpleasant, he even wished for it.
This was just such a time. He was sat with Banshee in his workshop, explaining a blueprint (NOT a scribble on a napkin, he had insisted), when suddenly he wasn’t. He sat in an office, watching an old man on a screen stare down at him with a curled, disdainful lip and skeptical eyes. “Are you sure you’re… suitable for our program?” The voice was imperious, cold, and yet somehow familiar.
“Yeah. I’m sure. I need this.”
He heard himself say, but it wasn’t his voice, not quite.
“Very well. Welcome on board, mister-”
“Cayde?”
He blinked. Banshee had leaned over at some point and was peering up at him, his head tilted and his jaw set in concern, “You good? You zoned out there.”
Cayde jerked back away from him, shaking his head to clear it. “Yeah, yeah, fine.”
“You sure?”
The intonation was wrong. The eyes, the face, all wrong. And yet… and yet he knew. He didn’t know how he knew, just like every other time he had found himself knowing things he shouldn’t, but he knew, the knowledge slotting into place like a piece of a particularly worn jigsaw.
The man staring at him right now was Clovis Bray.
No.
That was Banshee. His friend. His friend who dared him to do stupid jumps, who built guns for him, who drank with him, who sometimes he just wanted to lean over and-
He had to get out of here.
“Look, I’m fine, I just gotta go. Vanguard stuff, y’know? Real important, I’ll catch up with you when I’m done.” He insisted, leaping to his feet with more urgency than it needed. He saw Banshee’s eyes dim and his brow-plates draw down into a frown, but it felt like Arc surged through every wire in his body and he had to be outside, to climb, to get away. He darted out of the window without another word and leapt, flung himself up, up the Tower and away to the highest perch he could reach, and even then it was several minutes before his fans stopped roaring.
Clovis Bray. The man, the myth, the monster. Nobody knew the extent of what he’d done. He was a hero to many, even though every Exo Cayde knew shuddered at his name without quite knowing why. And he was utterly certain he’d just been sat less than a foot from him.
Did Banshee know? Had he kept his identity a secret all this time, adopted the slightly spacey, forgetful persona like an actor putting on a mask? Clovis Bray had been a genius, but was he that clever? That dedicated?
There were no answers. Only the memory, the feelings that came with it. Cayde drew his knees up to his chest and pulled his cloak around himself, plates rattling together as the wind whipped around the Tower’s peak. He gazed out at the Traveller, floating serenely over the City. Are you the one doing this to me? Some kind of test or something? Or is it something he did?
The pale orb remained silent, as always, and Cayde sighed in frustration and summoned a burning knife, spinning it between his fingers as though he might find an answer in the flames.
Even his Light couldn’t soothe him, and he fumbled the blade. It clattered to the rooftop and guttered out, sliding down and away as it faded out. He watched it go, and kept watching long after it had disappeared. Why him? Why Banshee? Why one of the people he trusted the most in the world?
He wasn’t sure how long he sat there, but eventually a ping from Ikora about some missed meeting or other broke him out of it. It wasn’t okay, far from it, but there were things to do. Distracting things.
Things that, as it transpired, gave him a convenient excuse to be busy for the next week or so. Even then, he wasn’t so busy that he couldn’t take the scenic route around the Tower, the one that avoided the Bazaar and Banshee’s shop. He thought he spotted a flash of blue and yellow at one point and all but turned on his heel and bolted in the other direction. He wasn’t running away, he told himself. He was just giving himself time to think. Which was fine. Definitely different.
Time to think became time to dwell, to brood. His mind kept helpfully supplying other tidbits; things he’d remembered before, his time on Europa, the end of that. The glimpses of a blue and yellow Exo in the chaos that had ensued, roaring sword - a sword, really?- carving through Vex. He’d never thought about that figure before, having remembered him so long ago when he'd had nothing to connect him to, but now… well, how could he not recognise those distinctive markings, when he saw them every day? When he had thought about running his fingers over them so many times?
The thought sent a shiver down his back for a different reason now. How close had he come to kissing Clovis Bray ? How many times? He’d lost count decades ago of all the times he’d thought about it, been tempted. He shook his head as he strode through the Tower, cloak billowing behind him, and he was so lost that only his Hunter reflexes saved him from colliding with someone coming the other way. He put out a hand to catch them on instinct as his shoulder knocked against theirs and they stumbled, and he found his fingers curled around a hard bicep, brushing against a soft scarf. He looked up, and Banshee’s sky blue eyes met his in the dim hallway.
Neither of them moved for a moment. Cayde didn’t have a stomach, but something sank as he willed himself to let go, and slowly his fingers uncurled. Banshee averted his eyes first as he gathered himself. “Hey, was just lookin’ for you.” he said, holding out the object he’d been carrying. A wooden box, about a foot long. Cayde took it carefully, noting how Banshee’s body heat had warmed it where it had been held against him. Oh, he was still talking, “- ain’t seen you since last month. Is everything… y’know, okay? Been worried I pissed you off somehow.”
“No, no you didn’t, nothing like that.” Should he tell him? Should he ask? Cayde sighed, turning the box over in his hands for something to do while he thought. Spade symbol engraved into the bottom, nice touch. “I just… I’ve had a lot on my mind. D’you ever think about who you were before you were, y’know, you?”
It was an odd question, and he knew it was an odd question the moment it left his mouth and Banshee raised a brow at him. “Not much. I don’t remember any of it, figure I’ve been me longer than I was that guy anyway. Why d’you ask?”
It was such a Banshee answer. As long as Cayde had known him he had looked forward- the past could teach, but it never learned, as he had said on a long-ago drunken night out, and then laughed when Cayde had looked baffled. A little of the tension eased out of Cayde’s frame.
“I remembered something. It’s kinda thrown me off a bit, been playing on my mind."
"Anything you wanna talk about?"
Did he? Part of him did, and he hesitated for a moment before shaking his head.
"Not really. I'll manage. Sorry, didn’t mean to ghost you.”
“‘S alright. Gave me time to work.” There was a wary smile flickering around the corners of his mouth as he gestured at the box in Cayde’s hands. “That’s for you. Not to brag, but I reckon it’s something pretty special.”
“Yeah?” Cayde returned the smile, fiddling with the clasp on the box. He hadn’t asked for anything, and this was too small to be the harebrained design he’d slapped down in front of Banshee when last they'd spoken. Hand-carving the box alone would have taken longer than that- and it was hand-carved, he could see the tiny impressions of a delicate chisel in the decorative scrolling of the edges.
Banshee was still watching, some strange mix of apprehension and anticipation on his face, and Cayde steeled himself to lift the lid, only for his fans to stop entirely when he saw what was inside. A black and white hand cannon, the spade on the side matching the box. Reverently, gently, he curled his fingers around the grip. It felt warm to the touch and almost seemed to draw his Light to it, to take it in and amplify it back to him. It fit his hand perfectly. Like it had been made for him…
“Bansh… did you…”
“Yeah. She’s a prototype, but I needed someone special to test her. Figured you might appreciate it, y’know?” Banshee had his hands in his pockets, and he shrugged when Cayde looked up at him, his eyes wide with wonder.
“She’s beautiful,” he breathed. His mind raced. What had he been worried about again? Banshee had made this wonderful thing for him. Banshee had tracked him down after more than a week of silence because he was worried about him, worried he’d hurt him somehow. Banshee cared about him.
If he knew one thing about Clovis Bray, it was that he had never been more than an asset to him. A number. But to Banshee, he was Cayde. He might have cried, were he still able. He swallowed around a lump in his throat and very carefully put the gun back in the box, then threw himself at Banshee and dragged him into a short, sharp hug. He felt him hesitate for a moment before returning it, letting it linger a little longer.
“I love it. You’re incredible, do I tell you that often enough? I really should tell you that more. Absolute genius.”
Banshee’s smile made his fans whirr again as he let him go. He lowered his voice a little. “I’m sorry I ran off. Can’t promise it won’t happen again but… yeah, I’ll try,” he said, and he surprised himself with his own sincerity. Banshee huffed a laugh, patted him on the shoulder.
“‘S alright. I’ve had a long time to get used to flighty Hunters. Just… if you wanna talk, I’m here to listen, yeah? Problem shared, problem halved, or something like that.”
“Hey, I’m not flighty!”
“Cayde-6, you are the Light-blasted
definition
of flighty.”
“Okay
but…
”
He ambled off, and Banshee followed, still bickering lightly with one another. Cayde didn’t care. It was all part of the same game they’d played for years, and he barely felt his toes touch the ground with all of the weight that had lifted from his shoulders. Banshee was Banshee, whoever he had been before. Perhaps one day he would ask, and tell him if he didn’t know, but for now he was content to let secrets lie.