Chapter Text
Somnia. That was the name she’d given herself. It felt better than the name she’d been given. More fitting. Birth in the Distributary to parents she no longer remembered had given her a different name and a different body. But medicine, time, and light had allowed her to forge her own final shape. She was still Hera’s twin. Still an Iron Lord. Still a Hunter. But now she was…her. Somnia. Her truest self. Who she was meant to be for all the untold millennia her body had existed for, trapped in the wrong shape with the wrong face and wrong name.
She felt…right. Whole. Complete. Or at least moreso than she had felt before. She hadn’t even realised how differently she felt until it dawned on her, unbidden. Even thinking felt different. She felt like she had swapped from one brand of brain to another with how different everything functioned. She processed emotions differently. Felt differently about different things. Hated spicy food. For as much as things were the same–no power in Sol or beyond could take the snark out her–there was so much that was different.
Which is what sparked fear in her now as she thought about talking to Eris. The last time they’d seen each other had been on the eve of Fire Team Olympus's battle against Oryx, the Taken King. They had been two ships passing in the night, unable to do much else beyond watch as the other sailed just out of reach; somehow less tangible than smoke or shadow. The time before that had been a meeting surprisingly more domestic as they’d baked oatmeal raisin cookies together for the Dawning, when they’d come to the painful realisation that the bond they had formed and the love that they felt for each other was something beyond them. An unreachable but wonderful dream. They’d made an oath to each other, then, whether they’d said it out loud or not. That whether or not they could be together, that their love wouldn’t end. That even if war and strife and darkness kept them literal worlds apart, that they wouldn’t move on. They couldn’t. They shared their first and likely last kiss that day.
Somnia ran her hands back through her hair, trying to wring away the stress. Eris needed to know. She had the right to. Even if what they had was never meant to be, Somnia wanted the person Eris thought of when she thought of the object of her affections to be her. Her and not him. If she even felt the same way at all. It wasn’t surprising that discussions around sexuality and attraction never came up between them as it just never seemed to matter. Maybe it wouldn’t matter now. But the thought that it could; that it might change everything and bury this dream is what made Somnia weep, even before telling Eris. Somnia had lost so much in her life. If she had to add Eris to it, she…
<”Ya doin’ alright there, partner?”> Dixie’s voice trilled as she floated off of the dash of the ship to Somnia’s lap. Somnia opened her eyes and looked down at the hatted construct, whose single eye appraised her with a saddened, concerned dim. <”I-I didn’t wanna bother ya none, but…ya ain’t moved in a few hours, n’...”>
“I’m okay, Dixie,” said Somnia. She breathed in deeply through her nose before releasing it in a slow exhale. “Just…”
<”Nervous?”>
“Terrified.”
Dixie hummed lowly. <”I been tryin’ ta think of the right words ta say to ya. ‘Bout all this. I feel terrible that, after all we been through, all I got is silence and my company.”>
Somnia scooped her ghost up into her hands and held the light construct close to her chest. “That’s more than enough, D–oup, sorry.”
<”Haha hit yer chest a lil’ sooner than ya thought I would, huh?”>
“Yeah, you know I never thought ‘one day I’m gonna have to get used to the extra space that boobs take up’,” Somnia chuckled. She wiped a tear from the corner of her eyes with a leather gloved thumb. She settled into her seat and sighed.
<”Can’t put it off forever, right?”> Dixie asked, rising up to shoulder level.
“No,” said Somnia with a shake of her head. “No I can’t.”
<”I love you no matter what, ya hear?”> Dixie floated up to eye level and tilted.
Somnia reached up and kept the ghost’s hat from falling off. “I love you, too, Dixie.”
=
The camp, tucked away in the frigid valley of Oymyakon, Russia, was deserted save for a small bonfire and a well camouflaged dome-like shelter already have buried in snow. Somnia could see the lone dark shape on the horizon near the small blaze and felt a tightening in her chest. She’d only spoken to Eris through text-based data packets since things had started, when they were able to speak at all. She had changed her call-sign for such information exchanges to Somnia at the time. She wondered if Eris suspected. If she knew this whole time and simply hadn’t said anything. Somnia was not an anxious person by nature, but she was sweating against the plasteel of her suit.
Eris stood as Somnia’s sparrow neared the camp, her ever present companion hovering just inches above her hand. There was a stillness to her posture. Was it anticipation? Or simply the cold. Somnia knew Eris well enough by now to be able to read her body language as an almost second dialogue, but the heavy cloak made it difficult. Somnia sighed, heavy breath briefly fogging the visor of her helmet.
“It has been some time,” said Eris in her slow, meaningful cadence. “Longer than perhaps I realised now that I see y–”
Eris’ words trailed off as Somnia dismounted the sparrow and turned to face her. Somnia watched as the subtle focuses of Eris’ eyes swept over her form. The new armour. The different shape. Anyone else would have dismissed it as simple inspection or piqued curiosity, but Somnia knew the way Eris moved like the steps of an old dance. She could see the confusion beneath the veil. The question forming. “You are not…” she began. Eris took a step forward, as if greater proximity would clear whatever fog there was between her thoughts and the dots that needed connecting. “And yet…” she reached out, as if she meant to draw closer. “I would know your presence were you a grain of sand and this moon a desert.”
Somnia gave the silent mental command and her helmet dematerialised around her light washed blue cheeks. Her short hair blew against her cheekbones and her old weathered Iron Lord coin rattled against her chest in the wind. She watched the flicker in Eris’ eyes as she looked. As she processed. As she saw the familiar wrapped in a swirl of new. Somnia decided to speak first before Eris could wonder any longer. “It has been a long time.”
The former hunter reacted physically upon hearing the voice–a slow straightening of posture–as if the incongruity of Somnia’s appearance and the sound of the voice had created a skip in a playing record. It was the suddenness of the connected dots, Somnia imagined.
Eris was silent, if only for a moment. “What should I call you?”
“Somnia,” said the Iron Lord. “I’ve chosen Somnia.”
“Somnia,” Eris said the name aloud. Likely not for the first time but now with new meaning. A weight to it. A realisation that a name once spoken so casually over centuries would never be spoken again.
“I know that…this is surprising,” said Somnia, uncertainty beginning to rush like stasis crystals in her veins. “And sudden. I–” the hunter stepped forward, hands gesticulating in the air without meaning to as she tried to sift through it for the right words. “--so much has happened since we last had a second to breathe, and...” Somnia could feel the speech she’d prepared crumbling as she spoke it, her confidence evaporating as fear twisted in her gut to replace it. “I’ve wanted to tell you for so long. You deserved to know sooner than this, but I…”
Somnia felt her tongue gripped by silence. When no further words seemed to come, Eris spoke.
“Is…” Eris asked, her normally unwavering voice quiet with…something. Not confusion. Not even uncertainty. Not disgust or hate like Somnia feared anyone she told would feel. Maybe it was curiosity? But not just curiosity, there was something in the softness. Worry? Concern? A touch of sadness? Eris stepped forward, heavy booted feet leaving behind equally heavy prints. “Is he gone? Are you…” Eris tilted her head as her posture dipped into her shoulder. “What does this mean?”
Somnia stepped forward, drawn by this invisible strand between them. If she had been asked any other time to articulate her reality, she could have done it with time to spare but now, here, under the eyes of the woman she loved, it was like, at least for a moment, she had forgotten all language. “I…” Somnia set her hands against her heart. “The me I am now is the me I’ve always been. I was just hidden under a lot of things that weren’t me. A body, for one. And when I realised that…” Somnia gestured. “I mean people are out here dying final deaths left and right like the light is just a thing we tell ourselves we have so we can sleep better at night. And I’d been fighting with this feeling of like…” Somnia gripped her plasteel woven vest with both hands, “being in a sweater that’s too tight and too warm and too itchy. And then I talked to Micah and this feeling that I’d felt since probably even before I was risen, finally made sense. I’m still…this is all still me, Eris,” Somnia declared. “I’m just… more me. Fully me. The me-est I’ve ever been.”
“Me-est?” asked Eris. There was a tone in her voice that was so subtly light that Somnia doubted anyone but her could have heard it. The full corners of Eris’ lips moved so imperceptibly that if they hadn’t been lips Somnia had read and dreamed about and once even kissed that she’d have missed the small smile there, too. Eris hated the word, Somnia could tell. In that way she pretended to hate all of Somnia’s antics across the centuries.
“Hey.” Somnia raised her arms in a wide shrug before letting them fall back to her sides. “Somewhere out there, there’s a horse made out of stars that runs a gameshow. I can invent words.”
Eris was silent for a moment. To Somnia, at least at the time, each second felt like aeons. But it wasn’t absent of comfort. Eris hadn’t rejected her; hadn’t seen her in this body and called her this name and turned away. Somnia could tell there was a small sadness buried deep beneath the complexities of the woman’s careful voice. It was a feeling Somnia could understand. Eris had known… him for so long. For centuries. For a woman that had lost so many she cared for over the years, Somnia imagined it had to have felt, at least somewhere, like she had lost another, without even a proper goodbye. But she could hear it in the words Eris didn’t speak that she knew otherwise; the way she moved closer and the way her gaze lingered, focused so intently, on Somnia’s eyes. Eris could see that the person she knew was still alive; was there, in front of her. Just in a different form.
Before either of them knew it, they were standing mere inches apart. As the Russian winter howled around them, the wind billowed the ends of Eris’ cloak forward, practically enveloping Somnia’s taller form. Somnia held a hand between them and ignited solar fire in her palm, causing the space between them to bloom with a welcome and needed warmth, drawing them both somehow closer.
Eris parted her lips to speak, but Somnia clasped the woman’s hand with her own to interject. “Wait. Let me just…let me say something first.”
Eris paused, head tilted in silent curiosity, but she nodded.
Somnia smiled in an unspoken thank you. She breathed in. She sighed. And then she spoke. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner, Eris,” said Somnia. “There are probably a dozen reasons why I didn’t, but…I think the biggest among them was just being afraid. I…I love you, okay? And I know you know that, even if I’ve never said it out loud, but I do, and I know I always have, and I think part of me was terrified that this would…” Somnia felt a gentle tightening of Eris’ grip in her hand. “I know that we aren’t…that we’ve never…that we can’t be…” Somnia grit her teeth as she stumbled through words again. “I didn’t want to lose the hope that someday…” The feeling of a hand on Somnia’s cheek broke her from her internal battle for the right words..
“My care for you is not contingent on the flesh that wraps your bones,” said Eris, her heavily gloved hand remaining in place. “I do not care whether you are a man or a woman or neither or both. I do not care if you are human or awoken or exo. My care for you was born of our experiences. Of the entwined memories of centuries with you. Of the life we have lived in one another’s company. Of the warmth the thought of you brings when we are apart. Of our triumphs and our mistakes. If you are still you, then my care has not changed.”
Somnia felt a shudder roll through her. She felt it across the surface of her skin, down into her bones. She felt it grip the rhythm of her heart. She felt relief. “Okay,” Somnia nodded, suddenly aware of the tears turning to frost against her lashes. “Okay.”
“My only regret is that I was not present to support you through this journey. That you had to face it alone. I know what it is to change in the shadows and fear the consequences when returning to the light. I could have…”
“I know, I…I’m sorry I didn’t come to you sooner. Dixie, you know, she's got me running ragged out here,” said Somnia, trying to lighten the mood. But when she saw that it was not, in fact, lightened, she reached up and took the hand Eris had placed on her cheek. “We had ‘saving of all known existence’ to consider,” said Somnia, locking eyes with Eris. “A lot of times it was me hitting myself with a syringe of E after reloading in the middle of a firefight and just hoping for the best. I picked a hell of a time to transition.”
“You did, Somnia,” said Eris. Warmth bloomed like a sun in Somnia hearing Eris say that name. Her name. “But I’m gladdened that you have found your truest self.”
“My me-est self,” said Somnia, her lips quirked into a grin.
“You are terrible.”
“No, I just told you, I’m Somnia.”
“May I ask you something?” asked Eris suddenly.
Somnia blinked but nodded.
“Has this change affected…”
Eris didn’t finish her words, but she didn’t need to. Somnia shook her head so quickly her hood fell away. She took Eris’ chin in her hand. “Nothing could ever change what I feel for you. You are the other half of my soul, Eris, I…” Somnia shook her head. “I’ve always loved you. I still do. I will forever.”
A new relief grew in Eris, Somnia could see. Along with a new sadness. It was in the way the attention of her three eyes drifted and her head tilted and her posture shifted. It all said words she parted her lips to say but couldn’t. Eris’ lips were a pale shade of blue, Somnia noticed. Stained against her usual pallor by the frigid grasp of the arctic chill. Standing so close, she could smell the familiar scent of sage, cinnamon, and smoke from the other woman, and if they leaned the way they were leaning towards one another, Somnia would soon be able to taste the cold from her lips. But neither of them moved. Somnia knew Eris couldn’t say the words back. It was alright. What they had, even if it would only ever be a wonderful dream, was more than enough for her. The small pang of sadness that came with the reminder of the distance between them, was drowned by the relief Eris’ acceptance brought. Somnia would focus on that.
“You…probably have work to do,” said Somnia, still leaning over Eris while the other woman leaned up. She could feel Eris’ hand grip her vest. A silent plea to stay, even if they both knew neither of them could. “With the research and…stuff.”
“Yes,” said Eris. “Stuff.”
“I’m sorry,” said Somnia.
“You’ve nothing to be forgiven for–but I will forgive you, if only to quell your worry.”
“I’ve missed you.”
“And I’ve missed you.”
“I don’t want to go years without seeing you again.”
“Nor do I.”
“...should I go?”
“No.”
“Then I’ll stay.”
“I would like that,” said Eris, drawing so close, the Iron Lord could feel the phantoms of touches across her lips. “Somnia.”