Chapter Text
“...but I’m guessing my death was another result of your famous collateral damage. ‘Cause you’re a real do-gooder. Seriously, it’s annoying- but good deeds never go unpunished when you’re around. You just… You got a blast radius, P.V. Well, it was-”
The recording stops, skips back.
“You got a blast radius, P.V.”
Again, the recording stops and skips back as Petra rewinds by a couple of seconds.
“You got a blast radius, P.V.”
With a heavy sigh, the Regent-Commander of the Reef drops her data-pad on her cot and puts her head into her hands. She’s heard the accusation a hundred times, ever since the recording had been dropped off by a well-meaning Hunter. But still the words cut her to her core.
You got a blast radius, P.V.
Because of course she does, she thinks. She’s known it as long as she’s been in service. The siege that made her a hero and cost her half her vision had cost her comrades much more than that. She’d staggered out of that warzone, a shattered woman half blind and bleeding like mad, but alive. Her comrades lay dead, bodies mauled by claws and shock staves and lives given in defence of the realm.
Petra would gladly have given her own life, she’d tried, conducting her duty while wounded heedless of danger. Anything for her Queen; duty unto death, knowledge of her Queen’s favour and health to be her comfort in her last moments. But now Petra doesn’t even have that, because her Queen is gone, and in her place Petra is Regent-Commander. In her hands now are thousands more lives; and her infamous blast radius can affect all of them, even if she is careful.
By now, the Dreaming City has reset so many times she's lost count. The Corsairs under her command have died and lived and died and lived and died anew so many times. The Taken infection that blights the city in Mara’s absence explodes with ugly vitality and then recedes again, repeating its cycle over and over.
Mara’s face swims into her head and Petra attempts to harden her heart to the angelic features of the woman she loves. She’s on duty. Here, Mara must be the Queen, Petra can not afford to allow her heart even so much as a look-in on the matters of state, not while she is being relied upon to govern in Mara’s impossible to match up to stead.
She’s always on duty.
Footsteps hurry near her and Petra drags her mask of leadership over her face, while she’s on duty, she’s not Petra, she’s Regent-Commander of the Reef Petra Venj, Queen’s Wrath, First Lady of the Throne Beneath the Howling Dark, Hero of the Pallas Siege. She sits up, picking up her pad to read through the three reports that have come in for her since she sat down a few minutes ago.
The footsteps and the Corsair responsible for them hurry past her, but the Regent-Commander doesn’t relax, eyes focussed solely on the reports in her hands.
There’s no time for Petra here. Duty over all.
Another line of Cayde’s message springs unbidden to mind.
If it was the Queen, I understand. You’re a real glutton for chivalry.”
The lines of text on her pad blur together and Petra reluctantly yawns, dropping her pad and laying down to crash for a few hours of rack time before some other crisis that desperately needs her attention can erupt.
She dreams, as she always does, of Mara Sov.
“My Wrath.”
“My Queen.”
Mara greets her in her dreams with a calculated expression, lounging upon a throne of black glass in a realm made manifest of her own willpower.
“Are there any changes?” The Queen asks, and Petra does not allow herself even a moment to feel bitter that even in her dreams with the woman she loves, she must be on duty.
“None drastic, my Queen.”
She lays out tactical plans, showcases ideas, debates the merits of high risk actions, all according to her duties as Queen’s Wrath, until the black sun ringed with multicoloured fire crests the horizon and her nightly few hours with Mara are at an end. But the Queen of the Reef does not dismiss her.
“Petra.” Mara’s voice drops the tone of authority wholesale, delicate hand smooth without enduring the roughness of mortal combat sliding gently into Petra’s rough and calloused palm. “Are you well?”
Petra kneels in front of the throne, head coming to rest in Mara’s lap as her single eye looks up at her Queen.
“I’m tired, Mara. I’m so tired.” Petra’s eye slides gently closed and she listens to Mara’s breathing, even ensconced as they are in a land of dreams, it is real, an anchor Petra relies on more and more every night. Mara’s free hand sweeps its way through Petra’s hair, loosening it from its uniform regulation bun and combing out a knot or two one-handed, thumb caressing Petra’s cheek every so often.
“You can stay with me.” She offers. Toying with the edge of Petra’s eyepatch. “You are my partner, my equal, my love.”
Petra nods, but heaves a sigh regardless.
“I am also your Wrath, your Regent, your First Lady. Or Second Lady, I suppose.” She laughs, humourlessly, at her own joke, and Mara scoffs, albeit gently.
“Petra, I have never kept it secret from you that I loved Sjur, just as I have never kept it secret that you are not simply a replacement.”
“I know.” Petra leans into the hand still gently on her cheek. “Forgive me?”
“Always.” Mara whispers, eyes bright, in the same tone of voice Petra remembers her using for their somewhat hasty vows before the fleet of the Reef rode out to Saturn. “For any accident of speech, any sin however committed. You are always and completely forgiven.”
Petra leans back against Mara’s legs again, savouring the warmth of her presence, the stability that Mara brings to her whirling mind.
“I miss you.” She says, so softly that it could almost be a whimper.
“I am here.” Is Mara’s simple response. Her hand drops from Petra’s face to press over her heart. “You can talk to me.”
“I can’t.” Petra sighs, although her shoulders are relaxing, ever-so-slowly. “I am Regent-Commander. Duty before all else, my loyalty and life for my Queen and her holdings.” She repeats the words of her oath of renewal, feeling them taste like lead, heavy and dripping from her tongue like the weights cast around her ankles as she walks through life, following Mara’s effortless footsteps.
“Not here.” Mara says, with iron-clad finality. “Here, you are nothing but Petra. My equal, partner, equivalent in all matters of life.” The conflicting wording of her vows and her oath presses at Petra’s mind and her brow furrows, before Mara’s gentle words and careful hand soothes her stress. “Your sense of duty is one of the things I love most about you, Petra Sov, but it is not the only thing.”
Petra turns her head and presses a kiss to the palm of Mara’s hand as she cups her cheek again.
“If I had fallen in love with a lesser woman.” Mara remarks, “I would have been powerless to refuse their desire to remain in this between-space with me, nights and days on end, as my kingdom burned and my people fell to the touch of despicable power.”
“You’ll forgive me if I have a hard time imagining you unable to law down the law with anyone.” Petra says, a smile tugging at her words, and Mara answers with one of her own.
“That thought alone could be what makes you the woman I love. You’re special, Petra. Unwilling to shirk your responsibilities.”
Petra opens her mouth to say something, and Mara speaks again before she can.
“And again, I will remind you, you are not lesser than Sjur.”
“How?” Petra asks, though not in challenge.
“Sjur was a devoted follower, a warrior, a woman who embodied my Wrath as a title, an application of force for problems.” Mara’s brow creases, ever so slightly, at the thought of Sjur Eido. “My love for her was not the same as my love for you. We did not share moments like this, for example.” She raises their conjoined hands, just a fraction; Petra nods. “You are a devoted follower, it’s true. Duty unto death. But you are not a warrior, Petra. You are a soldier. Sjur was my Wrath in title, a force I could unleash at my displeasure. You are my Wrath in concept, a part of me, as deeply rooted within me as I am in you.” Mara leans forwards to press a kiss to Petra’s hand gripped in hers. “You are always my equal.”
Finally, Mara feels the tension drain, at least a little, from the woman resting against her. Petra’s posture alters, from the stress-ridden woman still carrying the weight of her orders and the lives under her command, to simply Petra again. Their responsibilities still weigh on them both, but Petra is no longer in quite so much danger of snapping.
But the moment can’t last, and Mara has to end it.
“The mortal world calls you, my love.”
“I know.” Petra sighs, standing slowly, Mara watches as the weight of her rank and office settles back around her Wrath like a heavy cloak. “Until the next night, My Queen.”
“I await your return.” Mara says, finally letting go of Petra’s hand as the younger woman fades from her realm and awakes on her cot in the Dreaming City.
A Corsair’s urgent shout in her ear of “REGENT-COMMANDER!” Jolts Petra from her sleep and she grabs her rifle as adrenaline floods her system.
“Report!” She orders, already rising and sprinting to her post.
“The Hive!” The Corsair’s voice is marginally distorted in her earpiece and Petra swears. The Hive are new, new could be good or bad.
”You got a blast radius, P.V.”
“You are always my equal.”
Petra reaches her Corsair and stops short, mind running a mile a minute at the structure she can see poking from the ground, surrounded by Hive.
This is the work of Xivu-Arath. Mara’s voice whispers in her mind, and Petra trusts her implicitly.
“Get me the City.” She orders. “We need our allies.”
I will see you soon.” Mara’s presence in Petra’s heart and soul dims as the Queen turns her attention to other matters.
Petra takes a breath as she waits for her Corsair to return with the radio, props her rifle on a rock, and joins in the shooting.
Her loose hair is caught by the gentle breeze of the Divalian Mists and Petra smiles ever so slightly as a bullet leaves her rifle and stops a Hive Acolyte stone dead.