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Marcus stood over the Drifter, his remaining crew standing behind him.
“You… really… shouldn’t’a done that,” Drifter’s voice was a whisper from the ground, blood pouring from his mouth, the pool of red behind him spreading rapidly across the tree-roots and pine needles on the cold stone.
“How you even talkin’ with such big holes in you, Hope?” Marcus kicked Trust out of the Drifter’s slack hand.
Drifter chuckled, blood splattering all over his face. “You made her mad.”
“You always chatterin’ Hope. Even now when, far as I can tell, you ain’t even got any more lungs. Always flappin’ them gums of yours. Ya just never stop talkin’. I cannot overstate the amount of satisfaction I am about to bring myself at finally, finally, getting to shut you the fuck up.” Marcus pumped his shotgun.
A frozen orb flung at high velocity knocked Marcus’s shotgun out of his hands.
Two gunslinger’s heads made wet crunching sounds in quick succession as spikes of stasis embedded in them, killing them instantly.
Marcus crouched and rolled away. The person beside him did not duck fast enough. He jerked as a bullet hole appeared in his face and then collapsed like a broken doll.
Marcus heard grunting beside him and the sound of a person’s neck snapping.
There was a blur of movement he could not follow. Another went down, gurgling, a shard of stasis in their throat.
Two more found themselves coated in ice, unable to move as a whirlwind of glass-like shards suddenly formed around them, whipping and tearing, freezing everything in its path.
Marcus’ eyes went wide as he watched his last two remaining crew go down with sniper shots to the backs of their heads while the ones who were flash frozen solid shattered with a loud crack and soft tinkles. Shards of stasis and crystalline flesh fell to the stone.
Marcus glared over at the Drifter bleeding out on the ground near him. The Awoken gunslinger’s lips formed a cruel smile as he reached behind his back to pull a hand cannon from its holster.
The gun was black with a sickly green glow. Three protrusions curved out from the front of the barrel, like horns.
Flat on his back, unable to move, the Drifter’s eyes went wide with recognition and fear. He watched in slow motion as the glowing green muzzle moved in an arc, aiming along the ground on a trajectory which would raise it to point at his head. He shuddered, his eyelashes wet with tears, his mouth full of blood.
Sorry, Moondust. I thought we’d have more time.
A frozen sphere crossed in front of his vision, knocking the barrel to the side.
A poisoned thorn-shaped bullet impacted a tree trunk not far from him.
As the Drifter’s eyes lost focus, a familiar looking brown boot kicked the gun out of Marcus’ hand.
The weapon skittered along the pine needles and came to rest against tree roots embedded in stone. Eris spun and crouched between Marcus and the gun, one hand holding a shard of stasis like a knife, the other one open, palm flat.
Marcus recoiled at the three hive eyes staring at him over a frowning human mouth, her expression calm, focused, vicious.
The frozen sphere returned to her open hand.
“The fuck are you?” Marcus asked, incredulous.
“Your doom,” Eris said solemnly.
She drew her hand back and pushed out. The Ahamkara bone whipped out and cracked against Marcus’ knee, crumpling it, before returning to her hand. He fell to one knee and pulled a knife out of his boot. She threw the stasis shard, pinning him by his shoulder to the trunk of the tree as she twitched the fingers of her other hand. The orb whipped out again. His wrist made a loud crunch and the knife fell from his now useless hand. She kicked the knife away.
Marcus dangled from where he was impaled on the tree trunk, fear in his face as Eris slowly walked over to the gun which glowed with the same green as her three eyes, and picked it up.
“Don’t…don’t you want to know who sent me?”
Her face was impassive as she walked toward him. “If you were hoping for mercy… you should not have attempted to use something like this,” she held up the weapon, “on someone precious to me.”
“Precious?” Marcus laughed. “That guy?”
“Yes.” She shot him in the head. Then she shot him in the head seven more times, stopping only when empty clicks indicated that the gun was out of ammunition.
***
Eris knelt beside the Drifter, freezing his torso with stasis in an attempt to stop the very large pool of blood he lay in from spreading.
His eyes were unfocused and his mouth was opening and closing, dribbling blood all over his beard.
His ghost hovered above him.
“What are you waiting for? Why aren’t you healing him?”
The ghost emitted its single tone and shook its eye back and forth. Eris’ breaths began to come sharp and fast.
“He is dying. Heal him!” Her voice became more frantic, louder, higher pitched. “Heal him now!”
It emitted its single tone, its light red.
“Why are you just floating there?” Eris shouted, her stomach in knots, her throat becoming rough with panic. “He’s dying!”
The ghost shook back and forth.
Eris grabbed it in her hands, smearing blood all over its soldered misshapen shell. She was shaking, overbreathing.
“I’ve watched too many people I love die!” Her voice screeched into a scream and then cracked as her throat clenched.
Her last words were forced out in a scratchy whisper between rapid sharp uncontrolled breaths. “Do not make me watch him die too.”
Eris clutched the ghost’s shell, gasping, as though her lungs had suddenly lost the ability to breathe air.
Listen... She ever tell you to do something, you do it… got that? I don’t care what it is or if it goes against something I told you. She says do it, you do it…
The Drifter’s ghost emitted its tone and its light became blue as it shook in Eris’ fingers.
She let go.
It opened up all the flaps of its shell and began spinning, bathing him in light.
***
He woke to the soft green glow of Eris’ eyes upside down above his face.
She tilted his head to the side and poured a bit of water into his mouth from a mug.
He coughed and spit out blood and water on her knees.
Eris took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
“Hey Moondust,” he whispered weakly, looking back up at her, his head in her lap.
Her hand stroked his cheek. Her breathing continued to be even and slow. Unnaturally controlled.
“You covered in my blood or everybody else’s?”
“Yes,” she whispered back.
“Is any of it yours?”
“No.”
He smiled up at her. She smiled back. Her perpetual black tears slipped from her cheeks and dripped down into his hair.
“I thought that was it there.”
“It almost was.”
“When I saw that gun, all I could think of was all the things we didn’t get to do together yet.”
“Well… now you have a list.”
“I suppose I do.” He winced. “Ah shit is that asshole healing me?”
“Yes.”
He frowned, his hands forming into fists. “I told him never to do that. Not ever.”
His ghost emitted its single tone.
“Do not be angry. He is doing as I directed.”
“Well he can stop now.”
“No. You are still bleeding internally.” She looked up at the ghost. “Continue.”
The Drifter’s ghost kept going.
“I don’t like that.”
“I don’t care.”
“It hurts.”
“Perhaps you could avoid receiving sucking chest wounds in future.”
He tensed and whimpered in pain.
She reached out and gripped one of his hands in hers so he could squeeze it while she cradled his head in her lap.
“I am here and I will stay with you until it is done. You are with me, Germaine. You are safe. I am here.” She continued to whisper to him as he flinched.
“It’s better with you. Not as bad. I don’t know why, but somehow you being here makes it not as bad.”
“You do not trust him, and to be healed by him is to be vulnerable… to him and everything else around you. You hate being powerless. But you do trust me, and you know I love you. You know I will keep you safe.”
“Heh.” The Drifter looked behind her at what was left of Marcus, crumpled next to the tree trunk. “Yeah. Yeah I do.”
She held him as he flinched and whimpered for a few more minutes.
Coo-ooo… coo…coo…coo…
The sad mourning dove song came from somewhere nearby. They were used to it now. It was pleasant and soothing.
Coo-ooo… coo…coo…coo…
“Hey, Moondust!” he asked her gently from his lap. The familiarity of the phrase was comforting to them both.
“What is it, Rat?” She ran a thumb along his cheek, saying the last word with as much affection as she could muster.
“You ever had the urge to… build a nest?”
“I do not understand the question. You may be delirious.”
“When we get back, I wanna pile every blanket and pillow and soft thing we got on my ship into one big heap on the bed, and then… I wanna lie in it with ya. In a nest. Our nest. Can we do that? Will ya do that with me?”
Her concerned face broke into a smile. “I have no idea what this is about, you ridiculous creature, but yes… if you want to do that… we can build a nest in your bed and lie in it together.”
He smiled up at her. “Hey… is this one of those situations where you’ll say yes to anything I ask?”
“Hmmm…”
“It is, isn’t it? If I really want something and I know you’d never agree to it otherwise. Now’s the time, ain’t it?”
“How far will you attempt to push your luck, I wonder?” She ran her fingers through his hair. It was sticky with blood.
“I wanna go out dancing with you. Not like by ourselves on my ship. Out on a dance floor, with lotsa people and loud music.”
She sighed.
The sparkle was back in his eyes and he chuckled. He reached up a hand to brush against her face, smearing his blood and her paracausal tears in a smudge across her cheek.
“Is that a yes?”
She turned her face and kissed his fingertips.
“Very well.”
“Promise?”
“I will go dancing with you. Yes.”
His smile became a roguish lopsided grin. “Gotcha.”
***
A couple of hours later, both Eris and the Drifter were sitting beside the once-more roaring fire, huddled under a sleeping bag, slowly drying off. It had been easier to just rinse the blood off in the lake.
The Eliksni family kept their distance, afraid of Eris. She did not make any attempts to soothe their fears. The Drifter and Crow had told them they would not be harmed. Eris made no such promises, but did not threaten them either. They all awaited the arrival of an incoming Vanguard patrol, feeling safer together than split apart.
Crow was high up in a nearby tree, keeping watch.
“...I assumed it wouldn’t matter. There are so many people who want to kill you. And he was only saying it to try to bargain for his life. Maintaining his continued existence ceased to be something I was willing to entertain the moment he attempted to shoot you with a weapon of sorrow.”
“So,” the Drifter pointed at the gun in her hand, “You do know what that is.”
“I’m not familiar with this one specifically, but I understood exactly what it was the moment I saw it, yes.”
“How?”
“They are very distinctive and… it is something with which I am intimately familiar… I have made one.”
“You what?”
“I have crafted a weapon of sorrow.”
He stared at her, open-mouthed, his head tilted to one side.
“My workmanship is superior to… this.” She held out the weapon she had kicked out of Marcus’ hand and then shot him with. She used a folded cloth bag to grip it by the barrel the way the Drifter had used a similar bag to protect himself from the handle of the cast iron pan.
“That’s cuz that’s just a copy of the original. The original drove a man nuts and turned him into a mass-murdering psychopath… who I… was associated with… for a short while.”
“When you were a Dredgen?”
“Yeah. Wasn’t one of my best decisions. Figured that one out pretty quick and bounced.”
“Hmmm…”
“Moondust… What exactly made you decide to… create… a weapon of sorrow?”
She looked from the fire to his face. “Vengeance.”
“Huh… I mean… I don’t know what other answer I was expecting… It’s you… Of course that’d be why… Remind me to never truly piss you off.”
“Unless you are planning on rivaling the atrocities of the Hive, you should not be concerned.”
“What’cha planning on doing with it?” He pointed at the weapon in her hand. “That gun’s name is Thorn, by the way. Before it was Thorn it was a gun named Rose. It was renamed when it got all… nasty.”
She held it out to him, grip first, keeping the muzzle pointed away from both of them.
“I… uh… already got one of my own…”
“One of the benefits of… club membership, I assume.” She placed the gun on the ground a respectful distance from both of them and the fire.
“Former club member... Ex club member… But yeah, guess you could call it that.”
“I suppose I shall give it to Ikora… and she can stick it in a vault.”
“You don’t wanna… keep it?”
“In case I need to kill a lightbearer?”
“That is generally what those are used for, yeah. They’re uh… effective at it.”
“Hmmm… Mine are better.”
His mouth opened again. He looked into the fire for a few moments and then back at her, blinking.
She smirked and then leaned in and whispered in his ear. “That turns you on.”
He swallowed. “That you are that much of a sheer fucking badass?” he whispered back. “Yeah… yeah that is a turn-on. Hot damn.”
She rested her head on his shoulder and he put his arm around her to pull her closer.
The fire crackled and spat.
“You know… when I was bleeding out on the rocks back there… I couldn’t see you and you seemed very far away but… I… I heard you scream at my ghost.”
“I was… upset.”
“I hope I never make you scream like that ever again.”
“Then I recommend you do your best not to die. The death of someone I love is something I find to be somewhat… traumatic… for reasons I believe are… obvious.”
He squeezed her tight for a moment. She leaned in to him, soothed by his breathing and his touch.
“It was heartbreaking, hearing you scream. Literally. It sounded like your heart was breaking.”
“I am very fond of you.”
“You ok now, Moondust?”
“I think so.”
They held each other close and stared into the embers of the fire as the sun set in front of them across the lake. A handful of stars began to peak out from the darker edges of the sky.
“Hey… thanks.” He kissed the side of her head.
“For what?”
“Saving me.”
“You mean something beyond your life this afternoon.”
A loon called out across the lake. Another loon answered, returning the mournful cry.
“Yeah. Yeah I do.”
The fire popped, spitting glittering cinders into the air. They hovered briefly before wafting away into ash.
“The feeling is… mutual.”