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Even now, weeping and clinging to Osiris, Saint is careful of his weight. It is a mad thing to come to mind, Osiris thinks, as he wraps his arms around his beloved, clings back, and tries to be the rock that Saint has always been for him. That he deserves.
He rubs his hand lightly against Saint’s back, worries that it will seem like a parody of concern. He has always been awkward when it comes to offering comfort, the gestures always feeling like an ill-fitting robe, and the words sounding hollow and trite when what he wants to do is fix the problem.
There have been so many problems recently that he cannot fix. He wishes now that he had become more adept at offering comfort.
He manages to close the door – he does not want some passerby to intrude on Saint’s vulnerability, or to see his own expression which he can only imagine must be lost – and begins to manoeuvre them both towards the sofa. Saint goes where he nudges, keeps tight hold of him as though the tide will wash him away if he loosens his grip for a second. That ragged, raw sound keeps escaping him, and all Osiris can do is sink onto the sofa with him and make sure that Saint can feel the weight of his presence through his armour.
Saint’s armour is stained darkly with ichor that looks like rot spreading across the metal. The scent of it is pungent, and for a moment it overwhelms, fills his nose and his mind with sense-memory – the creep of something terrible towards him through the darkness, sickly light and clinical hands dissecting his memories, his knowledge.
Her laughter. Condescension. Drowning.
“Osiris…”
Saint’s voice drags him back to himself and he turns his attention to Saint. He deserves that does he not? His full, undivided attention.
“I am here,” he promises. He touches Saint’s helmet. “May I take this off?” He knows what security armour can be to Guardians – he will not make Saint feel more exposed by assuming the answer.
Saint is still for a moment save for the hitch of his breath, and then he nods. Osiris curls his fingers against the edges of it and pulls it off until he can see his beloved’s face.
Exos do not display emotion the same way that flesh and blood humans do, there is no soreness around Saint’s eyes, no blotchiness of skin. But simulated tears are no less real, and Osiris can read the minute changes in the set of his faceplates, the shade of his optical lights. A deep grief.
“My love.”
Saint shakes, and Osiris draws his head against his chest, holds him through the fresh wave of sorrow. He kisses the top of Saint’s head, everywhere he can reach, murmurs his adoration, his devotion.
When was the last time that he saw Saint cry? There had been tears of relief, of joy, when Osiris had awoken, yes, but like this?
Had it been the aftermath of Twilight Gap? Barely standing walls and more funerals than Osiris could count. Or earlier? A destroyed settlement, a burnt home, a rescue mission arriving a few seconds too late. Too many days without sleep. Too many deaths with no chance to recover.
Osiris feels old.
He curls his fingers against the back of Saint’s neck and presses another kiss to the top of his skull, closes his eyes, breathes.
Eventually the deep wracking sobs slow, then become shuddering breaths, then become a pained and fragile stillness, only their breath and the soft ever-present hum of the working of Saint’s body. Osiris dare not move lest he shatter this exhausted calm. He wouldn’t move anyway, not while Saint is here, holding him like he is a bulwark against the world.
Titans are the Wall, but who is the wall for them?
He moves gingerly, carefully shifting them both to lie down, Saint’s head still against his chest, and wraps a leg around the other man’s. He rubs Saint’s back again, anything to keep touching him, keep proving to Saint that he is here.
Eventually Saint stirs and looks up at him. Osiris meets his gaze steadily, and rests a hand against his cheek.
“You must think me ridiculous, my bird,” Saint says. He sounds hoarse, a static crackle at the edge of his voice.
“Never,” Osiris replies vehemently. He will not allow Saint to believe such a thing.
Saint turns his head, presses his mouth against Osiris’ palm in a soft kiss. “I am sorry for keeping you waiting.”
“How many times have I kept you waiting far beyond a few hours?” Osiris asks. Days, weeks.
Countless years within the Infinite Forest.
“I do not like to be late to spend time with you,” Saint says. “Especially not with something so…” He shakes his head, starts to pull away, stand up.
Osiris lets him, and Saint walks into their small kitchen. He pours a glass of water, drinks it, back turned away from the Warlock.
“You wish to ask, do you not?” Saint says, still not looking at him. “I can practically hear your mind working.”
He does. How can he not when it has left Saint in such a state? But the hive ichor on his armour, the events of the past few weeks… He does not need a prediction engine to make an educated guess at some of what had transpired.
“Do you want to talk about it?” He can restrain his curiosity for Saint’s sake.
Saint is silent. He washes the glass and sets it aside, and Osiris can see the hunch of his shoulders when he leans against the counter.
“I do not know.”
“Come and sit with me,” Osiris says.
For a second, he thinks that Saint will ignore him. Maybe he will walk away, leave the house, return later when Osiris is likely to be asleep, or engrossed in other work. But no, that was a long time ago. A worse time, when avoiding each other had seemed the only way to avoid hot tempers, and the bonds of duty had become an infected wound that neither of them could seem to heal. Then Saint turns – his smile is small, aching, but present – and crosses back towards him.
Geppetto appears briefly to remove his armour, and leave him in soft shirt and pants, and the Eliksni-made poncho that he treasures. It transforms him from Saint-14, hero of Six Fronts, greatest Titan who ever lives, into Saint, a man who feeds the local birds, who plays with the children of the city, who longs so much for peace. The man that Osiris fell in love with all those centuries ago.
Osiris takes his hand and twines their fingers together, then draws Saint in to sit with him. He braces himself against the arm of the sofa, and has Saint settle against him. His love presses his face against Osiris’ neck, and Osiris can feel the warmth of vented air against his skin. Saint’s arms curl around his waist, just a little more tightly than would be normal. Osiris welcomes it. He has certainly clung to Saint enough since he woke.
“You went to Savathûn’s Throne World,” Osiris says softly, and the way that Saint tenses confirms the guess. “Did you find her?”
There is a numbness creeping through him, as there often is when he thinks of Savathûn. The things he remembers… he is not sure if the numbness is healing, or hiding. He finds himself bracing for the pain and memories to overwhelm him. At least now he has the grace to accept that it will come when it comes, and attempts to forestall it or make it come when it is most convenient will inevitably cause more harm than good.
Still, he hopes that the storm will wait until they have weathered this greater calamity.
Saint pulls back a little, enough to meet Osiris’ gaze. “You tracked me?”
There is nothing accusatory about Saint’s voice, more a fond, tired, amusement than anything, but Osiris still scowls even as he strokes Saint’s cheek. “Your armour. Hive gore and the scent is… familiar.”
“I am sorry,” Saint says. “I did not mean to bri–”
“You have nothing to apologise for, my love,” Osiris replies. “As long as you are not harmed.” He knows the poison that the Witch Queen is capable of. They may have reached an uneasy truce with her in the facet of Xivu Arath and the Witness, but she is far from being an ally.
“I am…” Saint begins, then trails off, optics dimming a little. “I did find her,” he says finally. “And I killed her. Many times.”
Osiris closes his eyes at the harsh note in Saint’s voice. He should be glad to hear this, shouldn’t he? He should celebrate this act of vengeance against one who had harmed him, impersonated him, imprisoned him. He just feels… hollow.
“Is she–”
“She lives still,” Saint says, a twist of distaste to the words. “Perhaps I should have ended her and her traitor Ghost, but I–” He takes a deep breath and buries his face against Osiris’ neck once more. Osiris feels him shake, the sobs dry and heavy now.
Only when they subside does Osiris speak again. “You did not have to do this. I–”
Saint lets out a heavy breath and sits up. He adjusts them into a more comfortable position, so they lie facing each other, rather than Saint on top of him. “You do not need me to claim revenge on your behalf,” Saint says. “You will choose your own catharsis, and I will help as I can. No, this… this was for me.”
There is a lump in Osiris’ throat, sour with shame. He has always been self-centred, so convinced of his unique responsibility to keep the universe functioning. Of course Saint has his own pain. He has heard from others about how many nights and days Saint spent at his bedside. Of his rage at the Witch Queen’s revelation of her trickery. Of the cruelty that she had shown him.
So much pain that Osiris had not been there to see.
“Did it help?” he asks finally, quietly, as though the answer may break one of them. “Do you feel better for it?”
Would it help him to cut her down, to see her life bleed out at his hand? Would it lance the remaining wounds of his captivity, the memories which bubble up from the depths as nightmares?
Or would it just give her a bigger place in his mind than he wishes her to have?
“I feel… I feel tired, mostly,” Saint admits. “Perhaps is too soon to tell. Maybe I will sleep and feel cleansed. But I know that I do not regret it,” he adds firmly, and Osiris recognises in those words the voice of the man who had commanded the forces of the City before there was much that could be called a city. “Perhaps I am being selfish,” he adds, awkward with the admission.
Osiris runs his fingers against the seam of Saint’s mouth lightly, and Saint presses a kiss to the tips of them. “You deserve to be a little selfish, I think. You have always offered far too much of yourself. “
Subsumed himself into the position of the paragon, the example of all that Guardians could be, in the same way that Osiris had allowed his legend to become all that people saw. But one cannot be a legend and also a man.
“I would not say that,” Saint replies, “but to do something purely for myself…”
He trails off again, and Osiris gives him that time to collect himself. He rests their foreheads together, letting Saint’s breath warm him, burn away some of that numb feeling.
“I wanted her to feel helpless,” Saint eventually says, voice low and quiet. “To feel what I felt when I could do nothing but wait for you to wake, or when she spoke with your voice and made me believe that–”
He cuts off, turns his head away. Guilt? Anger? Osiris cannot tell for sure, but he knows that whatever it is, it is not Saint’s fault.
But he thinks he knows what she made him believe. He knows what many people have thought of him since he woke. It is not difficult to make those connections.
“That I was corrupted,” Osiris says. “That I had fallen to the Darkness, allowed the Vex to invade, betrayed everything we worked for.” He gives a sharp, humourless laugh. “That I am everything that people claimed that I was.”
And it does hurt to know that Saint had believed that even for a moment, but it is a small thing compared to his concern for his beloved.
“Yes,” Saint says, utterly wretched in a way that sparks fury in Osiris’ breast.
“The blame is hers,” Osiris says. He grasps Saint’s chin, makes the exo look at him, to see that fury burning on his behalf. “Not yours.”
Saint stares at him for a moment and then nods. Osiris feels him relax against him, as though some knot of tension has begun to unwind. How long had Saint been keeping that trapped inside himself? As though Osiris could ever condemn him. Even at their bitterest he had never truly been able to blame Saint.
“I showed her what it means to feel helpless,” Saint says. “The Witch Queen knows many things, but I hope that she has learned that feeling from me. A gift, to pay back what she gave me.”
“A worthy gift, from a worthy teacher,” Osiris says, and he cannot help the coldness that creeps into his voice. “I hope that she learns the lesson well.” Maybe it will change her, knowing what it means to be helpless. Knowing what so many of her victims have felt over the countless millennia of the Hive’s existence.
Maybe it won’t change anything at all.
She has, he thinks, taken up too much of both their minds today. For weeks honestly, ever since Eris had enacted her plan.
He cups Saint’s face between his hands. “Come to bed.”
Saint frowns. “It is not late yet.”
“Catharsis may refresh, but it is also exhausting,” he says. Everything that he had felt after he woke had been difficult, raw. And Saint had sat with those festering emotions for a year or more with no promise of resolution. Like a thread drawn taut until the release threatens to break it.
“It is,” Saint agrees. “Yes, I will come to bed.”
It is never that easy of course, but they fall into a well worn and comfortable domesticity as they prepare. Osiris makes tea and fetches food while Saint showers, and he wishes for the water to sluice away those hurts as much as the dirt.
They finally settle in together, a world for just the two of them. Saint rests his head against Osiris’ shoulder while he reads out loud from the novel that he is working through.
For a while at least, they are at peace.
When Osiris wakes, it is to find the sun streaming in through the gap in the curtains. He winces and shields his eyes, opens his mouth to ask Sagira the time and– oh. The grief aches, but it is no longer a knife lodged between his ribs or a thorn in his palm.
Saint stirs next to him, and Osiris watches fondly as his love curls away from the sunlight and against his side. How honoured he is, to be able to see Saint like this, vulnerable and utterly comfortable with him.
“Apparently, we both needed more sleep than we realised,” Osiris says dryly. He strokes Saint’s head lightly until the exo looks up at him with one bright eye.
“We would not if you took my advice to leave your books and reports earlier than you do.”
It is an old argument, one long since shorn of its sharp edges. Osiris laughs and leans down to kiss him.
“How do you feel?” he asks. Sleep can be healing, but it does not cure all ills, or wash away all dark feelings.
Saint thinks about it. “Empty,” he says finally. “But empty like I have been carrying a heavy load for a long time and now it is gone. I ache from carrying it still but I know that it will fade with time.”
Osiris nods. It is probably the best that can be hoped for considering the circumstances. It certainly could be worse.
“We shall both live well,” he promises, “and let the memory of her wither on the vine.”
“You have a way with words, my bird,” Saint replies. He smiles and it is still one of the most beautiful things that Osiris has ever seen. “Will you stay with me today? I do not wish to be alone.”
There is a hesitance to the question that Osiris hates. He could easily curse a younger version of himself for making such hesitance exist. But it would not help.
“Of course,” Osiris replies. He lies back down and takes Saint’s hand in his. “Anything for you, my love.”
Saint wraps his free arm around Osiris and draws him close. He gives an exaggerated yawn. “Then we will sleep more. And we will have breakfast when it is lunchtime.”
Osiris laughs and curls towards Saint, basking in the warmth of his presence and the lazy sunlight through the curtains. “Ridiculous man.”
“But you love me.”
“I do.”
And there is no force in the universe strong enough to make him stop.