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Peace. That feeling of perfect calm washed over Cherish as she looked out onto the Last City. Her eyes flicked from light to light to light to the Traveler that hung in the sky above, a serene and mute shape.
She remembered seeing it for the first time. The awe of something divine and incomprehensible. Her first steps in the City, a sword heavy against her back and a cloak wavering lightly in the wind, her silver hair swept back. Wonder in her icy eyes and excitement in her chest. So much love. Her name, sweet on her lips as she chose it.
“What a sight!” Lodi exclaimed beside her. His eyes, one human, the other godly, stared up at the sky. He had little acquaintance with the Traveler, of course, but its presence seemed to have affected him as well.
“Better get used to it.” Cherish smiled. “It has been here for so long, I can’t imagine a sky any other way.”
“Me neither,” Crow said, leaning from her other side.
Cherish closed her eyes.
She felt… happy. Life as a Lightbearer had thrown her around violently, and yet she had come out of it victorious and alive. With sweat and blood, but she did it.
She felt Crow’s gentle touch against her hand as his fingers covered hers.
“Hey,” he called softly. “Everything alright?”
Cherish met his eyes. That amber gaze glowed with contentment. Cherish felt a balloon swell inside her chest, she thought of all those years prior. Meeting Uldren, hunting him down across the planes of the Tangled Shore. Deciding his fate. And then meeting Crow. Watching him become the man he was today. Beside her. Her friend, her companion, her lover.
“I’m just so glad you were here this whole time,” she said. Words were finding a way out of her system, even if she had never been good with them. They tumbled and fell from her lips, and her eyes stung with sudden tears. She wasn’t sure why.
“I’m glad I was, too,” Crow nodded. “No other place I’d wish for.”
He kissed her cheek as Cherish felt her other hand picked up by Lodi. The man’s touch was warm, like the blaze of the sun, and maybe it was. But he was terribly gentle, as if she were a fragile thing. His fingertips brushed the many scars of Stasis on her skin, and then he squeezed her hand in his.
“I can’t claim the same amount of get-to-know-you,” he said. “But thanks for having me along anyway.”
Cherish laughed softly. Everything seemed surreal. Her life, her companions, the sight of the Traveler up in the sky and the wind playing with her hair. She felt like such a young Lightbearer again. The net of lights beneath the city sprawled in front of her like a magnificent web. She felt hope again, that very same hope that made her step light in her early Lightbearing days.
She squeezed the two hands in either one of hers. She wanted to focus on this moment. Later, she would go see her best friends. Saint-14 and the Drifter. She would visit Zavala and Ikora and Eris and Osiris. She would take every day in stride and enjoy every minute and be ever so grateful to be here to witness it.
But right now, she pressed a kiss against Crow’s soft lips, then Cherish kissed Lodi.
She was terrible with words. But when she said, quiet, “I love you”, everyone understood.