THERE ARE PLACES ON EARTH THAT THE WAR HASN’T TOUCHED. places like the cosmodrome, quiet and peaceful, haunted though they are. ( she’d stopped by a rusted truck, the coffin to a family, and spoke to old ghosts. they whispered words like peace and sleep and home, and sol envies them ; envies that they can choose to rest, disappear from the world, and no one will hurt for it. ) this world has made a killer of her and peace is a comfort found only among the dead, and those soon to be. ( he’s the only one left, the last of the old guard, and those have made habit of dying, lately. )
sol stops, closes her eyes. takes a deep breath and listens to the whispers of the dead on the wind. ( all things must die one day. it’s an unchangeable truth. but not him. not today. this, she’ll remind herself every day until death comes for the last time. ) she keeps walking.
it’s easy to pick shiro out when she gets close enough. blip of blue on her radar aside, he sticks out like a bright yellow canary, so out of place amongst the snow. ( she sticks out too, but where he’s dressed like summer, she wears vengeance and grief, an old - young ghost walking among the dead, never to join them. ) we wear each other’s colours, she thinks. he wears her name and she wears his grief, black and vermilion, sleek and sharp edged. not that the colours they wear aren’t their own, but sol can’t help thinking there’s a joke to be made about this — not that she’s got a got what it could be. ( that was cayde’s speciality — humour wielded skilfully as a blade / canon. )
helmet vanishes in the light of a transmat as she approaches and she squints at the sudden brightness. the memory of cayde is heavy on her back, but memory of someone she loves isn’t why she’s here.
“ been doing that lots, lately. he’s pissing me off. ” warmth meets warmth in voice and light as the void that’s carried her since the prison fades beneath her skin and solar steps forth, brushing against shiro’s light and curling ‘round him in a sort of loose embrace. an i missed you is stuck in her throat like a bone. for a moment, she drinks in the sight of him — keen blue gaze and yellow plating. tries to ignore the pang in her chest / growing hole in her heart shaped like him since he left. gaze drops to his hand, returns to his. her fingers twitch at her side. “ you look tired, shiro. ”
a chuckle, brief and quiet, escapes him, for there are few that are not annoyed with zavala by this point, but fewer still that would vocalize it so brazenly. it’s understandable, zavala’s newfound concern and over-caution, over dangers on earth. the city had fallen, briefly as it was, under his command, and he bore that failure on his shoulders like a hunter would a cloak. but he was still too persistent in his cautions, almost overbearing, and the hunters, who were so used to their freedom, were suffering for it.
cayde would have intervened on their behalf, tried to convince the commander that they needed their scouts to roam, but he was gone. and that made the suffocation all the more real.
he breathes in quiet and deep at the feeling of light around him, her light and traveler above, he missed her so, and his light reacts accordingly, little sparks coming to life around him as the warmth comes. he would never admit it to another person, another guardian or ghost, but there had been a great emptiness growing in him with all that had passed, and her absence had only made him feel more disconnected from it all.
he had not gone to cayde’s funeral, just like he had not gone to andal’s before, a bitterness having grown in him again at the thought of burying another friend, someone he had had first, and lost again to the vanguard dare. and that bitterness had grown, grown into something dark and angry but also empty. he hadn’t wanted anyone to see it, least of all her. so he’d left, and let that hole in him formed by her absence grow, let it consume his better judgement.
but she had found him regardless. because he could never quite leave no trace of him behind, not when he knew she was seeking him out.
another breath and then he’s turning to face her fully, hand still on the pommel of his blade, a partial squint to his eyes that suggests amusement at the observation. could an exo look tired? could they look worn and down and depressed? he didn’t think so. they were not flesh and bone anymore, had not been for a long time, and expressions of any kind were no longer possible.
but he knows better than to argue, knows sol wouldn’t let the matter go, would stand and point out every plating of metal and carbon fiber and composite that didn’t look right, would point out the way his shoulders were held lopsided and uneven, and the way his cloak had more rips in it than it had last time they’d spoken.
he thanks the traveler that cayde-6 is no longer there to see him to concede to her observation, thanks the traveler that she was the only witness to his weaknesses. “i’ve been scouting out camps since... maybe a week ago?” he admits. “i’ve lost track of time.” it’s not a lie, but it is. at the time he’d lost track of days, but now thinking upon it, he knew how much time he’d spent scouting without rest, and it was for longer than a week.
“what are you doing out here, sol?” he asks, a quick change of subject he hopes she’ll bite.
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