✧ Fandom: Starfield (huge spoilers for the main story!!)
✧ Summary: The Hunter and the Emissary used to be just people. Two brothers whose lives changed when they came in contact with the Artifacts. Unfortunately, the Unity took one of them. The Hunter mourns him, and reminisces.
✧ CW(s): Angst. A lot of angst, fighting, and general sadness. Erasure of a person, Idk if that counts as death though.
✧ Inspired by Noah Kahan’s ‘Lighthouse’. I definitely recommend listening to it.
✧ Disclaimer: The Emissary & The Hunter are referred to as Dalton and Hunter here, respectively. This is based off a personal headcanon of mine (actually several things in here are my own headcanons)! Also the Hunter might be a bit OOC, as he’s just freshly passed for the very first time through the Unity at this point. This absolutely contributes to his later personality though. This one came out to be 2.7k words! Sorry in advance…
His right eye was swollen shut, and the pain was unbearable. But Hunter had ran all the way back to his ship anyway, and got far away from Jemison. All the while his brain replayed for him the man in white turning to him, and his face being wrong. That moment when he’d attacked Hunter, getting him to the ground to pull off his helmet and draw a knife- which Hunter had barely escaped, but had still paid the price for.
He wasn’t sure how bad the damage would render him, if he’d be blind in that eye or not. The process of dressing the wound was brutal, staring at himself in the mirror as he blinked away tears of pain while applying the last bandages. Then he really took a moment to actually look at himself once last of the adrenaline wore off and he was stable.
His eyes were never a slate blue…did the Unity take that piece of himself? Wipe it from his existence like his brother, rendering him alone? What else did it take from him?
The rage reared up all at once, and he slammed his fist into the mirror with a choked yell, shattering it and effectively giving himself more wounds to worry about. That didn’t matter to him at the moment. Hunter watched himself in the fragments, distraught, confused and just angry. He’d been right next to his ship. They’d gone together. Yet only he’d come out the other side into a new universe.
As he bent over, breathing heavily as he put his injured hand on the edge of the sink and watching the blood flow down, he thought about it. Interaction with the Artifacts and the Temples had proved to have- although minute- consequences themselves. There had been an adjustment period, and through the years they spent gathering them, even if they had aged all that time, they looked like they barely had physically. He placed himself at about 40 now, but he didn’t look it. Even Dalton, at 44, hadn’t either.
Maybe this had been an unprecedented consequence of the Unity. After all, they’d determined that it wasn’t necessary for humans.
After picking out the glass and bandaging his hand, Hunter walked away from the bathroom and turned the corner to sit on his bed, listening to the drone of the Scorpius as it autopiloted in a stable orbit around a random planet. He put his head in his hands, sniffling. How was he supposed to figure out all this by himself? How was he supposed to be fully, truly alone, now? Memories flickered in his mind, playing like a broken record.
His phone buzzed in the pocket of his cargo pants. Annoyed, Hunter ignored it in favor of finishing his weld bead while it was still molten metal. While finishing the weld, his phone buzzed twice more. He turned off the oxy-acetylene torch, flipping his welding helmet up to peer at the weld as it cooled at the hot end. He nodded in approval- though his welds were usually good because he’d been doing it since eighteen. He slid his phone from his pocket, brushing the back of his gloved hand against his forehead to clear the sweat, even though it smudged his skin with black.
Hunter’s brows raised as he looked at the contact name of the person who had sent the texts. Dalton. His brother. He opened them, eyes scanning over them.
> Hey, Hunt. I’m in town.
> The parents say you should come over here. They said they want a family meeting, like, immediately.
> I know your ass ain’t working THAT hard.
He stared at the texts, shifting his weight on the chair and setting the torch head down in a safe spot, then taking off his glove. They wanted him home. Six hours away. Well, he could use a break from work and he had more than enough PTO to cover it. He cleared his station, got a coworker to take his place, and left, shooting his brother a text.
> On my way. Save me some breakfast, I know how you eat.
As Hunter got into his car, shouldering his work bag off and setting it aside, he sighed, thinking he could stop by his apartment to wash up and be presentable. He reached for the ‘Engine Start/Stop’ button before his eyes caught movement, and he followed it to a group standing in front of a government building, a few soldiers just watching silently. A group of protesters, by the signs they held, and one angled enough toward him for Hunter to read it.
‘Save the Earth’, with a nicely drawn rendering of the planet. Hunter frowned, a pang of sadness touching his heart. It had been close to a year after the news of Earth’s magnetosphere beginning to collapse made headlines. Sure, the advancement of humanity being on faraway worlds now and expanding into deep space was wonderful and well sacrificed, but Earth was still humanity’s very first home. It was still a big loss. He looked away and started his car. No time to think about it now.
The drive had been long, and while he could have flown in, he didn’t want to spend the credits on a flight. But when he finally rolled up the driveway in the early morning, spotting his parents’ vehicles and the familiar dark blue of his brother’s, none of it seemed to matter anymore. He parked next to Dalton’s car and got out, walking to the front door and knocking- he’d forgotten to bring his key. He heard movement inside the house before the door was unlocked and swung open to reveal him.
Dalton stood slightly taller than Hunter, about 6’2” to his 6’0”, with bleached white hair cut short, and blue eyes that were as vibrant as the seas. He was four years older as well- 26, but they had about the same muscular build and were still very similar generally. When was the last time he’d even seen his brother? Hunter couldn’t really recall, and he felt a pang of guilt.
His brother, however, didn’t seem to care, as he pulled Hunter into a crushing hug, laughing like it didn’t matter. “Hey, you made it. Surprised that car didn’t break down on you.” Dalton joked as he pulled back moments later, grinning. He avoided Hunter’s playful smack to his head, but Hunter was grinning as well. “Don’t wish that shit on me.” he said, before moving into the house, while Dalton closed and locked the door. Hunter hugged both of his parents and they invited both the boys to sit down at the table, where breakfast was still warm. As Hunter grabbed his own plate and began to serve himself, his parents exchanged glances and then his father cleared his throat. Something hopped onto Hunter’s lap, and he looked down to see his childhood cat Holiday, a grey tabby. He purred immediately as Hunter pet him, and then curled up in his lap.
“Well, kids, we have some news.” Their father started. The brothers exchanged glances, and Hunter caught Dalton’s odd look. Like he already sort of knew what was happening. There was a pressing silence before his father spoke again.
“We’ve got tickets to a colony ship. We’d be going to ah…Jemison, I believe.”
Hunter stopped eating, staring at his father and mother like they’d just grown two heads or something. He laughed incredulously, like it was a joke. Except it wasn’t. He set his fork down, wiping his mouth on a napkin. “How the fuck did you do that? Those things aren’t cheap.” he asked. They were well off, all of them, each with good jobs that made them their living, but they weren’t really rich. The last minute evac ships would probably be much cheaper, but that would be forever from now.
Dalton cracked his knuckles, sighing. “Remember that internship I had with that shipbuilding company right out of school?” he asked, looking at his brother. “Yeah. Since I’m a higher up now, they offered me full family tickets. Free of charge. And we can even take Holiday.”
“Holy shit.” said Hunter, taking a minute to actually let his mind absorb the shock and weight of the fact that they were going to leave Earth. “When are we going?” he asked.
“What the fuck is that? Hey- Dalton, you should come look at this.” Hunter spoke through his helmet comms, his breathing slightly unsteady. This cave was not breathable air, unfortunately. None of that mattered right now, as his eyes scanned over the odd, suspended pieces of rock and the metallic, gravity defying thing stuck in a rock column in the middle of the cave.
The heavy footsteps of Dalton came up behind him, and his brother paused as he stood next to him, staring at the strange object. “The fuck?” Dalton said, and the two of them exchanged wordless looks through the visors of their helmets. After a few seconds of staring at the thing, Dalton chuckled and glanced sideways at Hunter with a grin. “I’ll give you a hundred credits if you go touch it.” he bribed. “Are you serious? What if it kills me?” Hunter retorted. Dalton rolled his eyes.
“It’s a piece of metal, bro.”
“Yeah, a gravity defying glowy piece of metal…y’know what? Deal. But if I die, I’m haunting your ass.”
Hunter stepped forward, carefully navigating the ground as he got closer to the column. He touched one of the floating, cubical rocks, watching as it floated away from him with a spin. It was fascinating. He continued closer, and his skin prickled with goosebumps. He swore he could feel the object’s resonance, its power, or maybe frequency, seeping into his very being. Once he got close enough, he stared at it, watching the staticky lines of light dance across its metallic surface. He could see a few symbols on it, and the way it seemed to be bonded together, as if it wasn’t just one. Against his better judgment, maybe out of the pure curiosity in his veins, he reached out and touched its metallic surface.
The two of them had spent years together taking odd jobs, searching deep space for the signatures of the Artifacts and later the Temples. They had nothing to go off of, no previous records of such things, so that’s why it took them so long. Along the way they worked together to engineer themselves an Armillary, their own spacesuits, and found ships of the same tech stranded on a remote, unsettled planet where they built a rest.
It was great. For a while.
Until Earth. When they went back, on the signature of an Artifact, it was pretty much dead. The signature led them into a NASA launch tower that still had a colony ship attached to it, and further still where they learned the truth of everything. Records, logs, you name it, they exposed a scientist by the name of Victor Aiza. He was actually the first human to ever come in contact with an Artifact, not them, and he was the one who sacrificed Earth for the investment of the grav drives, knowing what it would do. It distressed Dalton, Hunter could tell.
Even hours later, Dalton had sat in the same spot, staring at the Armillary, when they were supposed to go to some planet named Masada for their very last Artifact.
“Dal? Come on, man. We’re so close to the end.” Hunter pleaded with him as he approached, having abandoned his helmet on a table. “Look, Earth dying was worth it, alright? We’re spacefaring now. All across the stars. And look at us, we’ve got whatever this is going for us. You can’t be sad forever.”
“You don’t understand.” Dalton spoke lowly, running a hand through his hair, finally standing up. “Aiza killed Earth. He sacrificed an entire thriving planet for some dream. Because some ‘other version of himself’ told him to. None of us got a say in it. He made that decision for billions of people, and billions died because of him.”
He turned, facing Hunter now, the white of his suit reflecting the light. “Don’t you get it, Hunt? He killed billions under the guise of ‘science’. He was power hungry and too ambitious and he should have never had access to that fucking thing. Not just anybody should be able to access these just cause they can. They have real world consequences. They should be controlled.” Dalton reasoned.
Hunter simply stared at him for several seconds, almost shocked. He had thought they were on the same page. Apparently, that wasn’t true.
“What? We’re ‘just anyone’, Dalton-“
“We are responsible with them.”
“And who should decide that? You? Because your judgment is flawed just like any other human’s, Dal. You can’t just- have all authority over something like that! That’s not your place to decide who gets access to the Artifacts or who doesn’t! You can’t even control something like that on a mass scale. It’s-“
Dalton glared at Hunter. “I’ve seen the look in your eyes.” he said quietly.
“What-?” Hunter started, blinking.
“I’ve seen how you look at the Temples, the Artifacts. The look in your eyes when you use powers. It’s eroding you, too.” Dalton clarified. Hunter stepped back from him, feeling hurt. “I don’t- what are you talking about? Are you saying I’m turning into someone like Aiza?” he inquired, his voice rising.
“Then why’d you say it like that? What the fuck, Dalton?”
“You seem like you don’t give a fuck! When was the last time you even thought of all those people? Earth was our home! And you stand here not giving a damn! All you give a fuck about is this power, Hunter! I don’t even know you anymore, are you even my brother?”
Hunter stepped back several paces, visible hurt written across his expression. “I see how it is. You want to protect from people like me.” he spoke, tone hurt but tinged with sarcasm. He grabbed his helmet off the table. “Fine. Guess I’ll make this easy for you and just leave.”
He ignored his brother’s calling of his name as he walked out, toward the Scorpius, ignoring the way his vision blurred. He couldn’t believe any of this. He hadn’t wanted it to turn into an argument, but he supposed it would have been inevitable.
Dalton found him later, anyway. No matter their differences of opinion, they were still brothers, and they were all each other had.
The agony of grief ate at him, along with the guilt. Their last conversation hadn’t been that argument, thankfully, it had been Dalton reassuring him. But he wished they hadn’t had it at all, now.
His hands slid through his hair, interlocking at the back of his neck as Hunter leaned down, elbows propped up on his knees. The silence was loud and crushing. The…other person had been wearing Dalton’s white suit. Had the same opinions as his brother. But it just wasn’t him.
He wandered many universes over the years. Subconsciously, he searched for Dalton, even if he knew he’d never find him. Each time he came up empty, each time he saw the Emissary, each time he saw the scar over his eye, the wound of grief reopened itself. But eventually, it stopped being so painful, and Hunter became colder, hiding his emotions behind a wall. If he couldn’t reach them, maybe he’d never be hurt again. He’d never be close to anyone again, but maybe that was good too, because there was no chance the universe could steal them away too, and leave him all alone again.
Maybe Dalton had been right all along, after all. The Hunter didn’t even know anymore who he used to be.
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