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eri-223 · 6 years

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Destiny 2: when the cold day comes

Jenev Furnon has both hands on that thorny gun, eyespots sprouting green from its tangles, when she decides whether or not to shoot the Drifter. Will the way this started make any difference to the way it ends? Guardian/Drifter, 3k, rated T

Jenev Furnon has both hands on that thorny gun, eyespots sprouting green from its tangles, when she decides whether or not to shoot the Drifter.

She focuses on the reticule on his chest instead of the black-clad people approaching through the trees. Leaves swirl around her and fall to the spongey ground, the first warning bells of autumn coming to the emerald coast. The trap has snapped shut. The gambit, the opening play in a quiet war, has given way to Shadows at the edge of her vision. Guardians startled mid-match have already been transmatted out, leaving her and these black-cloaked, masked cultists, and the Drifter himself.

(Her Drifter?)

Jenev is a Hunter, so her questions all imply action.

1. Which one should she aim at first?

2. Are the Shadows of Yor coming to help or hurt her? After all, she holds Malfeasance. She clawed toward that old title—but was it for the same reason?—it was for a different cause—

3. Is she as complicit as they are?

4. Will the way this started make any difference to the way it ends?

Weeks earlier.

It starts on a hot, humid night in the Tower, wind blowing like a murderer’s breath. Someone else’s fireteam is going after Cayde’s killers, insists a nervous beat in the back of Jenev’s head. She taps her fingers against her knife, blue-silver Awoken hands against blue-silver metal. The Fallen from the prison and that rogue prince killed him, people say. Out there in the Reef, rocks spin in long, crazy orbits and Tower law is a rumor and a suggestion. The Tower there is as optional as gravity. That’s Jenev’s world (not Reefborn but Reef-tugged, Hunter-born, fond of wild space and the unknown) and she can’t go there now. With other Guardians on the trail, she thinks as her stomach curdles, she would just get in the way.

Another new horizon has opened up in her world. Visions of jade coins won’t leave her: that carefully edged stone, the luck of the draw, the Drifter’s dragging shuffle. She has been throwing herself into Gambit, win or loss, seeing motes in her sleep and wondering whether the rumors of Shadows were true. So she goes to him, ducks under the grated door (half-closed like he doesn’t want visitors, like he’s hiding something), and they talk about coin tricks.

Half the time he looks away, even turns half-around like he doesn’t know she’s there. But he keeps talking, and eventually they’re both leaning against the glowing machine near his workbench, so that when he turns it’s toward her. Fluorescent light casts neon glow, turns shadows into pitch. She toys with her braids, digging blue fingers into black strands. And his scarred face is very close, and his hands are very quick, and she wonders what horrors she can manage to forget on a night so hot the air seems hateful.

They talk about sleight of hand and the weather and the frustrations of being a Hunter grieving for her Vanguard, and then when he balances a jade coin across his knuckles she snatches it from him and takes his hand. Meets his eyes while she turns his hand over, places the coin in his palm and strips the padded gauntlet off, folding the coin inside clammy cloth. His hand is scarred too, ugly bar-punch ripples of tissue across his knuckles. For someone with a Ghost, marks mean vanity. Jenev’s stomach aches.

“Who are you?” she asks.

“Who do you want me to be, ma’am?”

Coy. Fool. Perfect. She’s happy to mix the interrogation with the purr in his voice, so before she speaks again she pins his hand to the curve of her hip. The glove crumples onto the floor. “It’s no secret you work with dark things. How do I know I can trust you?”

“Work with ‘em? I bind ‘em. Doesn’t matter what you work with if you’ve got a knife to it’s soft parts.”

“Funny. I was about to say the same thing.” She draws her own blade. The blue-etched sheen glints in his eyes as she presses the flat to his cheek, against the three too-clean scars. “Let’s say I’m not a Guardian tonight. If I’m just a Light thing, looking to bind you…?”

She shifts the knife to his lips. He grins, wicked, then licks the flat of the blade.

It’s easy to sheath the knife while he moves back against the neon, drawing her against him with his bare hand. On the plaza, a heavy rain begins. No one will see us, Jenev thinks. No one will turn that corner, duck under that door. When she kisses him he tastes sour, his beard scratching against her cheeks. Her world becomes heat, static, warm rain on her face. And then she remembers who he is, who she is, the suspicion with which she flavored her attraction. Maybe it should have been more than suspicion.

She pulls back, slams her hands onto the machine to either side of his head with breaking force. They’re both breathing loud, winded as the invader after the fourth kill. The Drifter licks his lips and hums, ambitious and satisfied all at once.

She stays close enough to feel his lips against hers as she speaks. “Let’s get you in that arena. See how you are against the Taken.”

The Drifter smiles, slow. “How many times have I seen you die? It ain’t pretty for anybody, but what are bodies for Guardians? Ghost’ll raise you right up.” His gaze sharpens. “But you.... There’s even grace when you fall. When you become little bitty embers, I just wanna scoop ‘em right up.”

The Drifter’s problem, Jenev thinks, is that he talks too much. But there is such promise in his words. She speaks of a thinly-held belief to get her bearings. “You’re a fool if you think primevals will prepare us for that prince.”

He interrupts her. “You want training, go talk to Shaxx. That ain’t my job, sister. You want blood … I think I do my part all right.”

She talks over him right back. “I said, let’s see you in embers for once.”

She kisses him again, feels the jolt as the back of his head hits the plastic. Jenev raises a hand to his throat, sharpened silver nails like knives. They both like to fight, so she gives him just the suggestion of blades against paper-thin skin, and then puts her other arm around his shoulders and sighs against his neck because it wasn’t all fight. He supports her while she clings. The grief for Cayde has retreated, or devolved into a smaller creature.

“That’s enough of an answer for me,” she says.

“All right.” He shrugs like he doesn’t care, but meets her eyes with a concerned softness.

“Hunters make bets.” She moves backward, hand still outstretched. “Ten wins, and we can try this again. See if you can kiss better with practice.”

“Your wins?” He looks at her calmly and stretches his arms above him, showing off. “What exactly is the losing part of this bet, darlin’?”

“Doesn’t seem to be one, honey.”

“’Til next time.”

The grief has faded. She slips the coin she stole from him out of her pocket, and makes sure he can see it between her fingers before she turns the corner.

After the ten wins, he calls her.

“I’m opening up a new Gambit arena in that Dreaming City. Want to scope it out? I’ll give you a behind the scenes look.” His drawl turns slavering, sometimes.

She says yes.

Her Ghost, Iris, asks questions all the way to the Dreaming City. She’s practical and warlike, and both she and Jenev are comforted by one another’s speech even if they often tune it out. Iris memorized the major armories’ catalogues. Her Ghost is a Warlock, Jenev jokes sometimes.

And then the Drifter ushers her through a silver door into the Cathedral of Scars. The beauty of the crystals and plants makes her want to touch every surface, see it all from every angle.

“How did they let you into this place?” she asks.

“What, because I’m not Awoken?”

“No. Because you’re …” You. Even as an Awoken, she doesn’t feel a connection to this impossible place. Nevertheless, its majesty replaces more personal worship easily. How was it preserved for so long? What invisible cosmic dust is coating all of those jeweled pathways, all of those geodes glistening with water? Her distant cousins keep secrets. And here’s the Drifter, exhaling greed, owning a patch of the place. She resists gesturing at him, especially because she would be too tempted to touch him if she tried. “Not exactly the Vanguard’s favorite.”

“I know the Ascendant Plane, sister. This world touches it like clothes on skin. Doesn’t matter what the Vanguard thinks if they don’t know. Me and Petra worked some things out.”

They walk toward the sunlight, across shining floors.

He thinks himself so separate from the Tower, Jenev considers, but Ikora surely knows more about him than she lets on. After all, she controls the Hidden, the long arms of the Tower. Eris Morn, one of the Hidden now, had even been in a place not so different from the Drifter’s situation years ago. People hadn’t trusted Eris either, but through secrets and service she had become a part of the Tower. If Jenev asked what the Drifter thought he was getting away with unbeknownst to the trio, she wouldn’t get a true answer.

Duo.

The correction thunders through her.

The Drifter gestures her forward. Before they walk into the courtyard (beautiful, fragile) she gets his attention, back of her fist to his shoulder like a fireteam friend. He pushes her back, flat of his palm, and laughs. It’s the thrill of a new place, a strange place. The steps far ahead of them, beyond the plaza that will be the backfield float impossibly out beyond a foggy cliffside. Hunter wanderlust and the memory of kisses in the Tower drives her forward. She wants to talk to the Drifter forever and she wants to make him wait before she speaks.

“Lots of ways to mess a place like this up,” she says. Explosions in the crystals. Gilding ripped off the walls. Gold melted in sun-fire. Guardians were going to chew throughthis place. Good. She thrills to know she’ll see it. Let the Reefborn know they aren’t untouchable.

On the edge of a cliff stands a blue-purple platform, like a sequoia trunk sliced low and transformed into crystal. The surface is smooth but not slippery. The Drifter lays out a picnic: spring rolls and bread thick with grains, one cup and a bottle of a blue-black drink she doesn’t recognize, busy with bubbles.

“Soon they’ll be killing on every inch of this place,” he says.

The wind blows gentle, spiked with the acid scent of the endless drop. Trees wave, sending leaves spilling down. “Good. Get them ready for the ugly stuff.”

“There’s beauty in that too, sister. Death always brings out the vitality of things.”

Speaking of that. “Let’s talk about my ten wins, if you so much want death.” Pride bubbles in her chest, along with impatience. “I challenged you too.”

In answer he shifts closer to her, one leg stretched beside hers on the violet stone and one arm propped up on his other knee. His fingers brush her thigh so lightly she can barely feel them, just a prelude. The kiss isn’t sour, isn’t clean or furious as their first had been: it’s messy and whole-hearted and tastes like mint and ozone. She sits up against him, pressing her fingers deep into his hair and under the bandana where it scrunches against the back of his neck. He’s sweat-salty and lost, and when the kiss ends he pulls away from her bright-eyed and with a laugh that heaves up from him like a drumbeat.

When the Shadows do come, the wind is high and loud. Jenev stands in the emerald coast, listening to it roar grim and impersonally hateful as apocalypse. The Shadows of Yor are a hooting band like she imagines Prince Uldren’s Fallen allies to be, but the shapes under dark cloak are all Guardians. They attack mid-match, as the Drifter planned they would. She was in Gambit herself, which of course was also part of the plan, since she has the gun.

Figures flicker between the trees.

The Drifter himself marches across the grass, without a war helmet, pistol in hand. “Let’s go, sister. If we take ‘em out, we end this!”

In surprise and fear, she points Malfeasance at him.It startles him, an honest expression she isn’t used to seeing.

Light, she wants to help him. She wants to fight by his side, to wear his mark, to leave her marks on him. But what if her first instincts were right, the ones that said she couldn’t trust him? What if he’s smarter than he appears to be, and can hurt the Vanguard? If she took him out for just a moment, stopped the game with the very gun she earned from her devotion to it, she would be changing the tide of the Shadows on a whim. What power! But it would be a whim, chaos sewn. She’s used to acting on impulse.

She looks back and forth between the Drifter and the people lining up, careful as a high noon standoff, at the tree line.

She knows the Vanguard wouldn’t want her consorting with shadows, but Cayde was always irreverent and the other two are shattered with grief. Loyalty to the Tower has always come second for Jenev: second to her instincts, second to her wants. She knows now that she can please both sides: the Vanguard of the Light will want the Shadows of Yor dead, and the Drifter will want to draw attention to his game. After Cayde died, the whole world feels more gray.

Neither the Vanguard nor Cayde nor the Drifter nor Jenev herself would benefit from her staying her hand against Dredgen Yor’s followers. She has no love for the Shadows. She teeters on the edge of a cliff, and there’s no harm for a Guardian for following that impulse to jump.

She carefully takes one hand off Malfeasance to flash the jade coin at him, the one she stole. Please understand this message. I’m gambling right now. I’m performing sleight of hand. The Shadows are frozen in confusion. She sees him take his first breath since she raised the gun.

Then she steps onto the backfield and fights. The Shadows swarm, person-shapes becoming monstrous. Malfeasance screams in her hands. Maybe the gun is the only part of her that feels for the Shadows. Hive magic! It exalts. Twins-in-Darkness! She rejects whatever grief she imagines for it.

She sees almost immediately how the Drifter plans to shake the Shadows. He has unleashed some of the Darkness he keeps, trapping the Shadows in a zone where their Ghosts struggle to raise them. She feels it too, but she isn’t the one trying to gain ground. Interesting to have the upper hand, to be the one creating the mess instead of cleaning it up. Especially if the Shadows never reveal their leader. To them, it’s an exploratory cut. To the Drifter, it’s a slaughter.

She pumps the trigger. A Shadow drops, his chest a broken blur. Others rush forward, and she takes the opportunity to burn up and throw knives into three of them before they can recover. She sidesteps and returns fire. They’re good, but she has Malfeasance, and the Shadows can’t break into the space between her and the Drifter’s backs.

She sees him spin his pistol like a trick shooter behind the nearest Shadow. Crack of a shot, loud and almost echoing, and that one goes down.

Then it’s over, almost too easily. This wasn’t the real thing, she thinks immediately. They were testing us, too. Two remaining Shadows fade into the forest.

She holsters her gun, hardly seeing the landscape in front of her any more. Will the Shadows come back? What did they learn?

The Drifter moves closer to her, looks down at her with absent calm.

“They’ll be back with more,” she says.

“What did you think would happen, sister? We took down what, ten of ‘em? That’ll give the old man a message. They’re recruiting fast these days.”

Malfeasanse seethes at her back. Am I a recruit? “This gun brought them out already. And they didn’t wait around to hand me pamphlets. Guess I don’t fit their criteria even if I do have it. Which means we can bait more.”

“Game’s gonna accelerate now,” he says.

“Come here,” Jenev says.

He’s looking into the middle distance, back toward where the Shadows arrived. She grabs his arm, pulls hard enough that he stumbles.

“I’ve earned this,” she says, and kisses him on the mouth. She can feel his sly smile, can see it as clearly as if she was beside them instead, watching human-pink lips on Awoken-silver. There’s a smile, too, in the way he holds her around her shoulders. She curls her hands into fists at the small of his back, tenses for a moment before she gives in to herself and presses further against him.

“There’s still one more step,” he says against her cheek.

“The man with the Golden Gun.” She pulls far enough away that she can look into his eyes. Immediately they grab for new holds on one another, her hands on his jacket, his at her waist. “I don’t know what’s going to come of that. I’ve heard how you growl. Keep secrets if you want; I’ll watch my own back.”

Some of his talks with other Guardians in the Tower brought out a defensive anger in him. It’ll shake the walls if the time is ever right.

He laughs. “We sure understand each other. Together until it ain’t convenient any more, right, lady?”

“Until the Ascendant Plane collapses or one of us gets distracted.” A pirate’s life ...

So what, if someone else avenged Cayde? The sidelines are where Jenev lives, and she’s good at it.

“Glad to have you along,” says the Drifter. “Until the next cold day comes.”

The freedom of a dark forest, an unspoken promise to crash like a wave over her grief. She would not need him when her wandering was over, she thinks. She would not need him forever. Neither of them wants him to become an addiction, and so, Jenev, also, would comfortably drift.

#Destiny #writings #The Drifter #Drifter/OC #Jenev Furnon #with thanks to exordiumnoctis

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