#Sai Mota

[synnthamonsugar]

First Crota Fireteam Beach AU (Pt. I) for @d2artevents Solar Embrace Vol. 5!

Summer fun in the Lunar Sea of Rains with Eris, Toland, Eriana, Omar, Vell, Wei and Sai ... but beware the Hellmouth, a mysterious marine sinkhole in which monsters are rumored to dwell!

[bbyfacedx]

thinking about the first crota fireteam and how crucial eris was to recruitment. the mission in itself was to avenge guardians lost to crota but there was a specific tint of focus toward avenging wei ning, something eris didn’t have much of a personal stake in aside from being a friend of her’s and eriana’s. and yet, she went on to recruit people who were obviously incredibly important to her; sai who seems to trust her with complete faith, vell who saved her life once and is willing to do it again, omar who only agreed to go because eris supports the cause, toland who she’d probably looked up to even in his exile, who has genuine faith in the mission despite everything.

and then, they die one by one and eris is entirely helpless to stop it. maybe it would be less bittersweet if they’d accomplished anything close to their original goal, if eris could come out of the hellmouth knowing her team’s deaths weren’t in vain. but they don’t, and they are, and everything was all in vain from the very beginning.

it’s interesting how eris emulates them, keeps them alive through herself. like sai, she trusts herself to carry out this insane hive ascension ritual with little concern for the personal risk. like vell, she adventures out into a hostile frozen wasteland and fights to protect others no matter the cost, even those she barely knows. like omar, she keeps talismans and charms and gives them to others who need reassurance, a reminder she’s in their corner. like toland, she’s the hive expert who still seeks to teach and mentor despite her more self-imposed solitude.

and of course, like eriana, her passionate love and craving for vengeance are constantly at war with one another. her sorrow, he guilt, her anguish over what she’s lost, competing with her desire to help, to mend, to protect what little she has left, to save a world she still somehow has faith in. the difference between them is that eris’ love will always win. she will not be led blindly into any pit again, not by her thirst for revenge, not by her despair, not by the darkness, not by the deep.

[imonthemoonitsmadeofcheese]

The Enucleation of Eris Morn

A Festival of the Lost collaboration with @hiseumingo through @d2artevents

Link to Ao3 if you prefer to read it there

There are queer things told in the deep space cold      By the ones who venture far I seen horrible blights and gruesome sights      Too dark for planet or star But none are as bad, or as horribly sad      To make even a Deathsinger moan As when hope got squished, and ol’ Three-Eyes wished      On her Ahamkara bone

Wei Ning was a Titan, and always fightin'      Everyone loved her laugh If bad stuff needed killing she was always willing      To fight on Earth's behalf She volunteered when the call went out      To clear the Moon of Hive The Great Disaster's what they called that after      Very few got out alive

Now Eriana-3, was an Exo, you see      A Praxic Warlock, too She loved Wei Ning more than anything      So when Crota killed Wei, she knew There'd be nothing here that'd ever come near      To what she'd lost and, well, The only thing left was to get revenge      And march straight into hell

Ol' Three-Eyes was once Two-Eyes      And was a Hunter at that time She and Wei were tight, and when they took Wei's Light      The Hive had crossed a line So when Eriana-3 said come with me      First in line was Eris Morn They made a pact, and just like that      The First Crota Fireteam was born

They needed a way for Crota's death to stay      Or he'd just get back up from his throne Wei Ning bein' snuffed was proof enough      They couldn't use brute force alone His brains might've been scattered but Toland the Shattered      Said he knew a way "I think he's a jerk, but it just might work"      Was all Eriana had to say

So they gathered three more to kick down the door      And finish what Wei Ning began They snuck on the Moon's surface with terrible purpose      Intent to enact their plan They didn't know as they went down below      Giving one last look at the skies That no one among them would ever again      See the stars with their own eyes

Vell Tarlowe was the first to go      Got overrun by Thralls The horrid crunch as his bones got munched      Echoed through those hellish halls Sai Mota laughed as she breathed her last      While Omnigul watched her die The wormrot infested her, then it digested her      And that was the end of Sai

Eriana's doom was a snappy tune      By a Deathsinger named Ir Yut As it turns out that musical shout      Was power absolute A power so strong came out from her song      Eriana's Light couldn't outshine Toland betrayed her, and when Ir Yut had flayed her      He was willingly next in line

Toland's secret goal was to rip out his own soul      And in death become redefined He sold them all out to that Deathsinger's shout      And it blasted his fractured mind It's incredibly tragic that his love of Hive magic      Corrupted his brain with its call But he got what he wanted and now the Moon's Haunted      By Toland the sparkle ball

Now, he wasn't the first, but by far the worst      Was the fate of the Hunter Omar A Hive Wizard caught him, then gleefully taught him      That death ain't the worst thing by far She enjoyed how he squealed, every time that she peeled      Another small piece of his Light Eris Morn cried, at the time, still two-eyed      Unable to save him that night

Six had gone in with a good plan to win      'Till hope from them all was torn Five had found death and the only one left      Was the Hunter Eris Morn She knew she was stuck, but she wouldn't give up      And her ghost encouraged her sweetly Yet, each time she rested the Hive manifested      She couldn't escape them completely

They hid best they could but her ghost understood      That the Hive were attracted to Light And that little ghost loved Eris Morn most      And acted upon that insight So as Eris cried at her ghost's suicide      She was hid by the shadows around her And try as they might there was no more Light      To track, so the Hive never found her

Lost in the dark, without her ghost's spark      Eris Morn was abandoned in hell She wouldn't give in, and let the Hive win      But the way out, she couldn't tell She fought and she hid and somehow, she lived      For a hundred years all alone She had one option left, and it wasn't the best:      An ahamkara bone

She made her bargain in that bleak garden      Of chitin and sickness unkind The bone took its price, and it wasn't nice:      Eris learned the way out, but was blind Now what would she do? And as if on cue      A Hive Acolyte found her location No ammo, one knife, but she still clung to life      And fought with sheer desperation

Without her sight, it was quite the fight      But in the end Eris struck true And as the Hive died Eris realized,      Perhaps three eyes could replace two With a snick and a chop, her eyeballs went plop      With her own knife she dug a new hole With a bit of Hive voodoo and a lot of bad juju      She soon achieved her goal

Running on pure spite in that endless night      Eris Morn was purpose driven With her wits and her grit, she crawled out of that pit      But the Hive would not be forgiven As she saw the stars rise with her Acolyte eyes      Her need for vengeance burned bright And so Eris Morn, became Bane of the Swarm      And to this day continues to fight

There are queer things told in the deep space cold      By the ones who venture far I seen horrible blights and gruesome sights      Too dark for planet or star But none are as bad, or as horribly sad      To make even a Deathsinger moan As when hope got squished, and ol’ Three-Eyes wished      On her Ahamkara bone

[flowers-of-io]

when do ghosts have nightmares

“I entered the Hellmouth with a sense of fateful inevitability. We would all die, or worse. I knew this to be true. Woefully unprepared was what we were. I stand by that. But it doesn’t mean I didn’t respect them. I did then, and I always will.” – Toland, the Shattered

Even in his formless form, Toland is not spared the torment of phantoms.

Read on Ao3

[saltineofswing]

After posting this chapter of Destiny AU fic, I was commissioned by Otter to draw the three members of Eris's fireteam! This was a lot of fun, though designing an Exo head for Eriana from scratch was quite a challenge. Each of them also has the knife they fashioned out of their Ghost's shells.

The central conceit of the AU is that certain key events have changed, and characters' roles have been inverted – in this case, Eris was the only member of her fireteam who didn't escape the Pit, leading to this sequence (pt. 1) of events (pt. 2, above) that take place (pt. 3) during Season of Savathun's Crystal Spa Retreat.

[savyir-genesizz-the-wizard]

Sai Mota was a Bladedancer Hunter who joined the Fireteam Eriana-3 and Eris Morn led against Crota. She was partnered with the Ghost Yuka.

Wei Ning was a boisterous Titan who was in a relationship with the Warlock Eriana-3. A legendary warrior of The Last City, she partook in the Great Ahamkara Hunt and the Great Disaster, where Wei Ning was killed by the Hive Prince Crota himself during the battle. "So I ask Wei Ning: What about the Darkness itself? What then? And she says: I'll punch it too."

[rcbertleckie]

bucky and buck calling each other by their real names

[kbsd]

bucky egan // "free" by florence + the machine

the feeling comes so fast and i cannot control it i'm on fire, but i'm trying not to show it

[aramblingjay]

↳ variations on i love you by buck and bucky

[alienoresimagines]

If you put headphones on, you can definitely hear Bucky say "so cute" while smiling so wide at Buck just before he grabs his face 🥹 Thanks to @caterina07121 for catching it! I tried to heighten the sound so it's clearer but I don't know if you can hear it without headphones

[synnthamonsugar]

Happy Crota's End Day!

[bbyfacedx]

eris morn and the gang vs. the lgbt agenda (hard mode)

[whitetrashjj]

clegan + love languages

[flowers-of-io]

Read on Ao3

The knives glinted as they flew, spinning through the air on two arching trajectories, before they collided roughly half a meter above ground and jumped off in opposite directions. The hare made a small noise and lunged forward, disappearing in the grass.

“We’re terrible at this,” Sai concluded.

Omar gave her his best smile no. 5 and bent down to look for the weapons. The grass was still wet with morning dew, the fog barely lifted from the fields as the pinks and oranges of a sunrise were beginning to colour up the bland-grey sky. Somewhere in the trees lining up the edges of clearing birds were chirping. It was a cookie-cutter June morning, complete with a damp coolness in the air that seemed to seep through leather and cloth and settle directly on the skin. Sai pulled her cloak tighter around her shoulders.

“I really would like a breakfast.”

“We could always try fishing.”

“Why do I feel like your idea of it is literally throwing knives at fish?”

Omar found one of the blades and held it up triumphantly, the leather of his glove stained wet-dark. “Because you know me so well.”

“Traveler have mercy.”

He handed her the knife in an overly elegant gesture and returned to combing the grass in search of his own. “There’s this really cool spot nearby that has a weeping willow growing just over a creek, we could climb it and make a sniping nest there, the water’s very clear—”

“Sniping at fish,” Sai said.

“Yeah.”

“Have you ever even tried it?”

“There’s a first time for everything,” Omar recovered his weapon from the grass and sheathed it in an entirely too fancy spinning manner. “You’re the one who complained about being hungry.”

Sai gave him a half-smirk, “How long was it that you were stranded in Arabia, again?”

“It’s not like there were a lot of fish, you know.”

“Right.” She offered him a hand as he shuffled to stand up, one he eagerly used to pull her into a quick kiss the moment he was back on his feet. His lips were cool and chapped, electric against her own.

“Give me better ideas, in that case,” he smiled and his eyes glinted golden under the curtain of dark hair. It could use a trim, Sai thought idly.

“Starving away long enough for Eriana to wake up.”

“That’s gonna be another two hours.”

“Breakfast deal at Sierra the Sandwich Witch.”

“Bland and unexciting.”

“Raiding Kauko’s kitchen while he’s at the morning Vanguard briefing.”

“Now you’re talking,” Omar kissed her again. “Living room balcony door?”

“Duh.”

He grinned mischievously, with that same spark in his eye he would have when he replaced Vell’s machine gun ammo with foam pellets or snuck a fart pillow onto Hideo’s chair in the Consensus Hall. He pecked her nose and now she was grinning as well, and for a minute they just stood there, foreheads pressed together, as the morning light slowly chased away the greyness and settled over the meadow.

Entirely too loudly in the quiet reverie, Sai’s stomach rumbled.

“Well, that’s a sign we should get going,” Omar released her from his arms and stepped back. “Come to think of it, I can’t believe the guy hasn’t changed his locks yet.”

Sai smirked, “What if we end up finding he actually did? Don’t know the rate of luck it would take to twice over have the Hunter Vanguard lock his balcony door with something you can open with a hairpin.”

“Babe, I’m a professional.” He reached for her hand and wrapped their fingers together, his glove still a little damp from the dew. “I’d go to any lengths to test our Vanguard’s security measures. If I can open it, so could a cold-blooded murderer.”

Sai chuckled and kissed his cheek. “How benevolent of you.”

“I knew you’d appreciate.”

[saltineofswing]

EVERY WAKING MOMENT

Destiny 2 || 3500 Words || Pt. 1 || Pt. 3

In Another World, In Some Ways Like The One We Know…

“Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t stab you until you’re dead,” Sai Mota said with a measured and even voice that did not betray the extreme rage boiling in her chest. Toland, with the closest approximation of meekness he could muster, accepted that he had erred in leaving Sai out of his rescue plans. He panted on the metal floor of Sanctuary’s medical ward, his nose broken, his lip split, his left eye swollen.

“I’ll stay that way,” Toland croaked.

His blood was slick and black as it drooled down his chin, and dripped from the knuckle-plate of Sai’s gauntlet. Eriana-3 and Vell watched, arms folded, from the doorway and the far corner respectively; they seemed disinterested in intervention. Toland felt rage of his own ooze up from a place in his throat. The judgement of others was like coins prickling his bony armor to him, but the fact that they dared to judge him for his mistakes – his transgressions against Sai – when their betrayal was so much greater overwhelmed even his even temper. No… it wasn’t that, he decided.

He hated them in this moment for the fact that they had even bothered to show their faces at all. No matter that he had called them, that had been as much a formality as anything. Eris Morn’s body slumbered in Sanctuary’s recuperation suite as her closest friends tore each other apart less than a hundred feet away.

Sai strode forward three large steps and buried the toe of her boot into his gut before he could stand back up; Toland grunted as he was thrown back to the ground. He rolled, dragging the jagged bone claws of his glove across the stone until green sparks lit flame across his knuckles. Sai kicked him in the face with the flat of her boot – as he floundered backwards she drew a knife from her belt and nailed his hand to the floor with it. 

Toland screamed as he saw that it was the blade that had been Yuka. 

With his off-hand he drew the blade that had been Guren. At this, Eriana drew the blade that had been Jax, and Vell drew the blade that had been Razor, shifting from looming passivity to be prepared in case one of them gutted the other. Sai dove on top of him and he ran the edge of Guren across her cheek to her ear, leaving a deep groove that immediately spat the same tainted, maroon blood across his face. She hissed and battered her fists against his already-bruised cheekbone, his broken nose, tried to pin his head to the ground so she could continue to bludgeon him with more ease. With one hand indisposed, Toland was forced to make a choice. Even now, even with the threat of death igniting an ancient bloodlust inside of him, even though she had just done something unforgivable to him, Toland chose Sai. He dropped Guren to the ground with an unnaturally clear clatter and slammed the side of his fist against the opened gouge in Sai’s cheek, making her yelp in surprise and pain.

They fought like Thrall over scraps of meat, while Eriana and Vell watched like Acolytes. 

No words passed between them. In this way the Hive had changed them all, the speed and savage escalation of violence, the quiet and dispassion of it. The room held only the sound of Toland and Sai’s ragged breathing, their grunts of pain, the sounds of bone or metal clacking together or thudding against flesh. 

Then the double-doors to the ward slammed open. Ish-Mulmir darted into the room and drew herself to her full height; Toland, alone, knew enough to clap his free hand over his ear and flatten his head against his other bicep when she drew in one sharp, whistling breath.

Eriana, Vell, and Sai Mota still had enough Guardian in them – and Ish-Mulmir enough Hive – to recoil with shock and grab for their guns. But before they could, Ish-Mulmir barked out a single, shrieking note that rang like the peal of a bell through the entire building. Her eyes, dilated to massive pale discs of glowing Ascendant light, flashed with the power of a bolt of lightning, and the same light burst from her mouth and glowed in her neck and chest, illuminating her alien veins and internal structures for a brief moment. Eriana and Vell were thrown back against the wall with breathless grunts and collapsed in heaps. Sai jerked back away from Toland as if she had been bodily struck, and grabbed her head with a cry of pain. Ish-Mulmir stepped forward and swatted her, sending her crashing through a nearby sick bed into the far corner.

“ENOUGH!” Ish-Mulmir boomed with a voice that now rattled all of Sanctuary. Her wings whipped off of her back, suddenly filling the entire room with her stature. Toland stayed low, curled into a ball, with blood trickling from his ear. “COWARDS! ALL OF YOU! Fools! This is your hour of victory! You spend it on selfish bloodletting!” Her triplicate gaze burned into Eriana and Vell. “Or, at least, the more driven among you do!”

“We didn’t come here to get engaged in these two trashing each other,” Vell said with a shakily affected dispassion; he gestured with a dismissive wave at Toland. “These two chuckle-heads haven’t kept us in the loop on any of this.”

“Oh, fuck you!” Sai groaned from the corner, rolling clumsily onto her elbows and knees.

“You came at all, and that is enough,” Ish-Mulmir said; her ire waned and her wings folded themselves back down into her cloak. “You came because you held hope in your heart, and that hope was vindicated. I allow you no room for dishonesty, Vell Tarlowe.”

“We don’t have to take this from you,” Eriana snapped. “You aren’t involved in this any more than we are.”

“You do, and I am,” Ish-Mulmir hissed. “For I am right, and also, it was my spellwright that took Eris Morn from Savathûn’s clutches. So you will listen. You are listening. You have no choice.”

There was Sword Logic in that, Toland thought. But he also knew Eriana; she would burn herself to ashes before she allowed Ish-Mulmir to get the last word. Thankfully, Ish-Mulmir was through speaking to her. She turned to him, now. “Toland,” she said, and her voice was soft and almost pleading. “You must let them in.”

“Sometimes,” Toland managed, though he could barely hear it through the blood pounding in his head, “bloodletting is necessary. To relieve… pressure.” Even in this state, Toland’s voice was unshaken. 

Ish-Mulmir looked down at him with an expression that Toland could not read; the intricacies of her biology sometimes escaped him. It was withering, certainly, though it held also perhaps pity. 

“I am tired of you, Toland,” she finally said, with a laborious tone of surrender. Toland felt the acute agony of this more than anything else that had been wrought upon him. She looked at Sai, then Eriana, then Vell. “I am tired of all of you.” She turned, now diminished, and began to slip back through the doorway, shutting the doors she had thrown open behind her. Even Vell hung his head. Toland wanted so dearly to call to her, to ask forgiveness, to apologize, or to beg her not to give up on him. Instead, he was silent.

“Ish-Mulmir, wait!” Sai said, and some part of Toland was glad for her desire to be loved, or how willing she was to display it. “I –“

Ish-Mulmir silenced her with an imperious glance over her shoulder. Toland allowed his face to sag as the Thief of Moths left them to themselves.

Toland rolled fully onto his side and stared with dull disinterest at his hand and the blade that had been driven through its center. The blade was aligned parallel to his hand, artfully planted between the bones of his fingers without breaking or shearing any of them. All of their blades were different; his was a spade of a dagger, neither too long nor too short, but broad and courtly. Sai, the only Hunter left of them, had fashioned hers into an artful, narrow finger of death. The pain, of course, was excruciating, and radiated through his wrist, his elbow… he could even feel it in his navel. His fingers twitched, unsynchronized, with the beat of his heart. 

Sai pushed herself out of the corner and loped across the room to him. He tensed, not because he was afraid she was going to attack him again, but because he knew what she was about to do. She stooped and yanked the blade ungracefully from his hand; he felt the edge slice through the narrow inch between his second and third knuckles and emitted an involuntary, clipped groan. “Damn you, Toland,” Sai spat, wiping the blade clean on a nearby curtain.

“You attacked him first!” Vell cried; finally, Toland thought with a bitter sneer, their two betters joined them in the muck. Though it was, in truth, more like Ish-Mulmir had broken a spell, and Vell had remembered that he actually cared about the other people in the room.

“You didn’t stop me, so obviously it didn’t bother you too much!”

“Would you have listened to either of us?” Vell shoved her aside hard enough that she stumbled, and stooped to help Toland up. Eriana caught Sai and steadied her, and Toland allowed Vell to take his upper arm and lift him to his feet; he was thankful, in brief seconds, for the gentle hands of a Titan. He was unsteady on his feet after his drubbing, and folded his punctured hand to his chest. He smoothed his uninjured palm across it, and there was a sizzle of hot green magic; though he winced at the sensation of his skin burning itself back together, his wound closed up. The rest, he would let heal on their own. As penance.

“You didn’t even try.” Sai’s anger turned on Eriana and Vell, now, and Toland withdrew to the least-bright corner of the room to watch like an animal and lick his wounds. It wasn’t that Eriana or Vell felt emboldened to defend him, he was sure; rather, there had been a breach of social contract, and that meant someone was the ‘bad guy’ in the situation. Toland was used to it being him. “Honestly, I’m shocked you bothered to be here.”

“That’s not fair,” Vell puffed out his chest and set his fists on his hips. “Of course we came! You – you think we just forgot about all of this? You think we wouldn’t have helped, if we knew you two and the Young Wolf were trying to pull this off?”

“You abandoned us!” Sai bit out. “You gave up on Eris! Even when Omnigul and Crota were killed! Where were you when Toland and I were guiding the Young Wolf through the Dreadnaught? When she killed Oryx? I’m surprised you even bothered to keep your knives with you. Thought you would’ve thrown them away like you did us!”

“FUCK YOU!” Vell bellowed, his moodnoise suddenly roaring in the small room.

“YOU WEREN’T HERE!” Sai screamed back at him. Her voice was ragged and broke when she could not sustain its volume. She was mostly laconic in temperament; Toland wondered if he had heard her speak more in the last ten minutes than in the last ten years. “I never gave up on her! Toland never gave up on her! We and Ish-Mulmir have been grinding ourselves into PASTE trying to wrench her out of Savathûn’s grasp!”

“How is this about us, all of a sudden?!” Vell said, with a genuinely flabbergasted lunacy in his voice; he threw his arms out to either side and almost struck Eriana, who had been standing motionless, her posture attempting to evoke detached grace. Toland knew better. “Now you’re defending Toland? Two seconds ago you were trying to smash his skull in!”

“You stabbed him with Yuka,” Eriana said, accusatory and arch and unaccepting of any fault. Bitter. Spurned. “That’s unforgivable, Sai.”

There was a pause, then, a moment of quiet with a tensile strength insufficient for the weight it bore. Toland quailed at it. “Then he and I, at least, are even,” Sai snapped, with such breathless ferocity that Eriana was stymied for a response. Eriana turned her gaze away. The quiet glint of shame in her throatlights made Toland feel, amidst his agony, the faintest satisfaction. It was enough to unlock his throat and allow him to push words out of his mouth, though it hurt his lip. At last, an unimpeachable opportunity to condescend.

“None of us emerged from the Hellmouth whole,” Toland said, and marveled that he had not struck Eriana down in her moment of weakness. The others, too, seemed struck by this, and turned to look at him where he hid in the corner. He had eased himself down into a chair, and leaned his elbows heavily on his knees. He was so tired. The quiet stretched for a few moments more. Toland was a master in the art of choosing his words; he knew how to pick words to embarrass, to make small, to snidely placate or disparage. None of those ends would serve him here, and so he was required to truly think. With his head split as it was, the order was tall. 

Sometimes, the truth was the most effective weapon. “… We have been too shy of admitting it. We are all dead, and do not know it. We have not been as one since we dragged ourselves from the Hellmouth.” He looked at the puddle of blood and the hole in the floor where Yuka’s metal flesh had bitten him, and squeezed his injured wrist. “For better or worse we are bound, the four of us. Five of us. Tethered, but straining in opposite directions. Pulling ourselves thin and spiteful. Narrowed and strained. Mistaken for power. Briefly we were close, and so the tether was mighty.” He looked up at them. “Now thin like threads of silk. Perhaps broken.”

“… No.” Eriana stepped forward, touching Vell’s shoulder, brushing Sai’s forearm. She looked meaningfully between the two of them and then approached him; he looked up into her face, ever stoic and unmoving, devoid of the blistering fire he knew roared inside of her. Or, had, once. She crouched down until she was at his eye level; he closed his eyes, and so did she, and he felt the coolness of her metal forehead press against his. “Never broken.” He heard Vell’s lumbering footfalls, felt the Titan’s hand on his shoulder, and then Eriana’s on top of his. “You are right. We should never have given up on Eris. I just…” She stood now, unable to be both physically and emotionally vulnerable in the same space. “… I was so tired of losing people.”

“We all were,” Sai said, though her voice still quavered with anger.

“I know,” Eriana said quickly, and turned to her. When she took Sai’s hands, it was with a softness and affection that she could not display to Toland. They’d never been quite that close. “The truth is… the truth is that Toland is not the only one who failed you. I did, too.”

“I mean, I think I did okay,” Vell muttered, though when Toland looked up at him with an arched brow, he squeezed Toland’s shoulder and scratched his scruffy chin in an unconvincingly noncommittal way.

“I am better than that,” Eriana said. Her tone ignited with passion. “I will make it up to you all.” Vell strode to her and patted her firmly on the back with enough force that Toland would have been jerked out of step, but Eriana took the blow in stride. She smiled at him in her mouthlights, still holding one of Sai’s hands, and then looked to Toland. He dipped his chin cautiously at her. She gave him a resolute nod, and her eyes shone with a respect that made him feel a twisting knot of different emotions.

The room was silent once more. Toland wanted to stand and go to the three of them, standing in contemplative, quiet togetherness. Comforting each other with their closeness. Recommitted to one another. Instead, he remained apart, and convinced himself that it was not in his nature to require acknowledgement, or respect, or togetherness.

“I have business,” Eriana finally said. “With the Hidden. I… I cannot stay.” She looked to Toland again. That same, new, smoldering respect was in her face. “Will you tell me when she wakes? Send for me, when she is strong enough for visitors?”

“Yes,” Toland said simply. She turned, murmured something he could not hear to Sai, and gave Vell one more affirming nod. She paused only briefly at Sai’s gaze, which still prickled with betrayal and anger. Eriana sighed. Some things, Toland thought, could not be fixed with a rousing speech. But Eriana had already dedicated herself to the task. And then Eriana left them. Just as before, but now, with the promise of return. 

Vell set his hands on Sai’s shoulders. She hugged him, briefly, and tightly. “I uh… I should get back to Earth,” he managed, though his voice was awkward and uncertain. “The blueberries on the wall have been alone for almost a day, so I’m sure something’s been destroyed.” He glanced between her and Toland, then picked up his helmet from where it lay. “… The second call you make is to me,” he said meaningfully, and Sai nodded without responding. 

And then there was only Sai Mota and Toland, once-shattered. She turned to face him. He did not have the strength to stand, and so she approached him cautiously. Her face was tight and pale with frustration, but he did not see loathing. She dragged a nearby chair over and plopped down in front of him, folding her arms and appraising him, the damage she had done to him. He snorted in through his broken nose; a glob of coagulated blood and mucus slid out of his sinuses and into his throat, which he swallowed thickly. 

“Why?” She finally asked, and the hurt and anger in her voice made Toland close his eyes for a moment, so he could indulge in the pounding ache of his injuries. 

“I didn’t trust you,” he finally admitted, and she let out a wet scoff. “I knew the architecture of the thing we were attempting. I knew that… we would need to back the Witch Queen into a corner she did not realize was there. I knew that we would need our machinations to escape Mara Sov’s imperious eye. Weaving two spells, but really three, but really, one.”

“More plainly,” Sai said, her voice clogged and her cheeks red. “Or I’ll stab you again.”

“It is as I said. I did not trust you,” he said soberly. “I didn’t trust that you would be able to… keep up. Or understand the precariousness of what we were doing.” He dragged his hand down his face, wiping blood from his lips and chin. “I thought that I was all we needed. I am sorry, Sai Mota, for underestimating you. I failed you in this way, and many others.” He lowered his head, and sneered to himself. “And I used my own angst over that to fuel the spell. I told myself it was necessary to complete the Lament. So I kept pushing you away.”

“So,” Sai said slowly, her eyes red and wet, “this was all for you, and your ego. To prove that you could.”

How true, in some ways, that was. But it was more than that. Proving he could was nothing next to having Eris back. He would have burned his soul out of his body, if it meant re-tethering Eris to hers. And more than that – he couldn’t risk that Sai would have done the same. That, in truth, was where he trusted her the least. Her compassion. If anyone should have been wasted away by the weight of their Spell, it should not be Sai Mota. He could not possibly lose Eris and Sai, after everything he had done to keep her alive.

“No. I did it for you, too,” Toland rasped. “Oh, Sai, I did it for her.” Sai’s face finally crumpled, her eyes streaming, and a sob escaped her. She threw her arms around his shoulders and cried for a time.

Toland, exhausted, bloodied, denied the relief and exultation and, yes, love he found that had wanted so badly, closed his eyes tightly and quietly allowed himself the same. He wondered, selfishly, if Ish-Mulmir would ever speak to him again – he felt bound to her, too. He hoped she would. 

But only if he changed. He thought of Eris, and decided that it was a sacrifice he was already willing to make.

[meyerlansky]

JOHN "BUCKY" EGAN in MASTERS OF THE AIR PART TWO