#atom was telling me about how secretly worried she is about delphi and it's very sweet

[warlordfelwinter]

exercise/exorcise

all the post lightfall oc chats with @chasing-kitsune keep making me think about delphi's fireteam. fireteam duck duck goose is canon. to me.

mirei takes delphi out for some hunter style therapy

guardian ocs, gen, post lightfall, ~1100

++

“Delphi, eyes up.” 

Delphi looked up just in time to duck under the gun that had been thrown at him. He watched Hawkmoon clatter onto the floor behind him and then looked at Mirei. The hunter leaned in his doorway, cleaning under a nail with her knife, looking for all the world like she hadn’t just tried to take his head off with his own gun. 

“What?” he asked, voice coming out a little sharper than he intended. He wasn’t exactly pleased to see Mirei, though it was no fault of hers. He wasn’t really pleased to see anyone anymore. Artemis had accused him of turning into Osiris, which was clearly meant as an insult. 

“Pick that up, we’re going on patrol,” Mirei said, nodding toward Hawkmoon. 

“Why?” 

She sheathed her knife and crossed her arms, staring at him for a long moment. He could see thoughts working behind her gaze, innumerable things she was thinking about saying. In the end she shrugged. 

“You need to kill something.” 

Delphi stared at her for a moment, trying to think of some way to argue. Mirei would leave him alone, if he asked. But it was unlike her to come get him like this. Usually her requests for him to come back to the fireteam were lighthearted, joking about dragging him into Crucible or something. There was something in her eyes this time that made him pause. She almost looked concerned, but not in the same way that everyone else was looking at him lately. 

In the end he just stalked over and snatched Hawkmoon off the floor. 

“Fine.” 

**

“Did Artemis let you into my vault?” 

With a crack, Mirei freed her trophy from the head of a dead Hobgoblin. One of quite a few in their immediate surroundings. She held up the broken eye with a grin, tossing it into the air once and catching it before her Ghost squirreled it away. She sheathed her knife and sat down next to Delphi on the ledge. 

“Yes,” she said, in response to his question. “Because she agreed with me that you needed to kill something.” 

“Did she…” 

Artemis made no reply. 

Mirei gestured at the piles of broken and tangled metal in the snow field below them. Some burnished and steaming, some impaled on solidified stasis, some still crackling with arc, some with limbs simply ripped off. “I barely did any of that,” she said. 

Delphi tapped Hawkmoon in his hand. “You’re worried about me,” he guessed. 

“Nah,” she said, dropping back into the snow. 

“Everyone else is,” he said. He looked out over the snow field. They were sheltered on their ledge from the howling wind that stirred up snow as it swept across the landscape. Delphi’s Light hummed, burning hotter to keep him warm in the frigid air. 

He thought back to the first time he had come to Europa, his first tentative steps into the Darkness. It felt strange to think about now, when he could wield Darkness just as easily as Light. Just as easily. Even now. His Light felt strange now, but it still came when he called, still leapt to his fingertips just as swiftly, still burned through his enemies just as powerfully. 

“They all talk as if it’s dead,” he said. “And they look at me like they pity me.” 

That was the worst. The pity in the Vanguard’s eyes as they tried to explain to him what they’d seen the Witness do. What he’d felt standing beneath the Veil. They all looked at him like he was going to fall apart any moment. Even Crow. Even his sister. He didn’t want pity. He wanted revenge. 

Delphi lifted Hawkmoon, aiming down the sights. It was thrumming with Light, eager to be released. As his finger started to squeeze the trigger, that burning need for vengeance took him back. Perhaps it was Artemis that pushed the memory forward, and for just a moment he saw Uldren. 

Delphi smiled, humorlessly, and pulled the trigger. The last shot in the cylinder rang out, chased by Light, that bird-like call echoing out into the emptiness of the Asterion Abyss. He lowered the gun and dropped back into the snow next to Mirei. 

“Do you feel better?” Mirei asked, after a while. 

Delphi thought about that. It had felt good to exercise some of his pent up anger on the Vex. But as the feeling ebbed, he was still angry. It was grief. That was what Artemis kept telling him. But it felt like fury. And beneath it he just felt… lost. Empty. Silent. 

“No,” he said. 

“Do you want to find more Vex?” 

“No.” 

“Do you want to go home?” 

“... No.” 

“Do you want to lay here and slowly get covered in snow and freeze to death, never to decompose and to be discovered in a million years perfectly preserved?” 

Delphi smiled, despite himself. “Yes.” 

Mirei snorted. “All right. Carinae, clear my schedule.” 

Delphi looked at her, narrowing his eyes slightly. “You are worried about me, aren’t you?” 

“No,” Mirei said, returning the look. “Because I know you and I know you’ll be fine eventually. Once you put the Witness down like you did Uldren, and then we’ll all just have to pray it doesn’t come back as your new boyfriend.” 

Another bark of laughter escaped Delphi, surprising him again. 

“How do you know?” 

“We’ve been a fireteam since the Red War,” she said. “I know you.” 

Delphi looked back at the sky, feeling strange. The cold of the snow was starting to seep up through his robes and he focused on that instead, trying not to think about how quiet it was. The wind howled and underneath it he could hear every shift of armor and snow as he breathed, as Mirei breathed. And yet it was still so silent. 

“How is Lox, anyway?” he asked, looking for a subject change. He knew Mirei kept an eye on their wayward third, whether she would admit it or not. 

“Keeping herself busy,” she said. “Giving Spider a run for his money, I think.” 

Delphi huffed, the soft laugh puffing out into the air and crystallizing, quickly pulled away by the wind. 

“Maybe we should go visit her,” he suggested after a moment. 

“You think?” 

“Yeah.” He shouldn’t. He should go back to the Tower. Go back to Neomuna. Help find a way to follow the Witness. But his voice was never loud in a room with Osiris or Ikora or Eris or Mara. So many understood paracausality and all that came with it better than him. He was a mouthpiece and he’d been cut loose. 

“The Vanguard can spare my help,” he said, looking at Mirei. “I want to break something.”