#funnily enough the only time I have written cayde

[xivu-arath]

cayde is in this one

“There’s my favourite Nightstalker!” Cayde said, straightening up from the map with a look of relief.

Oni rolled her shoulders, trying not to look too uneasy. He was just being facetious, like he always was. Her instincts went screamingly taut whenever anyone drew too much attention to her, but that didn’t mean they were right. While the City always made her itch, the years had dulled whatever paranoia her previous lives had nurtured about the place.

Mostly.

“As if. I bet I’m not even in the top five.”

“The top ten, maybe?” Miraj said, floating in close on her left.

“Tell you what, next time you report back I’ll give you the rankings – for your Ghost’s sake, anyways. And how to move on up,” he said, tipping his head to the Ghost. Before she could get the polite banter aside, Cayde switched gears. “If I don’t move, I’m going to rust to the spot. Come on, you can report while I get some air.”

They didn’t go far, just out onto one of the Tower’s terraces. More used to the sight of the dormant Traveler than she’d like, Oni watched various ships flit in and out of the atmosphere above them until Cayde leaned on the balcony beside her. Miraj and Sundance drifted a little ways away, which could have been politeness but was more likely Miraj trying to get the latest Vanguard gossip without distracting them.

“So. How’d it go?”

She tore her eyes away from an arriving ship. Right. The report. “Oh, well – I shot down the ether shipments, picked off the reinforcements. Fallen know when they’re beaten. If it’d been Cabal, I’d still be out there.”

Cayde shot her a look, eyes glowing in what passed for an eye roll among Exos. “Come on, not one exciting thing happened? In two weeks of ‘picking off reinforcements’?”

She slumped further down on the balcony, exasperated at him and at herself for caring about his needling. She was always a little... raw when she came back from the wilds. The City was too crowded. People wanted to hear stories from beyond the walls, or to see her knife, or ask about people who were definitely bones and dust somewhere in the wilds. It all piled on, until she wanted to shake them by the shoulders, tell them she didn’t even want to be here and then throw them over the walls.

Cayde was good at figuring out where people’s limits were, and grating juuust up to them and no further. Better than facing Zavala’s certainty, or Ikora’s knowing. As long as Cayde was the only important person she had to ever talk to, she could handle all of this.

But it was tiring, some days.

“Hey, if you keep spacing out, I’m pushing you over. I bet Miraj would get a real kick out of hearing you try to be a thanatonaut.”

“I’m here,” she grumbled, well aware he might actually try to do it. It took her a minute to go over the conversation, and she hated drifting off so openly. Miraj could usually cover for her, but... another Exo could always tell. “You know I don’t go for excitement. That’s why I was out there in the first place.”

“You know, you could get a mission watching paint dry and something would still show up to ruin it,” he said. “If we’re not throwing ourselves at danger, it’s going to find us anyways. That’s just part of the job.”

And not one she had asked for, not that there was any point in whining about it. She’d woken up with her past lives all dragging at her feet – what was just one burden of duty, compared to that?

“Did you shoot the bow at least?”

It was her turn to roll her eyes. “Yes, I shot the bow. Several times, even.”

“Come on, Nightstalkers are cool because of that bow. Everyone loves it. You can get so many free drinks once you show it off.”

“That’s because they don’t have to use it.” Not that she’d ever stop. There was a weight to it, a... finality in where the void pierced the world. It should have made her want to crawl out of the skin she didn’t have, but instead it was comforting. There was security there, the certainty that as long as she hit her mark, she would survive – and her enemies wouldn’t.

And it was, admittedly, more than a bit cool.

“Alright so, Fallen: too boring to even mention. Bow: shot. How was China? The ruins?”

“Quiet,” Oni said, mulling it over. “Overgrown, anywhere that the Fallen haven’t been. It was kind of nice, once all the shooting was done with. Lots of birds. The nights, when we were waiting and watching and the animals forgot to be afraid of us...”

She lost the words for the memory of it. “It was quiet,” she said again. The peace of those nights had made her ache, a foreign intruder into a space where she couldn’t belong, but she had been desperate to be close, to be able to at least witness it.

“Yeah,” Cayde said, dropping the banter. She appreciated that, and resented it. Banter was easier than sincerity. Safer. “I remember what it’s like.” And then, just as quickly, he was back in full form. “Really makes me want to head back out there, just... drink in the horizon for a bit. How much glimmer do you think I’d have to pay to get someone to imitate me for a week?”

She couldn’t help it, and snorted. Cayde brightened, probably taking it as yet another victory for his irrepressible wit. “You wouldn’t. But I don’t blame you for hating... all of this.” She swept an arm at the skyline, taking in the endless parade of inbound and outbound ships, the crackling comms transmissions and, of course, the millions of lives that tied him down to this place.

“What, you don’t think I’d risk making both Ikora and Zavala want me dead in a dozen different ways?”

“You care too much,” she said, and shut her mouth with a click. That had been too sincere by miles.

Cayde didn’t seem to notice, or take offence, and she tried to push down the jittery tension that had jolted up her spine. “You would know, seeing as you don’t care at all.”

“Right,” she said, and almost dared to relax when he added, “Because you’re scared to,” and she nearly went over the balcony herself.

“What?” she heard herself say, and commended her autopilot for only sounding a little strangled.

“I mean, I get it.” He tipped his head back, and his not looking at her made it easier, somehow. “Forty two is... a lot. A lot of past lives running around with their own stories. Though they were probably better at telling them than you are.”

Oni laced her fingers together, absorbing herself in the joins of her hands, how hard she could press before her receptors began to complain.