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imonthemoonitsmadeofcheese · 4 months ago

Text

Ashes, Ashes

FYI - This story involves several D2 canon details of the Drifter's past, which is violent and not nice (including the death of a child and suicidal ideation).

It is also based on "Curses" by the Crane Wives.

This is the song on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEhuGPXxRrA Or on Spotify, if you prefer: https://open.spotify.com/track/5PqUrRRbNsjMCM2o61istC?si=8900e91e4be048ae

Link to Ao3 if you prefer to read it there

"What face would your nightmare wear?"

It was a blood red dusk. All around was scorched earth and shadows. Some small fires were still burning. The air was thick with ash and death.

On the bare dirt floor of what had once been a shack with a sheet metal ceiling, the man with no name sat cross legged, flipping cards out of a half-burnt deck in his hands onto the tamped earth in front of him. None of the walls still stood, but the floor was intact. It was too dark for him to see the faces of the cards but he kept flipping them over in a familiar pattern on the ground anyway.

Yu, age nine, walked up to him and knelt down near him. Blood dripped out of her nose. Her clothes were scorched. Half her hair was gone.

The man with no name stopped moving. Holding one card in his hand, he stared straight ahead past the child, waiting.

“Why are you here?” Yu asked him.

“I could ask you the same thing,” he replied.

“I live here.”

“No ya don’t. You’re dead, kid. Been dead a long time.” He resumed flipping cards into the pile.

“Are you cold?”

“Nope.”

“Then why are you shaking?”

He looked at her with red-rimmed eyes. "Why don't you… go see what your parents are up to?” He swallowed, the words burning in his mouth like embers. “I'm a little beat."

“Ok,” she said, shrugging, and left.

He closed his eyes, wanting to feel tears trickle down through the ashes on his cheeks. No tears came. He tried to laugh but it came out as a cough, dry and hacking.

Dropping the rest of the cards in a pile he looked around and spied a half-charred ration pack with an intact box of water. He stood and walked over to it, picking up the familiar tin he kept beside it. He twisted the cap and water flowed out into the tin. He lifted it to his lips.

Ashes. Hot cinders burned his mouth. He spat them out and dropped the tin, cursing.

There was a loud crack and a rumble. The man with no name flinched and looked over to see the remains of his neighbour’s barn collapsing in the fire that was slowly eating away at it.

In front of the collapsing barn, Yu’s mother held her child tightly, crying out in fury as her husband lay dead at her feet, shot through the head. The man with no name felt his face get hot. He was weak and sweating, his whole body shaking with chills.

He blinked. They were still there.

He picked his way through the wreckage toward them. Yu’s mother stood crying, clutching her daughter. Yu looked back at him with sad eyes as he approached.

The man with no name looked down at the dead man at his feet, then back at the mother and child.

“Germaine,” Yu said. “I don’t want to die.”

“Sorry kid,” he said.

There was a bright flash and a roar of machine gun fire. Yu’s mother fell, limp in a heap next to her husband.

The smoke cleared around them.

Yu stood alone looking up at the man with no name.

“They’re dead,” she said.

“Yup,” he nodded.

“There’s no one left.”

“I know.”

“They’re all gone.”

“Yeah, yeah they are. Ain’t no bringin’ ‘em back. I’m sorry.”

She reached out and took his hand.

“Won’t you stay with me?” she asked him.

“Sure, kid. I can do that for a little while.”

Yu began walking, still holding his hand. The man with no name followed.

They walked across the middle of town, picking their way through the bodies, the rubble, the small fires.

They came to a burnt husk of one of the neighbours’ shacks and went inside. There were cobwebs in the corners near the ceiling, coated in ash. Yu walked through a hole in the back of the shack to where their neighbour had once kept chickens. Instead of chickens, now, there were just bones. Stacks and stacks of bones. Some were bleached from years of weathering, others were still in various stages of rot.

“Did you kill all these people?” Yu asked.

“I don’t know, kid. Maybe? Hard to tell. I’ve killed a lot of people. I don’t remember who they all were.”

“I thought you didn’t want to ever kill anyone.”

“That’s right, kid. I never did.”

“You’re still shaking,” Yu said. “Are you sure you’re not cold?”

“I’m sure. Are you?”

She stopped and looked up at him. “I can’t feel anything,” she said.

And then he was on his knees, cradling her in his arms, her mouth next to his ear, whispering. “I can’t feel anything. I can’t feel anything. I can’t feel anything.”

The man with no name rocked back and forth, holding the child. He wanted to cry. It would be a human thing to cry in a situation like this, but he couldn’t.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled. “I’m sorry.”

She crumbled to ashes in his hands. A cold wind came down from the mountain and began to blow the ashes away. It picked up speed and began to fling ashes and dust everywhere in small whirlwinds, whipping up some flames, extinguishing others.

The mountains of corpses around the kneeling man began to shudder in each gust. Bits of bone skittered along the ground.

The man with no name stood and faced the wind as it began to whistle through the piles of bones. Gradually the whistling became voices, whispering out of the wind as it swirled around him.

I can’t feel anything

I don’t want to die

Shut your hole, Germaine… Your name is stupid, and you're stupid, too

You were one 'a them all along

I don't want to die

This is what you aspire to be? A perennial liar who plays house with refugees?

I can't feel anything

You could have helped her

Who were these people to you?

I can’t feel anything

You could have saved them all

I don’t want to die

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled into the wind.

His bones ached and he was trembling as though he might fall apart.

Ashes and dust whipped around him.

There was a shovel in his hand. He knew what he had to do.

With a sigh he turned his back to the wind and started digging. The wind continued, singing songs to the secrets behind his eyes.

Surely this would be when he would cry. A normal human would break down sobbing in this situation. He wanted to cry, to pour tears like someone turning on a faucet in a kitchen sink, but nothing came. The well was dry.

He cursed as he dug. He cursed as he placed bones in holes and buried them. He cursed as he slowly and methodically laid the dead to rest again and again and again but the piles of bones never ended. There was no rest for him.

I can’t feel anything

I don’t want to die

Explosions went off around him as he dug grave after grave. Gunfire. Rockets. Void energy. Solar. Arc. The man with no name kept digging holes, putting bones into them, and filling them.

“I’m sorry,” he said to each one.

Fallen from the house of Devils cut down civilians in front of him with guns he’d supplied.

He dug more graves.

He turned around to see a bar table in the clearing behind him.

Cenric, Jaak, Otto, Ayrin, and Thalia lay dead across it. Blood from the bullet holes he’d put in their faces had only just started seeping out. Cenric was still holding his glass.

“Together again, huh?” the man with no name said to his old crew.

He sighed and started digging their graves too.

It got colder. The ashes were mixed with snow. Eventually he was no longer digging dirt, just snow.

He turned around again to see four frozen bodies, all of them pointing guns at him.

“Was wonderin’ when you lot would show up,” he greeted them with a hollow salute. “Suppose there’s always room for more.”

He dug more holes.

The crew he’d rode the vex network with, countless civilians from the pilgrim guard, friends, lovers, enemies, bodies upon bodies. And still the wind whipped around him, whispering. Cold and ashes stung his eyes, but still not so much as a tear. Crying was a human thing. Humans got to cry. Not him.

I can’t feel anything

I don’t want to die

He was so tired. He’d been digging for so long. Everything hurt. Eventually he turned around and didn’t see anything, just ashes and snow. He turned back to the hole he’d dug and realized he’d finally run out of bodies. He’d buried them all.

But there was still a hole, the one he’d dug without thinking because the bodies had seemed endless.

I can’t feel anything.

Who were those people to you?

Nothing. Just ghosts.

I can’t feel anything.

The man with no name nodded to himself and lay down in the hole he’d dug.

The ground was cold and the ashes and snow began to blow over him, burying him.

This was how it would be, he guessed. The end of it, finally. He could rest. It was cold though. Very cold. He hated being cold. It hurt. If this was the end, why did it have to hurt so bad? Why did everything always have to hurt?

“No.” The voice was firm and clear. It was not his voice. It was not any of the other voices either. Low, feminine, fierce, unrelenting. So sharp.

His eyes opened but he couldn’t see anything through the snow.

The wind whispered in Yu’s voice: “I can’t feel anything.”

His eyes closed again. Even now at the end, he couldn’t even cry. He didn’t even get that small mercy of feeling human before he died.

“No.” the strong voice resonated around and through him. “We’ll live in the night if we have to.”

The man with no name sat up in his own grave.

“It is necessary,” the strong voice said. “For what follows.”

Something was touching him. Something warm. He was so cold. All he wanted right now was to be warm. He couldn’t see through the snow and the ashes what it was but he reached out and grasped a hand. It was warm, gentle. It held him firmly. His other hand reached to follow the first. He grasped an arm that was criss-crossed with scars.

“Help,” he rasped, his entire body trembling, his voice almost gone. “I know I don’t deserve it but please, please help me.”

“I am here,” said the voice. “You are safe.”

“I don’t deserve to be safe,” he said, “I know I ain’t good and I shouldn’t get any mercy, but please, please stay with me.”

“You are good enough, Germaine,” said the voice, pulling him closer into her arms, sheltering his face from the ashes and the snow.

He buried his face in her skin, feeling her scars against his cheeks, pressing himself against her warmth, the wind receding. He felt her hold him close and relief washed over him. The voices of the dead grew faint and silent, replaced by the faint rattling of the engines in the Derelict.

Shuddering, the Drifter blinked his eyes and drew in a ragged breath, slowly taking in his surroundings. He was shivering naked on the floor under a table in his workshop. Three green eyes glowed in the darkness, inches from his face.

“Eris?” he asked.

“Yes,” she answered.

“Are… are we ok?”

“Yes.”

And finally, finally, it was safe enough to cry.

#destiny 2 #the drifter #nightmares #ao3 #fanfiction #writing #eris morn #drifteris #drifter/eris #the drifter/eris morn #imonthemoonitsmadeofcheese #curses by the cranewives #ashes ashes #death #sad #dreamscape

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