#the drifter/eris morn

[imonthemoonitsmadeofcheese]

Dawning Oasis ILLUSTRATION BY ROBYN!!! *falling over in happiness*

I do not know if there is a greater joy for a writer than for a beloved artist to have drawn something from their words. I was able to commission @haykebyr aka @dredgensimp and of course I begged for Drifteris.

To my great delight she chose to draw a scene from my story A Dawning Oasis.

The Drifter’s eyes shifted as he talked to a visiting guardian in the Annex, tracking movement behind them. For just a moment his entire face lit up in uncharacteristic glee and then he resumed his usual detached-but-friendly expression. His smile never faltered as he accepted the dark chocolate motes being gifted to him.

He nodded appreciatively at the guardian transmatting away and then his eyes flicked back, snake-like, to focus on the silhouette of an additional shadow in the Annex doorway, his smile becoming a delighted grin. Eris Morn stepped out of the darkness, her green glowing orb in her hands.

“And here I thought my Dawning couldn’t get any better!” The Drifter flipped the coin in his hand into the upturned helmet on his work table, landing it perfectly without even looking at it, as he stepped forward, arms wide offering a hug he knew she would decline. “How’s everyone’s favourite former Hive god doin’ today?”

“Germaine,” Eris glanced over her shoulder before walking up to him swiftly until she was close enough to reach out and lay her hand lightly on his wrist. “I have come seeking refuge.”

“Any time, anywhere, Three-Eyes,” he said, his voice flirtatious while his eyes flicked over her face, carefully analyzing. His gloved hand shifted to brush his armoured knuckles up against the inside of her wrist through her own gloves. She did not flinch away.

“I find myself wearing thin, my composure fraying. It is worse than usual this year. I seek solace… a respite from the near-constant persecution.”

A look of concern came over his face. The flirtatious grin was gone. “Of course Moondust,” he said quietly. “Is it… nightmares?”

“No. I can handle those. I can handle the screaming of the Hive through the ascendant plane. I can handle the whispers. What I cannot handle is…” She looked up at him and sighed deeply, her hand on his arm tensing. “...the cookies.”

The Drifter threw his head back and laughed. “Sick of ascendant oatmeal raisin already? Wanna trade? He spread his free hand out and indicated the set of small boxes piled up on his work table. I have enough dark chocolate motes to last me for the next century. Don’t tell our heroes, but I’ve been sneaking down to the Eliksni quarter every night and redistributing the Dawning cheer.”

“I have nowhere to redistribute mine. They are in piles everywhere. On my work tables, on my ritual surfaces, on the bed, the counter, the floor. I trip on them when I wake. I stumble over them when I try to go to sleep. Even now I fear well-meaning guardians will find me here with you and inflict more upon me.” She stepped closer to him, her voice a low whisper. “If I were to never see an ascendent raisin again, or any raisin for that matter, I would not sorrow.”

His eyes glittered in delight at her willing invasion of his personal space.

“Got a gambit match starting in seven minutes,” he said quietly, not wanting her to move away. “Come up to the Derelict with me and watch the show? Best seat in the house, and… not a single cookie on the entire rig.”

He raised an eyebrow enticingly, tilting his head.

“None at all?” Eris asked hopefully.

“Derelict’s a cookie-free zone, Moondust. Not only that but anyone transmitting on board, that ain’t with yours truly, goes straight to the gambit ready room. They won’t be able to find ya if you’re with me. No festivities. No decorations. No well-wishers. And…” He waved his hand with a dramatic flourish. “...not a single baked treat to be found. A veritable oasis in the overwhelming oppression of holiday cheer.”

He grinned and leaned forward playfully as he spoke, expecting her to draw back or bristle in her usual frustration with his constant flirting. She did not move away.

“I would very much appreciate coming with you.” Her three green eyes stared at him earnestly from behind the cloth wrapped around them, her hand still on his wrist, a look of relief on her face apparent even through her perpetual black paracausal tears.

Time seemed to slow as they lingered in each other’s space longer than was necessary or normal for either of them. He caught his breath and leaned in even closer. She still didn’t pull away.

The obnoxious clang of the Drifter’s pre-game alarm rang out and Eris jumped back with a start, her now-free hand frosting over instinctively to defend herself.

He swallowed, blinking, a frustrated smile on his lips over the ruined moment.

“Five minutes till go time,” he explained, wistfully.

Eris relaxed, the frost dissipated from her fingers.

“You comin’ with?”

She nodded.

“All aboard the escape-from-Dawning express!” He held out his hand once more.

She took it eagerly and firmly in a way that made him briefly hold his breath without realizing he was doing it.

The world shimmered around them as the Drifter’s transmat kicked in and transported them. They appeared in a small room with consoles on three sides and sixteen monitors all showing different views of the same area.

“Make yourself at home. I’ll be right back,” he said, squeezing her hand and releasing it with reluctance before walking through the door, out onto the catwalk.

Eris watched him through the doorway, out of view from the people below. The rogue lightbearer stepped up the metal stairs to his usual platform, tumbling his coins across his knuckles.

“All right, all right, all right. Let’s see what we’ve got.” He looked back at her with a grin and a glint in his eyes briefly before turning back to the guardians assembled for the game. “Hive!” He held up the coin. “Bring a sword.”

Eris heard the murmurs from the participants and listened as several of them swapped out their weapons and gear while the Drifter continued with his pregame patter.

“I’ve always wanted a pet Hive.” He said as he tossed a coin from one hand to the other, flipped it in the air and bounced it off of his ankle. “The ascendent plane must have all kinds of…” He spun around with a grin to wink at her before turning back to the group on either side of him. “...I’m oversharing.” He whirled his arms at the elbows and pointed forward. “Transmat is go!”

He sauntered back into the room with a grin.

“A pet Hive?” she asked him. “Really?”

“I mean, outside of the mass-murderin’ psychopathy and universe-spanning genocide, they’re really just overgrown shrimps, right?”

Eris Morn, Bane of the Swarm, from whom the Hive had taken everything, glared at him reproachfully.

“Besides,” he continued as he walked past her, turning to look into her surgically and magically implanted eyes as he moved toward the console, “on the right person, Hive eyes can be weirdly cute.”

Eris tensed and the soulfire-glow in her eyes flared.

“Not to mention,” he continued, “...cook ‘em right and they’re delicious, make ya see colours for days.”

“Watch yourself, Rat,” she growled through clenched teeth.

He picked up a headset and pushed a button by his ear. “Lock and load, hotshot,” he spoke into the microphone. “Bring those motes to the bank.” He pushed the button again.

“Awww don’t be mad-mad, Moondust. You know I only tease you so much cuz I like you.”

She tilted her head in surprise at the forthrightness of his statement. He stepped close to her, gently touching her elbow. She looked down at his hand and back up at him but did not pull away.

“I’ve got maybe two minutes before I have to say somethin’ again.” His voice was warm now, gentle. “Let me make it up to you. Can I start ya some tea?”

She sighed deeply, her irritation leaving her. “An acceptable peace offering. I would like tea, yes.”

“Sit down in the chair. I’ll be right back.” His eyes sparkled as he walked backwards into the hall before slipping through a doorway.

Eris stood still for a moment, considering his offer. Then she walked to the chair at his console and sat down stiffly, resting her soulfire wreathed Ahamkara bone in her lap.

Not much later, the Drifter reappeared beside her to push two buttons which lit up blue when he touched them. He tapped the mute button on his headset. “Hostiles, incoming at the beach!” he barked excitedly into the microphone. Then he hit the button on his headset again.

“Water’s set to boil.” His voice was soft again. “When’s the last time you ate, Crota’s Bane?”

“I… do not remember. Probably this morning? It was this morning, yes.”

He crouched down next to her, folded his arms on the arm rest for the chair she was sitting in, looking up at her. “I got soup in the crock pot. Been cookin’ all day. Hot and ready. I was gonna have some for dinner now. There’s lots. Will you eat it if I bring you some?”

“Is it made of Hive eyeballs?”

“No. It’s made of chicken, lentils, vegetables and a creamy coconut curry. It’s good. You’ll like it. Trust.”

“That… does sound nice.”

“Is that a yes?”

“Yes.”

He half-stood and reached across the console, leaning across her and bringing his face close to hers. Eris tilted her head quizzically at him but did not move away. He pushed two more buttons which turned blue like the first two. He then pressed the button on his headset, his nose still inches from hers. “Incoming hostiles, at the trees,” he called out before clicking the mute button again.

He stayed there, close, his eyes lingering first on her lips, then looking back into her eyes, and then back to her lips. The corner of her mouth quirked into a half smile. The Drifter’s eyes half-closed and opened his mouth to say something when a shrill continuous whistle pierced their ears from the hallway behind them. They both flinched away from each other in alarm.

He blinked several times, the frustrated smile once more on his face.

“Hmmm…” There was a hint of gentle amusement in her tone.

He opened his mouth as though he were about to say something to her and then shook his head, standing up.

“Incoming tea, from my kettle,” he said it the exact same way he’d have announced it in gambit, as he walked briskly out of the room.

A few moments later he was placing a steaming mug into her gloved hands and pushing more buttons on the console.

“High value target’s on the field. Hunt it down and put some rounds in it,” he said into the headset before re-muting himself.

“Is that team down one person?” Eris asked him, pointing at a screen.

“Yup. The one that jammed out’s getting a warning for that. That’s rude.”

“Do they always lose when they’re only three?”

“Depends on how good the ones are that’s left behind. Mostly yes,” he told her. He pushed the mute button. “Portal’s up. Go say hello!” He waited and then pointed at one of the screens with a grin as Eris watched one of the three-person team run to the other side.

“Embrace the Darkness,” he told the invader.

Eris leaned forward to watch.

“Well done,” she murmured appreciatively as the hunter took out two guardians with headshots from a sniper rifle. Then she gave a small gasp in delight as they danced around the remaining two, dodging and swapping weapons before bringing them both down with a submachine gun.

“Wooo!” The Drifter leaned back and whooped into his un-muted headset.

Eris’ face split into one of her rare open-mouthed smiles at his infectious glee.

“Your invader's back and they just took out the entire opposing team! Glad they're on your side.” He hit the mute button. “With an invader like that, those poor bastards might just pull this off. I’m excited to see how this turns out.”

“As am I,” Eris said quietly, her smile subdued but still present as she watched intently with him, sipping her tea.

He pointed to a progress bar on one of the screens. “When this gets to 100, press this button here,” he reached out, took her hand gently, and placed it on top of the button.

“Won’t you need to know when to talk?” she leaned in as she asked him while he was standing.

Her nose brushed against his ear.

He froze and sucked in a shuddering breath. She smirked and leaned back.

“I um…” He swallowed and gave her a small, almost shy, smile. “I’ll be able to hear it on the feed.”

“Hmmm…” She let her chin rest on her other hand, smiling back at him like she had just won something. “And this is so you can go get the soup?”

He stared back at her, the smooth charismatic mask temporarily gone, his expression uncharacteristically soft. “Yeah,” he said, as though he had forgotten what he was doing entirely and she’d just reminded him.

Shortly after he disappeared into the hallway behind her the number of motes hit 100 and Eris pushed the button, as directed. From down the hall she heard his voice with his usual practiced gambit tone, “Opposing team’s got a primeval. They kill it, they win.”

Eris continued to watch as the other team's mote bank also approached 100 and found a very similar button on that side of the console. As they hit their target she pressed it.

“Ok, you can still win this. Focus on that primeval,” she heard him talking into his microphone behind her. Eris turned to watch him enter the room walking slowly, a bowl of hot soup in each hand. As he placed a bowl on a flat spot in front of her, he silently mouthed the words ‘thank you.’ He placed his own bowl next to hers, flipped a different switch, said “Portal's up. Grab your gun,” to one team and then, with another switch, “Invader's on the field. Get ‘em!” to the other.

Eris smiled at how he always sounded like he was supporting the side he was talking to as she removed her gloves. She ate a spoonful of soup. It was warm and delicious, the taste of it shifting on her tongue, giving her too many flavors at once to process.

“It's very good, but also very complex,“ she said quietly.

“All good curry is,” he whispered before pressing the button on his headset again and continuing to call the match from a stool he’d pulled up next to the chair she was sitting in.

The three-person team had only just begun to damage their primeval when the Drifter pointed out to Eris how their opponents were on the last leg of the primeval damage phase.

“Alas,” she said softly into her soup. “They tried.”

“Oh, it ain’t over yet.” He leaned in closer to her again. “I mean, it might be, but let’s see what our hotshot from earlier can do.” He reached across her and flicked a switch. “Portal’s up,” he said through his headset, “Go make a mess.” He clicked the mute back on.

“There’s no way they can possibly win at this point.”

“Oh yeah? Wanna bet?” His eyes sparkled in glee.

“I have nothing to wager.”

“If the underdogs win, you come over here for dinner tomorrow night. And before you ask, no screeb guts or Hive eyeballs. Actual dinner with actual food.”

She frowned. “A… date?”

“Yeah,” he tilted his head to look her in the eyes. “A date.”

“I do not date.”

“I know. That’s why it’s a bet.” He shook his head side to side slightly to accentuate each word.

She pursed her lips. “And what do I get if the other team wins?”

“Whatever you want,” he said quietly with more intensity than he’d intended.

“Hmmm… if they win…” she began.

“Yeah?”

“You ‘redistribute’ my cookies for me.”

“Deal.”

The four-person team converged on their taken primeval, guns blazing. Eris and the Drifter watched as the primeval’s health indicator decreased rapidly. The hunter from the three-person team ran in, jumped up, and flung two kami into the middle of the fray, summoning a stasis whirlwind.

“Ugh. Too slow,” Eris critiqued. “That will not kill them quickly enough.”

The Drifter reached behind her to flick a switch swapping one of the screens to an over-the-shoulder view of the invader. He left his arm draped over the back of the chair. Eris noted the positioning of his arm while swallowing another spoonful of soup, but said nothing.

The invading hunter switched to their heavy weapon slot, pulling out Xenophage. Eris sat up straighter and smiled grimly as the first opponent fell with one shot, feeding the primeval and raising its health up from a sliver to a still-manageable, but significant chunk.

The Drifter chuckled in her ear as another guardian fell to Xenophage, feeding the Primeval further. “That’s your gun, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” she said, her voice proud. “It is Omar… from my fireteam. His spirit is within it.”

“Still a badass.”

“Yes.” her voice was warm. Then she sighed in disappointment as the invading hunter was taken down by a well-placed punch from a solar titan.

Still holding his soup bowl, the Drifter held up one finger away from it and pointed, drawing Eris’ attention back to the screen focused on the primeval. The stasis whirlwind was still going.

The hunter who had invaded was resurrected on their own side. They immediately began emptying Xenophage into their own primeval from across the map as they ran in. As Eris watched, alerts of the four-person team’s deaths popped up on the screen and their primeval’s health bar skyrocketed back up to full.

“It continues after they are dead!” she said excitedly.

“Yup. There’s a reason people hate stasis hunters more than most in this game.”

The four-person team’s portal came up and their invader ran in, but the three-person team made short work of their primeval, dancing together as the Drifter praised them for their hard-fought win.

Eris leaned back in the chair against his arm. He stumbled over his closing commentary when she touched him. She smiled and finished her soup as the Drifter continued to tell the exiting gambit players how well they would be paid.

With the game over and all participants transmatted away, the Drifter leaned forward and tapped several buttons, killing the feeds and opening up a single screen with a list of people waiting in the queue. He took his headset off and set it beside his empty bowl on the console, his arm still draped over the back of the chair.

“Want more soup?” he asked her gently, leaning in more than was necessary.

“Perhaps later,” she handed him her empty bowl.

He turned back to her after nesting her empty bowl within his just as she leaned forward and their faces once more became far too close together.

They smiled at each other, neither one moving.

“How long until your next match,” she asked, touching his face with her fingertips.

“Ten minutes,” he whispered, staring into her eyes through the cloth that was covering them.

She curled her fingertips slightly and he leaned forward, his eyes fluttering closed as their lips met in a gentle kiss.

After a few moments he pulled back slightly, sucking in a shaking breath. She leaned in further and her hand slid around his neck to press their mouths together again.

Kiss after kiss followed. Reverent. Hungry. Teasing. Soothing. Hard. Gentle. He clung to her as though she might disappear at any moment. She pressed her lips against his tightly, drinking in his affection like he was water in the desert.

Eventually they had to breathe for a bit, but, loath to separate, they instead panted softly against each other’s necks, still holding tight. At some point he had slid off the stool and was partly in her lap, one knee on the floor. Her fingers were laced into his hair. Their breathing was in sync. The Drifter’s hands were soft and trembling, brushing against her face, her neck, pulling her close. Eris’ hands were cool and almost claw-like in how tight she held on to him.

“Hey-o! Drifter! Time for gambit!” someone shouted from one of the platforms in the ready room.

She felt his eyelashes blinking against her skin. He felt her lips smile just behind his ear.

She leaned back, cupping his cheek in her hand, her fingers buried in his beard.

“Driiiiifter!” someone else called.

“You should go start the next match,” she whispered.

“Screw the match,” he whispered back. “Is… is this real?”

She kissed him again. “Yes. Go start the match. I will wait.”

“Promise?”

“Yes.”

He got up to go and then sank back down to his knees, kissing her one more time before backing away, shaking his head, adjusting his headband, willing the mask of the meretricious rogue back in place.

Cheers echoed through the doorway as he appeared, his coins tumbling on his knuckles once more.

Eris had followed him and stood to watch, just out of sight.

“Took you long enough!” someone called out.

“Ya know what, just for you…” the Drifter pointed and snapped his fingertips, holding out the coin that had appeared with his trademark sleight-of-hand. “Scorn approaching.”

Everyone groaned.

Eris laughed silently and the Drifter’s eyes twinkled as he glanced back at her through the doorway before returning his gaze to the people assembled below.

"Never trust a Scorn!” he told the group as they were preparing for the match. “They're little balls of instinct. Shoot first, talk to it later.”

“You had to piss him off. Scorn are the worst,” someone said on the left.

“You ain’t seen me pissed off, brother.” the Drifter pointed at him. “For both our sakes, let’s hope you never do. Prepare for transmat!" He whirled one arm around his head and sent them off.

Eris handed him the headset as he stepped through the doorway. He put it on and then immediately pulled her into a kiss, pressing his whole body against hers.

He broke away from her lips reluctantly, tapped the side of his headset, spouted off some words of encouragement, and re-muted it so he could sink back into her lips again.

Three matches later, Eris was comfortably snuggled against the Drifter in his lap, pressing buttons for him with calm precision as he called the matches between tender feverish kisses, soft clinging touches.

Here they were, two of the most hardened, vicious, efficient killers, survivors of more horrors than any reasonable person could withstand and, for the first time in longer than either of them could remember, they were both content, smiling, quietly drunk on being gentle with each other.

. . .

The next evening, after a long shift at her post in Sanctuary on the Moon, Eris returned to her living quarters for a few moments of solitude before she would need to leave for the dinner she’d promised to attend for losing her gambit bet: her ‘date’ with the Drifter.

As she entered through her doorway she froze. Something had changed. It took a moment for her to realize what it was. She stood in the middle of her rooms looking around, first in surprise, and then genuinely impressed. There was not the slightest trace of an ascendent oatmeal raisin cookie anywhere.

At some point while she was working, the known thief, conman and criminal she had spent the last evening passionately kissing had snuck in through her perimeter defenses, skulked undetected past the many guardians who had been visiting her all day, bypassed the locks on her doors, and stolen every single one.

“A happy Dawning indeed,” she whispered to herself as she prepared a Hive portal to the Derelict, a small smile on her face.

[kept-confidence]

happy dawning season!!!! with my favourites ❤️

[imonthemoonitsmadeofcheese]

This explains my unwritten thesis on how Eris Morn is Punk and the Drifter is Goth.

Maybe that's why he's wearing eyeliner in that cutscene in TFS.

I was thinking recently about how "alt" subcultures are so aestheticized now but they used to be much more about your societal views than the clothes you wore or even the bands you listened to, and my brain connected some dots. Idk if this is anything

[imonthemoonitsmadeofcheese]

Breaking a personal rule here to never point to the evil bird site for this one:

[kept-confidence]

An attempt at baking reveals some of Eris's deeper struggles. As the Drifter teaches her how to fold flour into butter and sugar, Eris begins to understand what it truly means to fold — both in baking and in her own heart.

This piece draws inspiration from several things, both Destiny-related and not: the current Dawning season and the cookies we gift to others, but also my personal journey with baking. I recall the feeling in my hands when a chocolate cake I made crumbled, and how quickly that terrible feeling turned inward.

A large part of the baking process is the folding process, where we gently fold batter in so that it doesn't lose the many pockets of air we've worked so hard to create. But folding for me is no longer just a technique, it's also a metaphor. I think about my writing as a means of folding too of both my personal history and my interests. In some way, I hope this piece unfolds seamlessly for you, and makes for a nice read as well.

Note: I wrote this in a bit of a fever induced craze so if you spot typos please let me know because I am sure there are a number that I've missed.... thank you......

[imonthemoonitsmadeofcheese]

Oolong

Look! Look! Art by @dredgenaves for my story!!!

It was early and many of the market vendors had not opened up their shops, carts, or stalls yet in the rubble of the last city where everyone routinely gathered for commerce. Eris wondered if the Drifter also preferred the lack of people or if his insistence that they come this early to ‘avoid the crowds’ was entirely for her benefit. Probably for her, she realized. A crowd, for him, would simply be a cloak of invisibility.

She reached out and touched a t-shirt, rubbing the cloth between her fingertips, smiling at the softness of it.

“That one? Really?” the Drifter asked her.

“The material feels nice.”

“You uh… don’t see colours the same way, do ya?”

“No. What colour is it?”

He waited a few moments, watching her fondle it, and then leaned in close and whispered in her ear. “Bubblegum pink.”

Eris drew her hand away as though the shirt had bitten her.

He laughed, picked up the shirt, and held it up against her, eyeballing the fit.

Eris gave him a look that could curdle milk…or blood.

“I have limits, Rat, and that is well beyond them.”

He laughed again and turned to the merchant.

“Do you have this, but in black or maybe grey?”

The vendor pointed to a pile of clothing in a barrel on the other side of a table.

Eris heaved an audible sigh of relief.

The Drifter began picking through it. “This might do,” he pulled a couple of pieces into his hand. “We'll want to add in a layer or two.”

“We don't even know if they will fit.”

“Oh these'll fit.” He paid the merchant.

“How do you know?”

He gave her a sideways look with a half smile and licked his lips.

“Hmmm…”

“Oooo…” the Drifter stopped at a spice vendor they were walking past who was just opening up their stall.

Eris found the cacophony of scents overwhelming and wandered past the spices to an area filled with pottery. The elderly pottery vendor looked at her suspiciously. Eris found a selection of chunky looking mugs and began to pick up individual ones to sense their weight and feel how the handles felt against her hands.

“You should get two.” The Drifter’s voice was by her ear.

“I was thinking of it. What colours are these?”

“That one’s green and that one’s blue. Both dark and swirly. They don’t match but they also sorta go together. They look nice.”

“Very well.”

“Smell this.” He shoved a small bag in her face.

She sighed and inhaled. “Oh… that is nice… is it tea?”

“Yup. They said it’s oo-long, whatever the hell that is. Smells fancy.”

Eris smiled. “It is. I like oolong.”

“Well we got some now and if you get mugs we can put it in them and be fancy together.”

Eris took the mugs she’d selected to the nervous pottery vendor and attempted to be non-threatening. He took her glimmer with shaking hands.

“Now, let's find you some boots that don't look like they're for walking on the moon.” Drifter tugged at her elbow.

“Everything about me looks like it's for walking on the moon… Because I spend most of my time walking… on the moon.”

“Yeah well, we ain’t goin’ to the moon which is why we’re getting ya non-moon shit for those rare times when you ain’t on the moon.”

“Hmmm…”

“This place has a bench. Here.” He tossed her a pair of dark brown leather hiking boots. “Try those on.”

“The feet fit,” she said after a few minutes, “...but the calves and ankles are a bit too wide.”

“Really? Let me see.”

He knelt one knee on the ground in front of her and pulled her foot up onto his leg. His hands slid along her calf down next to her ankle. Eris would have sworn his hands were empty, especially since she had felt all his fingers caress her gently, but there was a sudden weight and she felt an object pressed against her ankle. Something several inches long in a leather sheath.

He tightened the boot laces and tied them off with a bow.

“Nah I think that's perfect.”

He pulled her pant leg down to cover the knife.

“Let me see the other one,” he grinned.

“Hmmm…”

She replaced her left foot with her right as he repeated what he had done.

“You just ain't tyin’ it right, Moondust.” He looked up at her with mischievous eyes. “Try that. Walk around a bit. Make sure it feels good.”

He stayed on one knee as she stood and walked from one side of him around to the other. She reached out a hand and brushed her fingertips against the side of his beard. He leaned into her hand like a cat and looked up at her with affection.

“I think you might like being on your knees in front of me,” she said quietly enough so that only he could hear.

He blinked rapidly, looked away from her, and gave a nervous laugh. “Now that’s a dangerous observation for you to make.”

“Hmmm…”

“Boots good, though?” He stood.

“Yes. The additions are… comforting.”

“Ain’t never met a hunter… current… or former… who thought there was such a thing as too many knives.” He winked at her.

The Drifter spent some time talking with the leather worker while he was paying for the boots. They conversed in a language Eris did not understand. The Drifter seemed to be asking for something beyond the boots and the vendor asked a few more questions before they came to an agreement and glimmer exchanged hands.

Eris looked around at the market. More people were arriving now. More vendors were opening up their shops in the rubble. A small child stared at her over a barrel of apples. Eris stared pointedly back. An adult behind the child called it away. A few moments later it returned to stare at her over the apples again. She couldn’t see the face, only dark hair and eyes wide with fascination. No fear. Only inquisitiveness. Eris stared back, one side of her lip quirked up in a small smile.

“You frightening children?” The Drifter teased her, pulled gently at her elbow.

“No. They are not afraid.” Eris turned to follow him. “I appreciate naked curiosity. It is so much more refreshing than fear.”

A lone Eliksni was setting up a stall slightly apart from the others, pulling out bolts of cloth and placing them on a table. The Drifter tugged Eris’ elbow again and walked over to converse with the cloth merchant in fluent Eliksni. Eris followed, impressed.

She was able to understand the essence of what they were saying but her Eliksni was mostly gathered from reading books with Eido and what she’d picked up fighting Fallen on the moon. The alien language flowed from the Drifter’s lips and hands as naturally as the unknown human language had before with the boot vendor. He asked specifically about colours first, and then softness, elasticity, flexibility, absorbency. The merchant’s bottom two hands pulled out a bolt of cloth while the top two gesticulated regarding the craftsmanship of the weaving and the materials used.

“Hey, Moondust, touch this one for me, will ya?”

She reached over and fondled the cloth. It felt soothing, light, yet strong. The texture was instantly pleasing to her. She gave the merchant a small smile.

“Yes,” she said quietly but firmly.

A portion of the cloth was cut and folded. Drifter asked about the price. The merchant pointed to Eris and asked a question she did not follow. The Drifter nodded. The merchant raised all four of its hands in refusal. The Drifter insisted and suggested a price. The merchant shook his head and protested. Drifter put a small bag of glimmer on the table. Nods of respect were exchanged. The Eliksni looked toward Eris, bowed deeply, and spoke much more slowly. “Thank you,” he said in his own language, and then he switched to theirs, “...thank you. Eido told us. It is… great honour… thank you…”

They both gave the merchant a small bow in respect before turning away.

“What has Eido been telling people?” Eris asked him quietly as they walked toward several stalls containing fresh vegetables.

“It seems the scribe of the House of Light may have informed them how one of their allies took the wind outta the sails of not one, but two hive gods, at great personal risk to herself, and lived.”

“Hmmm… The Eliksni material feels delightful. What is it for?”

“Your eyes. What you have now is all rough and scratchy. I seen where it chafes. This is light enough it can go underneath between what you have now and yer skin. Won’t look different at all, but it’ll be soothing on your face. Feel nice. I ain’t telling you to hide or not hide your eyes. That’s a you decision. Nor am I telling you what to wear, on your eyes or otherwise. But… you should get to feel nice… if and when you want to.”

She took his hand and squeezed it.

The sounds of the market were beginning to pick up, voices all around were increasing: negotiations, call-outs, the occasional shouting. Eris found it all very overwhelming. Outside of combat, she was never around this many people at once. Her pulse quickened. The Drifter was a central point of calm for her in the swirling noise, but the noise was increasing. She gripped his hand tighter. He looked over at her, concerned.

“It is loud,” she explained.

He nodded and pulled them into an alley and around a corner, which helped to cut the noise.

“Thank you.”

“I think we got everything we need at this point and the day has now fully started so it’s only going to get louder. Shall we bug outta here and go tell Sherlock Mamma-bear we’re running off so she does not hunt us down and nova bomb our camp out of concern for our wellbein’?”

“Yes.”

“All right. Back alleys and shortcuts will be quieter on our way back.” He took both her hands in his as he started walking backwards, slightly bouncing on his toes. “This is my bag, Moondust. Allow me give ya a quick tour of the sketchy side of town.”

His eyes sparkled in glee as she laughed and followed him down the alley.

This is the first in a series I wrote on Ao3 called Embers and Stars (aka Eris and the Drifter go camping and then there is violence). FYI a few of the later sections have some nsfw happyfunsexytimes but those sections are clearly marked with skip links for anyone who isn't into that but wants to still read the stories.

[imonthemoonitsmadeofcheese]

Eris Morn & the Drifter

I understand the "I will die for you" ship dynamic, but what about the "I will not let you die, I will not let myself die- we will, at any cost, survive" kind of couple?

[kept-confidence]

to be vulnerable is to unfold our being for the other, and to reside in the spaces between, together. a short piece on a moment of shared vulnerability between eris and the drifter, loosely inspired by the abstract possibilities that come with the 'to'-infinitive

clearly my obsession with the infinitive has not left since 4 years ago and i am still thinking about it in different forms and I guess it has now appeared in this

writing is a little rusty because it has been a while but i hope it is a nice read! please enjoy :')

[imonthemoonitsmadeofcheese]

Hey Ikora

Link to Ao3 if you prefer to read it there

VANNET PERSONAL VANTOWGUESTACC/ 6cc842de4888f9899a1f0e9ed97c2efa >> VANCINCLOCK IKORA REY

Hey Ikora,

Three-Eyes says hi. We're going on a scavenger hunt for weird Darkness bullshit and Vanguard's not invited. Back in like a week. Don't freak out.

No salutation entered, “VIP #1315”

.

VANNET PERSONAL REMOTEACCESS/VANTOWGUESTACC/ 6cc842de4888f9899a1f0e9ed97c2efa >> VANCINCLOCK IKORA REY

Hey Ikora,

Apparently we've been workin for you the whole time and she only just told me. My bad. I didn't ask. Anyway, she's left a package for you. Says to send a field agent to come get it. Coordinates attached. Don't send Aunor. We don't like her.

Transmat firing, D

.

VANNET PERSONAL REMOTEACCESS/VANTOWGUESTACC/ 6cc842de4888f9899a1f0e9ed97c2efa >> VANCINCLOCK IKORA REY

Hey Ikora,

You're gonna love this. Did you know there was a small Shadow Legion outpost buried in one of the rings of Saturn? We didn't neither. Fixed that for ya. Might wanna send someone to come clean it up though. We made a mess.

Have fun! Nony Mouse

.

VANNET PERSONAL REMOTEACCESS/VANTOWGUESTACC/ 6cc842de4888f9899a1f0e9ed97c2efa >> VANCINCLOCK IKORA REY

Hey Ikora,

I'm typing this out exactly as she's sayin' it cuz I dunno what in the hell it means:

There is a lay line disturbance which is generating concretions of Darkness energy in the sediment which in turn are creating environmental hazards on the surface of Ganymede.

I think she wants you to send some Guardians to come and shoot it.

Toodles! Deeznutz

.

VANNET PERSONAL REMOTEACCESS/VANTOWGUESTACC/ 6cc842de4888f9899a1f0e9ed97c2efa >> VANCINCLOCK IKORA REY

Hey Ikora,

You've known Moondust for longer than me. If someone wanted to get her something special that'd make her super happy, you got any suggestions? I said something hilarious and she did not agree with how funny it was. She's real pissed at me and I do love making her mad, but not this mad, ya know? Help a fella out?

Transmat firing, D

.

VANNET PERSONAL REMOTEACCESS/VANTOWGUESTACC/ 6cc842de4888f9899a1f0e9ed97c2efa >> VANCINCLOCK IKORA REY

Hey Ikora,

Heard some of your spies went places they shouldn't of and now there's a mess in the Annex. You could'a just asked. Get Aunor to clean it up with a toothbrush or something and we'll call it even.

Later, N. O. Buddy

.

VANNET PERSONAL REMOTEACCESS/VANTOWGUESTACC/ 6cc842de4888f9899a1f0e9ed97c2efa >> VANCINCLOCK IKORA REY

Hey Ikora,

Eris says: The sedge is withered from the lake and no birds sing. Hope you know what that means cuz I sure as hell don't.

Ciao, Noman

.

VANNET PERSONAL REMOTEACCESS/VANTOWGUESTACC/ 6cc842de4888f9899a1f0e9ed97c2efa >> VANCINCLOCK IKORA REY

Hey Ikora,

Want anything from Neomuna while we're out here? Nimbus says hi. Osiris said something too but I stopped listening after he started using words like "weft" and "transmutation." Also Three-Eyes don't hate me no more. Thanks for the help.

Catch you soon, D

.

VANNET PERSONAL VANTOWGUESTACC/ 6cc842de4888f9899a1f0e9ed97c2efa >> VANCINCLOCK IKORA REY

Hey Ikora,

Was quarantining the Annex really necessary? I already got past all those locks and shit your people put up but I need to run a business here. I left your Biohazard, Restricted Access, and No Entry signs in a pile under the stairs.

Transmat firing, 1315 in da house

[imonthemoonitsmadeofcheese]

Destinytober24: Day 2 - Tower

In the Destinypedia article on the Tower of Woe (from the Scarlet Keep strike) there's a quote at the top:

After much investigation, this has been determined to not be an actual quote from anywhere within Destiny that anyone has been able to find.

Link to Ao3 if you prefer to read it there

"Tower of Woah? …It's not that impressive."

"What?"

"You said it was the Tower of Woah. It don't make me go woah."

"There are times when you are completely incomprehensible."

"Pot. Kettle."

"Hmmm…"

"Don't guardians normally have to fight their way in here?"

"Yes."

"But we just walked in right through the Scarlet Keep and no one bothered us."

"Yes."

"And there ain't nothin' shooting us as we go up this elevator right now."

"Correct."

"But when I looked this place up in the Hidden archives there was footage of-"

"You have been infiltrating the Hidden archives? Again?"

"Well you said we were goin' here. I wanted to research it."

"You could have simply asked me and I would have shared the relevant files."

"But then I wouldn't possibly come across any irrelevant files. The amount of times I've stumbled across the most profitable-"

"Do. Not."

"Right. Sorry. Point bein'… the footage I saw had Hive Acolytes shootin' Guardians in this elevator from those holes in the sides."

"Alcoves."

"Sure, whatever. They were in there in those Al-Coves shooting guardians as they came up the tower like they was fish in a barrel. No cover. Shoot before ya get shot. But there ain't no one shooting us here. Last Guardians through can't have got rid of all the Hive in this tower. Those fuckers move back in hours after you clean 'em out. Sometimes five minutes if you time it right."

"Yes. But they are not here now."

"That's my point. Why?"

"Why what?"

"Why ain't they here tryin' to kill us?"

"Because I sent them away."

"You what? You can… command them?"

"The lesser Hive are easily compelled with sufficient magic and force of will, yes. The spell will last for the next four hours, which is more than enough time for us to make a full circuit of the tower and take care of anything we might find."

"Holy shit. I didn't know you could do that. That's… hot."

"Hmmm…"

"Wait… You said the lesser ones. What about the greater ones?"

"This is why I requested your assistance."

"You can't take on the greater Hive?"

"I can, and frequently do. However this is one of those situations you have mentioned before… where it 'makes sense to bring a friend'… just in case."

"Buddy system. I get ya. Surprised you didn't just bring one of the Guardians."

"I usually do. I will in future, if you prefer."

"No. I do not prefer. I like this. You know I like this."

"I do. Hence your invitation."

"Just not used to you… bringin' me along for… Moon shit… that's all. I like it. I hope we do it more. I'm happy to come with ya for anything, you know that."

"I do."

"Hey… wait a sec… is this… a date? This is a date, isn't it?"

"What? No. Why would it be a date? How does that even make any sense?"

"Creepy Hive tower… you scared 'em all off so we can be alone… maybe we fight something nasty together… murder is a form of love for Hive so us killin' something big together is kinda-"

"No. We are here to set wards and confirm the tower's energy is not being put to even more nefarious uses than it is routinely. It is not a… date."

"Not with that attitude."

"Ugh."

.

"Hoo-ee! Four Ogres, six Wizards and nine Hive Knights… It may not be the Tower of Whoa but it sure is the Tower of Ass-kicking today."

"Tsch."

"That was fun. You should take me out on dates like this more often, Moondust. You really do know how to get someone's blood flowing."

"Hmmm… Yes. You should use your ghost for that."

"Nope. Not gonna."

"Do not be ridiculous. You are likely to lose consciousness from blood loss before we even get back to Sanctuary."

"Nah. Brought a first aid kit. Gimme a bit and I'll have myself patched up. It'll be fine."

"A first aid kit? Why would you bring a first aid kit? You have a ghost."

"Because you don't."

"What?"

"Rule number one about hangin' around Lightless, is you bring a first aid kit in case they need it. My ghost can't do shit if you get hurt."

"Do you… always bring a first aid kit when you are… with me?"

"Uh… yup."

"Really."

"Well… yeah, Moondust."

"That is… extremely thoughtful and… kind."

"Really? Wild. It's almost like I like you or something."

"Or something."

"Hey… you sure this ain't a date, Moondust? Cuz when you're up close touchin' my face all gentle like this, it really is very nice… and it almost looks like you might wanna kiss me right about now."

"Do you never stop talking? Even now… with our lips so close together… you are still… talking."

"Yeah well, if you want me to shut my mouth so bad, maybe you should shut it for me."

.

"Ok I take it back. It is the Tower of Whoa."

"Tsch."

Link to the entire month's worth of prompts on Ao3, posted daily.

[imonthemoonitsmadeofcheese]

Eris & Drifter

Yeah... that's like... half my fanfiction... sorry, not sorry.

battle couples has gotta be one of my favorite tropes though. The “you got me?” “Yeah, I got you.” The kiss for good luck. Fighting alongside each other for so long they know every strength and weakness. The dichotomy of being fucking terrifying to their enemies, but so soft with each other. When one is in danger and the other goes feral, protects them at any cost. When everything is over and done, it’s all “let me see where you’re hurt,” and washing off the dirt and blood.

[imonthemoonitsmadeofcheese]

Destinytober24: Day 4 - Reunion

Always wondered wtf Shin Malphur was doing during Beyond Light. This was as good an excuse as any.

Link to Ao3 if you prefer to read it there

"Looks like Stranger's got company," the Drifter said over his shoulder to Eris Morn, riding behind him on the same sparrow.

It had been dark when they had left with Eris driving, but now the light glinting off the snow was blinding. Days and nights on Europa lasted 85 hours. Due to Eris's excellent night vision and the Drifter's keen eyes during the day, it made the most sense for them to drive a single sparrow together when they were out on patrol through sundown or sunset.

"A guardian, perhaps?" Eris asked.

The Drifter licked his lips and smiled, glad his rebreather was hiding the lower half of his face. The sound of her voice right by his ear was such a turn-on, even with the wind whipping the warmth and steam from her lips away from them.

The Drifter brought their sparrow to a perfect sliding stop sideways next to the other vehicle near Elsie's yurt. His stomach lurched as he looked it over.

"What is it?" Eris asked, feeling him tense.

"I know that sparrow."

"Clearly."

They both disembarked and he put his hand on her arm. "Do me a favour, Moondust?"

"That depends upon what the favour is."

"Let me do the talking and let me stay between you and him."

"Why?"

"Long story. Tell ya later. Please?"

Eris tilted her head. It was the first time he had ever asked her something ending with the word "please." His voice was gentle. Gentler than he ever spoke to her. His eyes were cold. His body had become eerily relaxed, in a way that felt… dangerous. Like a snake, loosely coiled, ready to strike.

Whatever this was, the Drifter was afraid. But… Eris observed… not for himself.

Even now, their friendship only recently and loosely established, their time on Europa only recently begun, Eris could tell when the Drifter was readying himself for… something. She was learning his moods, his body language. His behaviour now was almost… protective.

"Hmmm…" Eris frowned. She loathed being protected. And yet… it was unlike him to behave in such a manner. He had never done so before. This was different.

"Very well."

As they entered the shelter Eris saw Elsie nervously fidgeting with a coffee cup at the small table where they took their meals. A hunter sat across from her. He was dressed in black leather with a wide-brimmed hat tilted low over his face, obscuring it. A cup of coffee sat in front of him on the table, steaming. It looked untouched.

Elsie looked up sharply as the two entered. The glow from her eyes settled first on the Drifter pulling his rebreather off, and then immediately looked behind him to fixate on Eris.

The elder Bray sister was never nervous and yet she clearly was exhibiting symptoms of nervousness now. Her Exo frame was tense with agitation, but Eris only noted this in passing.

Eris' three eyes zeroed in on the man across the table from Elsie, or rather, the tendrils of Darkness she could see wafting around him with her Hive-augmented sight, tendrils in a distinctive shape she'd only ever witnessed coiled around one other person.

"Hey," the Drifter said, his voice friendly as he tossed his rebreather onto a heap of equipment near the door.

Eris watched the Drifter shift his stance as the man at the table turned to look at them. She wondered if the movement to place even more of his body between herself and their new guest was even conscious at this point. She could feel him reverting to instinct. A dangerous wild animal facing off against another of its own kind.

"Hey," the man at the table responded. A gruff practised friendliness. And then his head tilted up slightly and she saw his eyes.

She knew them instantly. "Eyes like mana in the desert," the Drifter had once described them to her. It was an apt metaphor. Eyes that could see through anything. Eyes that could lead a cult. Eyes that could summon the Light with enough power to form a gun that would leave its victim nothing but a shadow on a wall. Captivating. Beautiful. Very old and very young at the same time.

Those eyes bored into her. Eris' mouth formed a thin line. Her three Hive eyes met his gaze through her bandage without flinching and bored right back. Analysing. Observing. Feeling the Darkness within him shifting and writhing.

The two Hunters stared each other down and sized each other up over the rogue Lightbearer's shoulder.

"What'cha up to out here, friend?" the Drifter asked, his voice extremely casual as it broke the tense silence.

"Might ask you the same thing," the man responded.

"Doin' my job. Just like we agreed." Eris noted how the Drifter was careful to keep his empty hands where everyone could see them while simultaneously hiding what her own hands were doing.

"That's funny. I seem to remember your job is runnin' Gambit."

"Gambit's doin' just fine, thanks for askin'. But you didn't come out here just cuz I cancelled a few matches now, did ya? Seems like an awful lot of fuss."

"Nah." The man didn't even look at the Drifter. His eyes never left Eris'. "Just wanted to check in on my friend's new… friends."

Elsie looked back at Eris sharply, concern on her face.

"We're doin' just fine." Eris could feel the Drifter's disarming smile in his tone as he spoke.

"Are you sure about that, friend?" The man at the table leaned forward slowly. The Drifter moved in a way that was barely perceptible. The coffee cup trembled between Elsie's hands.

The tone was gentle but Eris felt the threat behind it. A threat directed not at the Drifter or at Elsie, but squarely at her.

"Yeah… friend," the Drifter replied.

"Wouldn't want you to be getting too attached to anyone out here in the cold," the man at the table continued. "Might compromise your judgement." He continued to start at Eris.

"Why? You gettin' jealous?"

Eris and Elsie both looked at the Drifter in surprise. True to form, it was the last thing Eris had expected to come out of his mouth in this situation.

The man at the table laughed with his mouth but not his eyes, but he did look away from Eris to the Drifter when he did so. "Not of you."

"Always a bridesmaid, never a bride," the Drifter said with a fake wistful tone.

"Yeah, well," the man at the table looked back at Eris. "You ain't the till death do us part type."

"Damn straight. You know how much I like breathin', brother."

"Oh…" The man at the table stood up, or rather, he flowed to his feet. Elsie spilled a small amount of coffee onto her hand. The Drifter took a half-step back, lightly bumping against Eris. Eris rocked onto the balls of her feet and willed her Ahamkara bone to frost over behind the Drifter's back.

The man in black stepped toward the Drifter and Eris.

The temperature in the room dropped several degrees.

Elsie's hand dropped down to rest her fingertips on her No Time to Explain pulse rifle slung over her shoulder.

The Drifter turned slightly, nudging Eris back and to the side with one shoulder, away from the door.

"I'm countin' on it," the man said as he stepped in close to the Drifter, finally staring into his eyes.

The Drifter raised one arm slightly in a shielding motion to the side as he stepped back again. Eris growled quietly but followed the Drifter's lead, stepping away from the door and, as he had requested, keeping him between her and his 'friend.'

"Last thing I want is to have to come clean up your mess," the man said quietly.

"Aww… come on… you know how much I love gettin' dirty." The Drifter punctuated his response with a lascivious smile and a wink.

They stood, their faces inches apart, the Drifter smirking, the other man not reacting at all. Waiting.

"Seriously though, we're fine here," the Drifter broke the silence. "You do not need to be here now, and you don't need to come back. Ever."

The man looked from Drifter's eyes over his shoulder to Eris and then back again.

"See that it stays that way."

The Drifter's lips made an exaggerated kissing motion twice as the gunslinger stepped past him through the door, out into the snow.

The door slid shut and all three of them heard the sound of a sparrow leaving. The Drifter closed his eyes and let out a long slow breath, still leaning slightly into Eris as he relaxed.

"Was that… who I think it was?" Elsie asked.

"Uh… yup," the Drifter answered, blinking slowly. "The one and only." He turned to Eris. "Thanks. I know you probably wanted to stab him in the face."

Eris' three eyes narrowed. "The three of us could have taken him."

"Maybe" The Drifter sighed with a smile and stepped away from her. "Maybe. Still not very good odds. And I am very glad we didn't have to find out."

"Is this normal?" Elsie asked. "Does he just periodically show up and… threaten you?"

"Eh… one man's threat is another man's foreplay. He's… very dramatic. Probably comes with the territory when you're a myth walking around on two legs."

"Hmmm…" Eris intoned as the frost left her Ahamkara bone and the room began to warm up to its regular internal temperature.

"Anyway. That's over. I'm still alive and so are both of you." He pointed his index finger on his left hand at Elsie and the index finger on his right at Eris. "I'm calling that a win." He took another deep breath and let it out slowly. "Fuck I need a drink. Surely we got something in here that's stronger than coffee…"

Link to the entire month's worth of prompts on Ao3, posted daily.

[imonthemoonitsmadeofcheese]

Intervention

Set during Season of the Witch.

Elsie Bray is on her way to kill Eris Morn to prevent the dark future when an unexpected impediment gives her pause.

Link to Ao3 if you prefer to read it there

Elsie tried another door. It, too, was locked. The back hallways of the H.E.L.M. never used to be such a maze. She’d gone in here to avoid having to deal with Crow at the main doors but now it had been over half an hour trying to reroute herself through maintenance areas and storage rooms and she’d doubled back several times to find herself slightly rerouted again. It was almost as though someone was following her around and locking doors, preventing her from confronting Eris.

Maybe someone was.

Elsie looked around. The only other person she could see was the ancient janitor, stooped over, washing the floor. He'd been slowly washing the floors since she got here. She’d passed him numerous times, and he was the only common element in all the doors being locked.

“You. What are you doing.” She pulled out her pulse rifle, No Time To Explain, and pointed it at his head.

His mop stopped and his eyes remained on the floor as though he were trying not to aggravate her.

“I'm… washing the floor. You want me to go? I can go.”

His voice was old, grandfatherly. It exuded harmlessness. Elsie was not yet convinced.

“Who are you?”

“I'm Tom. I'm the janitor.”

She walked around him to get a good look at his face.

Old, like his voice. White bushy eyebrows. Long stringy white hair. She looked closer. The eyes. There was something about the janitor's eyes.

“Are you going to shoot me?” He asked, his hands shaking on the mop handle.

There was something about his voice now too, something familiar but also, something which deep inside of her she identified as a friend.

Elsie sighed, “No.” She holstered her weapon.

“Appreciate it.”

“How do I know you?”

“I've been working here a while.” He resumed mopping. Elsie regretfully noticed that his hands on the mop handle continued to tremble.

“I’m sorry for reacting like that. I’m very upset right now. Can you unlock this door for me?”

“Yes.”

He stood his mop up into its bucket and walked over, fumbling with a mess of keys clipped to his belt. He then pulled one out and tried to turn it in the lock.

“Actually no, I can't. That's weird.”

“Maybe you're using the wrong key?”

He handed her the cluster of keys all connected together. It was heavy. There must have been over fifty keys.

“Feel free to try ‘em yourself.”

Elsie began methodically trying keys as he went back to washing the floor.

“What's through there anyways? You going to kill someone?”

“Yes.”

The old man sighed and shook his head. “Must be a bad person.”

“Yes. She wasn't before but she is now and I can't go through this again.”

“Not sure what you mean there, but I'm sorry. Was she a friend before?”

“Yes, a friend, a companion, a student.”

“You taught her and she went bad?”

“Yes.”

“Was it because of what you taught her?”

“I taught her to try and prevent this. I thought if I could teach her how to use her power she would not be corrupted by it.”

“But she didn't learn?”

“No. She learned. She was… still is… one of my best students.”

“That's too bad. I'm sorry.”

“Me too. You have no idea.”

“She killing people now? Murdering civilians like me and guardians like you left and right?”

“No, not yet, but she will.”

“Wait, she ain't killed anyone yet? How do you know she's bad?”

“I can hear it in her voice, feel it in her smile. I've felt it before. I know what this becomes.”

“You sure? Ain't no one can tell the future. You killing her before she's even done anything? That don't seem right, sister.”

“Nothing about this is right,” Elsie replied.

“I'm not in any position to tell someone like you what to do, but it sounds to me like you're about to kill someone when they ain't done nothing yet to deserve it, just because you don't trust them.”

“You’re right. I don’t. I've seen what this becomes.”

“I heard a lot of guardians talking about that darkness whisperin’ to them. You sure this isn't like those whispers?”

“This is different. You're a civilian. You wouldn't understand.”

“You know I knew someone like you once, killed their own kid. They were convinced the kid was evil because of what they saw in a dream. Thought the kid would kill their mom. Thing was, kid wasn't evil, the dream was. And they were so wrapped up in preventing themselves from feeling what they felt in that dream, they destroyed their own family in reality, thereby causing all the pain in their dream to come true. Kid died by their hand and the mom killed herself outta grief. It was the exact result the guy was trying to prevent in the first place. He made that dream come true.”

Elsie paused and stared at her own hands while he continued.

“You sure this need to kill your student isn't the future you're trying to prevent attempting to get you to cause it to happen? Cause you're right. I'm no guardian, but I've seen what happens when people are killed for something they ain't done yet, and it never ends well.”

Elsie handed Tom the keys. “You're right, none of these keys unlock this door and I can't transmat through. I have no idea why.”

He took the keys with trembling hands. “That the only thing I'm right about, sister?”

Again that familiarity washed over Elsie. Perhaps he was related to someone she knew. He was certainly old enough.

“No. I… I don't want to kill her. I just can't live through this again.”

“There's a lot of things humans think they can't live through, and then they up and do anyway. You're a lot stronger and more resilient than you give yourself credit for. Your student probably is too. If you taught her the best you can, shouldn't she have a chance to prove she ain't bad this time around?”

He leaned on his mop and kept eye contact with her. Elsie found herself compelled to listen to him, to examine his face in order to try and pinpoint what was so familiar.

“You guardians all have so many lives you forget what it's like to have only one. People with only one life know how precious that is. Don't take that away from someone on account of a bad dream that ain't happened yet. You're more likely to make your dream come true that way than anything else”

He pulled the mop back out of the bucket and continued to speak as he resumed washing the floor. “Sometimes you just gotta trust you've set a person up the best you can and let them make their own decisions.”

“You have no idea. It's not that simple.”

“Maybe it ain't, but from where I'm standing, you're about to do something real bad and you've convinced yourself there's no other way, and it's all because you can't trust someone you trained to do the right thing. Maybe you should wait till they done something worth dying for before you go taking their life away.”

“I can't. The stakes are too high.” Why was she justifying herself to this man? Why were his questions and statements so compelling?

“You know,” Tom spoke in a carefully measured tone as he looked up from his mopping again into Elsie’s exo eyes. “This student of yours, she probably has people that love her. People who would do the same thing to you, kill you to keep you from hurting her.”

Elsie shook her head and turned away. “No. All the people she loves are dead.”

“Oh, I wouldn't be so sure of that. How do you know she don't have no one else? That she ain't found someone else to love and love her back? People find love all the time in the weirdest and darkest of places. And what would you do if one of them were about to kill you to prevent a murder you ain't done yet, because they just can't trust you not to make the wrong choice? There could be someone ready to kill you right now. How would that be right?”

A weird feeling washed over Elsie, like she was missing something, something very important.

“See how wild that gets?" he continued, "How completely unfair? How evil and downright selfish that is to take away a life, someone who loves and is loved, because you are afraid of feeling something that might not happen? Don't go there, sister. It ain't right.” He turned and stabbed the mop into the bucket violently, tipping the bucket and slopping dirty water all over the floor.

Tom sighed and ran gloved fingers through scraggly white hair with one hand on his hip.

“Well now here I got all passionate and made a mess. Guess I'll be here a while.” He righted the bucket and began using the mop like a sponge, soaking up water and wringing it out to get the liquid off the floor.

Elsie stood there, blinking, his words resonating in counterpoint to her memories of other timelines, other deaths.

“Tom, what's the fastest way to the main area of the HE.L.M. from here?”

“I ain't telling you that if you're gonna kill someone.” He said, wringing the mop. “You shouldn't do that.”

Elsie sighed. “I won't. I've heard you. I am going to leave and think about what you've said.”

He looked up at her, as though he were judging whether or not she was telling the truth, then he nodded.

“Alright. Main room of the H.E.L.M. is actually through that door.” He pointed to the left.

“Thank you, Tom. Although, I do still feel like I know you from somewhere. That we’ve talked before.”

“You do. From here. We have. I've been working here a very long time, sister. Everyone who comes through here finds me familiar. Janitors are like furniture. No one sees us unless they need to and then they're surprised they know us. But of course they do, we've been here the entire time.” He gave her a small smile before returning to soak up the water with his mop.

“Right, well, thank you.”

“No trouble sister, you take care now.”

“I will.”

The door closed behind her as she walked through.

After a few minutes, Tom stopped mopping the floor and stood up straight, straighter than he'd stood at any point while talking to Elsie. He tilted his head from side to side, cracking his neck.

Then he sighed and a rectangular jade coin appeared in his fingers. He flicked it down at the huge puddle of water on the floor. The coin made a wet 'Ding' as it pinged back to him. The water was now frozen solid with stasis.

He caught and flicked the coin into the air again. It ignited with solar energy mid-air, tumbling end over end, wreathed in fire. When it touched the ice on the floor, there was a loud crack and the frozen water shattered before sublimating into steam.

Tom the janitor caught and palmed his coin, absent-mindedly using slight of hand to make the coin disappear, before setting his mop and bucket against the wall. He moved to the locked door Elsie had been fighting with and adjusted the mechanism. It slid open, leading to a room filled with books, arcane oddities, and a hive portal.

Tom reached down to a table and touched one of the metal emblems with Eris' symbol on it. He caressed it lovingly.

“Go get 'em, Moondust.” He whispered to it before transmatting away.

This is one of a series of stories written during Season of the Witch that I called Kept Conficence, after the hand cannon with the lore that helped to inspire them.

Here is a link to all of them in order if you wish.

[imonthemoonitsmadeofcheese]

Hello! Me again, back to pester you about lore.

So what's going on with The Drifter? For once I know a little about the character, I read 'A Man With No Name', but I still have questions. From how the book read, Drifter convinced Felwinter to get revenge for the destruction of the village. Did that go anywhere? And what did Drifter get up to for the (unspecified very long) timeskip between the book and the game?

And with the modern day, does the Vanguard know he's running a fighting ring out of the basement? Or does every single guardian look away when Zavala tries figuring out where people keep getting these weapons? I guess first rule of fight club and all that. What's he even trying to do? He seems to be pretty against most of the Vanguard's leadership.

Anyway, another invitation to infodump about your other blorbo. I hope you don't mind XD

If you thought I was long-winded about Eris... She's maybe 400 years old whereas the Drifter may be 900... get comfy... this will not be quick.

"Dark Age was wild times."

I adore the Drifter and a good chunk of how and why I adore him is his voice - both the voice acting and the syntax/diction/phrasing used in the writing, but voice alone does not cover why I find his character so utterly enthralling and fantastic.

I wrote a short piece consisting of Eris telling Ikora what she sees in him in my story Finders Keepers. It's basically a personality analysis and some people have (I think probably accurately) accused it of being a love letter to that character. (Reminder: that link is fanfiction - I wrote it - it is not lore, but it is based on lore. However, everything else I list after this is actual lore.)

But, personality aside, ultimately the Drifter's story is what I find most compelling about him and makes him so empathetic. You mentioned you've read A Man with No Name, but there's more. A lot more.

To start, the Drifter is D2's most violent pacifist.

He doesn't want to fight and when he does, it's vicious. The Emissary of the Nine, formerly Orin (his ex-best friend and/or ex-lover, depending upon how you read it) aptly says "He hates violence. He hates it so much he'll murder anyone who tries to inflict it on him."

In A Man with No Name, we see him go from hiding in a town and having it obliterated by warlords, to running a bar at the bottom of Felwinter peak, to getting Lord Felwinter himself to avenge the town. Drifter doesn't fight anywhere in there and gets other people to do his fighting for him, which is a pretty standard tactic for him. And yes, it is strongly implied that Felwinter does indeed murder the fuck out of Lord Dryden when he says "Call Lord Dryden. Prepare my Iron Banner arsenal."

But then we get Dark Age Drifter entries where he's gunning down Fallen attackers with quotes like "He had never brought himself to shoot a human. Or anything even resembling a human. Risen included." (Bonus mention: notice "Alright" repeated here and compare to his standard Gambit opening of Alright, alright, alright...") Where he's slipping away from non-violence, specifying, in particular, that he won't shoot a human but will defend himself from aliens.

And then he becomes something else entirely in these amazing entries with what I've been calling his Breakneck crew:

Now Otto's a Sword man. He's all about "craft." Technique. Precision. It's disgusting, but I don't care how he does it, as long as it gets done, so I just let him do it. And Otto does it so beautifully that, when he's done, you're standing there holding your guts in your hands and thanking him for the show.

Never touches a gun, that girl. She likes to get close. Likes to look right in their eyes and be the last thing they see.

The chumps that run out to stop us are babies. That's the kicker with Warlords—other than ours, there's not a Ghost in sight here. Just civilians who can barely hold their guns without wetting their pants, who can't aim worth a damn, who stick their necks out for the bad guys with eternal life. Real geniuses.

Cenric stood up. That vein of his looked about ready to pop. Drifter let his feet down as he reached for his rifle, asp-quick. "And you know what we do with rats, don't you, brother."

And the thing I love about this is the character development this speaks to where he goes from pacifist who won't fight at all... to someone who will use a machine gun competently, repeating "Alright" and getting himself used to killing, but not humans, never humans... to stone cold vicious murder-Drifter talking about the lightless who die to his crew in ways that make them (and himself) seem no longer human, to gunning down his own crew, people he felt were a perfect team, when they make deals with warlords behind his back and lie to him about it.

The Drifter started out adhering to an ideal of nonviolence and it destroyed him and everyone he cared for. His sense of self, his principles, everything he believed in is eroded until he completely loses all hope and in order to survive the cruelty of the world he lives in he becomes a ruthless monster.

Either before or after his Breakneck-era crew (it's not clear), the Drifter (under the name Eli) joins the Pilgrim Guard, a group of Titans protecting lightless people as they travel to the Last City. He does this out of a desire/need to be near Orin, a Titan with a complicated past and strong ties to both Queen Mara and the Nine. But then after spending time with Eli/Drifter and the Pilgrim Guard, Orin, the one person Drifter's ever had a deep human connection with, the person he considers his best friend, leaves without a word.

It's very telling that the green snakes, the jade coin, and the red string on those same coins that form such profound parts of the Drifter's symbolism and identity all come from Orin. When the Drifter truly cares for someone, he incorporates part of them into himself, into his identity, making them part of who he becomes, so they live on inside of him.

After his time with Orin, we get into the extremely confusing, contradictory mess that is the Drifter's intersection with Shin Malfur-related Rose/Thorn/Lumina lore. And by this I mean that the Drifter, after fighting alongside people doing genuinely noble good work, in the wake of losing Orin, leaves the Pilgrim Guard and eventually ends up joining the evil cult of evil: following in the footsteps of one of the most reviled risen to ever exist - the guardian-killer: Dredgen Yor.

If you're gonna hang with me, you need to know about the Shadows of Yor. They follow the edicts of a very bad man named Dredgen Yor. And what're his Shadows after? Everything the Light can't provide. I thought they could help me find an answer to the battles of Light versus Light that raged during the Dark Age. But the longer I flew with them, the more I saw they're blind as all those who follow the Traveler. One albatross for another. I was done with 'em.

And while in the cult, in some sort of ritual, he communes with the Darkness directly and gets some sort of Darkness powers (possibly Stasis, possibly something else - it's super unclear) and the Darkness whispers to him his Dredgen name: Dredgen Hope, which is particularly brutal in context with this quote from Dredgen Yor himself:

I care only to give hope to the frightened, huddled masses so that when I come upon them they will have more to lose. Their pain will be greater. Their screams more pure… Nothing dies like hope. I cherish it.

But it is also particularly pointed because hope is the thing the Drifter doesn't have. Trust is the thing he doesn't have the ability to do any more because of his experiences (and is also the name of the hand cannon he wears shoved into his pants). He is the most jaded (literally - constantly fidgeting with a jade coin) character in the D2 universe. He loses everything and leans in on it and follows that path to full evil.

And then he walks away. Because evil doesn't work for him either.

But also (either before or after he's completely left the cult - it's ambiguous, but possibly when he's still entangled but it's already fracturing and falling apart) he finds Orin again (he's using the name Wu Ming at this point - either having returned to it, or because he hasn't changed it yet from Felwinter Peak, or perhaps this happens before Felwinter Peak - the order and timeline is somewhat fuzzy).

Orin does not remember who he is when he finds her the second time (she's pretty nuts at this point - her story is filled with madness and tragedy), and is going insane with grief over losing Namqi (the person she left with when she disappeared the first time) as well as her obsession with the Nine. And the Drifter is once more drawn to her and once more connects deeply with her:

Wu Ming leaves his questions by the wayside as he is drawn inexorably into the gravity well of her desperate honesty. Her confessions lower his defenses. He talks of himself. Of his fear. Of his loneliness. How he feels he is one fingernail away from plummeting into an abyss. How he feels vicious resentment every time he is brought back from the dead: He never asked for the gift of the Light... They make excuse after excuse to meet again. Every conversation is colored by excavated truths; every day they feel they will reach some bedrock that will break them to pieces. It is as frightening as it is intoxicating.

But then Orin finds out about him being a Dredgen, terminates their relationship, goes off to become the Emissary of the Nine and, as someone I was talking with once referred to it: 'it was a breakup so bad he had to leave the solar system.'

Things go very poorly the first time the Drifter loses Orin but the second time is far worse. He has a full-on Lovecraftian 'At the Mountains of Madness' style horror-movie-plot experience with a crew he calls his 'best friends' (which may or may not be all ex-Dredgens but there's at least evidence they might be) out on a frozen planet being stalked and driven to insane levels of paranoia by Darkness creatures able to snuff out their light:

I think I mentioned we're all raving psychos at this point. Well, we did what all measured raving psychos would do. We thought we each had been betrayed by the others. We drew on each other.

The Drifter kills them all to keep them from killing him (at least, that's what he says - no one else is alive to argue). Then his ghost, who up until now has been kind of a moralistic asshole, suggests he hunt down the ghosts of his former crew and Frankenstein them together in order to survive:

And the craziest thing happened. My Ghost snapped... But we would need parts. Ghost parts. And we knew where we could get some... The Ghosts of my former crew all fled as soon as their charges hit the dirt. So me'n mine, we hunted them... "Hey. There's always hope. For what it's worth, I'm proud of you." It was the last thing my Ghost ever said, and the last lie it ever told.

The Drifter's ghost is rendered mute from the experience (either mechanically or due to the trauma of hunting down and murdering other ghosts - it's not clear) but the plan works, they survive, and the Drifter builds the Derelict out of scrap, returning to the Tower where he sets up Gambit.

It's super unclear (again, the Shin-related lore is just a mess and deliberately confusing) but it turns out that Drifter going on about how the Man with the Golden Gun is out to get him is actually a deal he made with Shin to set up Gambit (because, spoiler: the leader of the entire Dredgen cult, Dredgen Vale, turns out to be none other than Shin Malphur, the Man with the Golden Gun, who hunts Dredgens and who the Drifter has been saying is out to get him this entire time) to draw out the truly Darkness-corrupted guardians so Shin can kill them. (And this is ultimately why the Vanguard lets him run a fighting ring in the basement - because Shin convinces them it will help find the truly bad guardians so they can be eliminated).

If you find that confusing, that's because it is. Anything to do with Shin Malphur/Dredgen Yor/Rose/Thorn/Lumnia is pretty much an acid-trip, continuity-wise. It hurts my brain.

As for where the Drifter gets the weapons he gives us for Gambit? To the surprise of no one, he's stealing them. Because of course he is. It's him.

While running Gambit, he ends up visited by the Emissary of the Nine (formerly Orin - same body, different person) and has the Haul attached to the Derelict as a 'gift' in this amazing cutscene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFtmr___dSw

And he pretty much stays in "shifty morally ambiguous guy in the basement" mode until Arrivals when the pyramids show up on Io and we get one of my favourite lore tabs in all of D2: Whispering slab.

The two sit. They speak. They listen. Linkages forged in Light and Dark of traded secrets as the Derelict hangs in orbit around the Earth. Pacts are made. Soon, there is only the silence of knowing left between them.

"Next time you fly over the Moon, dust your boots. Tracking that crap all over my floors."

Both of the Drifter's deep emotional entanglements with Orin happen when he really genuinely talks to her, and now in Whispering Slab, he's genuinely talking to someone else, plus we get the origin of why he calls that someone else Moondust.

Then, during Arrivals, we get the amazing banter between him and Eris, and in Beyond Light they learn to control Stasis together with the result being (in my highly subjective opinion) the best cutscene in all of D2 : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQAB-sSi6P0

At the end of Haunted we get Eris' message to him about healing and finding joy , he has this line in Plunder "What we do now matters more than who we were", we end up with the Kept Confidence lore tab during Season of the Witch where the person who previously insisted he trusted no one now is saying: "He didn't trust them. He trusted her" and then in the Gloaming Journeyer tab, he pulls her into a hug and reminds her of what she told him once (in the Prophesy dungeon dialogue): "That we'll live in the night if we have to. We do it for what comes after." (What comes after is dawn, hope, the continuance of existence after the darkest point.)

Someone in a chat I was in once summed up the core dynamic of the Drifter and Eris' relationship perfectly as "He gives her trust. She gives him hope."

There are people online who are very frustrated with the Drifter's character development, feeling that the Drifter has 'had his teeth filed off' and that he 'got his depression cured by getting a goth girlfriend' but I feel that's just people who don't like change. The Drifter has, throughout his entire storyline been constantly changing who he is. Change is part of his many self-constructed identities which he re-creates over and over as his old sense of self is destroyed and remade. Gritty vicious Drifter is still in there and he will be just as brutal as ever if he needs to be.

He doesn't want to be, though. He never has. And as someone who deals with medical-grade depression and who found themselves in a situation where they needed to reconstruct a sense of self to replace the one that was lost, the Drifter finding a way to hope and trust again after all he's been through is an extremely powerful and poignant narrative which speaks to me on many levels.

It's not trite, thoughtless happy fluffy rainbows, friendship-fixes-everything-whee! It's painful and slow and beautiful as the Drifter learns to have healthy relationships with other people. We need stories like this to speak to us at an unconscious level and tell us that even if you're not Eris Morn and you failed, and you gave up, and you didn't make it out of the Hellmouth, and you in fact gave in to despair and completely lost all hope, your experience erasing who it was you were and having that old you replaced with someone else, you can still find hope again. Even if you've been burned so severely by so many, many, negative human interactions that you cannot trust anyone, if you find the right people, you can slowly learn how to trust again.

The Drifter's story has been called a redemption arc, and I guess in a way it is that too but, for me, the essential quality of the Drifter's narrative isn't redemption: it's healing.

Stories have power. We incorporate them into who we are. Dredgen Hope ultimately does live up to his name. Within D2 he is finally starting to heal. I find that idea, of healing in spite of being so altered by one's experiences as to have had to become an entirely different person in order to survive, of being unable to trust and still finding a way to learn how to trust again, to be important and beautiful to have in my subconscious as something to draw from. It is a story that is very much needed by a lot of people. We need to be reminded that we can be irrevocably changed and have everything taken from us and still find a way to trust and hope and love again. That might seem a bit much for a shooty game, but I maintain this is why D2 has some of the best storytelling of any game I've ever played and that the character of the Drifter is a huge part of what makes that storytelling so compelling.

Sorry this took so long to answer. This seriously was as short as I could make it and still say everything that I felt needed to be said. There's more, and more detail, of course, but this is my treatise on why the Drifter is as awesome as I think he is.

That is all.

[imonthemoonitsmadeofcheese]

The Drifter... gently and lovingly fumbling to help Eris with her many many strings of charms and beads... memorizing how each loop is placed... learning how to properly wind her strands of charms to her exact specifications... his utter glee when she doesn't instantly redo it but is satisfied he did it correctly... missing her and idly practicing winding her charms around himself with wires or whatever he has lying around to recreate the feeling of being near her via muscle memory and patterns of touch... recalling the sensations of where the beads press against them both when they embrace... eyes closed, softly smiling in the moonlight...

the intimacy of helping someone with their earrings/necklace.. be it putting it on or taking it off.. helping them fix something that got tangled or twisted.. whatever

[tarakanpaintedpurple]

Receiving gifts, visualized, continued

Featuring Saint-14, Drifter, Eris Morn, Devrim Kay and Failsafe :]

first batch here