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#destinewt
lizzieraindrops · 6 months
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like oh my god. yes ikora is extremely aromantic. yes chalco is the love of her soul. yes it's entirely platonic and all-consuming. yes she's also demi for eris. yes it's incredibly lesbian/sapphic. yes that's equally important. yes this does incorporate them into the greater reef polycule. what's not clicking
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lizzieraindrops · 7 months
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BRING ME PINS FOR MY RED STRING BOARD
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Eris looked to the last card. The Wish puzzled her. A wish is desire, the greatest power in this universe. Eris had wished before. It had led her here. Would she be asked to wish again? What else would her desire wrought? Turning away, Eris left the cards on the table and took her questions with her.
From the Ex Diris exotic grenade launcher lore. This will obviously be highly relevant to the resolution of Season of the Witch. What does Eris really want??
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guiding others down the same path that saved me. But... I might allow myself to want more than peace. What, I am not certain. Is joy the word? Might I find that again?
From Eris' last radio message in Season of the Haunted. Once resigned to misery, Eris now wants something more than the peace she has gained helping others process and survive trauma like hers. She even entertains the once-impossible idea of seeking joy in her life.
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"Hey," Drifter said. "You find that joy yet?" "Soon," Eris answered. "Joy is built... but I have taken the first step."
From the IV. Tether in the Purpose lorebook from Season of the Deep. She's seeking the joy, folks! But still, what does she want?
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I am lost in these lunar tunnels. Out of ammo. Short on Light. I am out of moves, save one. I clutch an Ahamkara bone in one hand, and my dead Ghost in the other. I hear a whisper. My vision is gone. My face itches from the viscous flow from my eyes. Though I can't see, I find that I suddenly know the way out.
From the Cloak of the Great Hunt lore all the way back in Forsaken. She wants what she's always wanted, what she originally wished upon an Ahamkara bone for. A way out. Of the Hellmouth, of her personal misery, of the Sword Logic and the greater horrific positive feedback loop of violence that the Hive have been enacting upon the universe for billenia.
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Your star got its name from the oldest myths in that archive. and when your mother told your father that story...the star became your name. A prayer that all will go as it must... and the way it must go is struggle." "Aiat." Not a word in Ulurant or any other Cabal tongue. "But Caiatl means something else." "Yes. 'It may not always go as it needs to go.' A good name for a soldier." (emphases mine)
From Caiatl's journal in the Lightfall Collector's edition. A way out!!! It keeps coming up in the lore again and again. Ending vicious cycles and finding out what's beyond them, even the Hive's unstoppable AIAT.
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Recovery is a spiral, not a circle. You may return to the same patterns, but you will break free." —Eris Morn
From the Refashioned Shapes (!!!) ship from Shadowkeep. Perhaps the most iconic Eris line in the game. This is who she has always been! This is what she has always sought. By finally fully embracing and claiming the way the Hive have affected her, she is going to paradoxically END THE HIVE'S CYCLE OF VIOLENCE. The HIVE!!! She is going to FREE HERSELF and in doing so FREE THE HIVE FROM THE SWORD LOGIC!!!!!
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lizzieraindrops · 9 months
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osiris enjoyers i love you. i'll be over there but you boys have fun objectifying my grandpa <3 signed, a lesbian
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lizzieraindrops · 2 months
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you're beside the campfire with a beautiful boy.
also Savathûn is there drunk-crying in a bird suit
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lizzieraindrops · 1 year
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idk if I've sent this before, but I just want to say there have been multiple moments playing through Lightfall & Defiance with my boyfriend where I've just say "Destiny is a story about shapes and grief" because HOLY SHIT IT'S SO TRUE.
DESTINY IS A STORY ABOUT SHAPES AND GRIEF!!
thank you anon, i'm delighted to hear it.
literally though. this is my thesis statement on destiny. it's literally All about grief told through a metaphor of shapes. dig deep enough into any storyline and you'll find that it's about the shape someone's grief takes - the shape of grief, if you will.
literally every character is experiencing a kind of grief, and their stories are about how it shapes them and what shapes they let it take.
sometimes those shapes are horrific - see Eramis, the Hive Gods, making choices that increase the suffering in the universe. other times the resulting shapes are kinder, choices made out of grief to alleviate that same suffering in others - see Zavala, Eris, Caiatl, Misraaks. some struggle to move through their grief, resisting letting it take form at all - see Ikora, Nimbus, Osiris - though Osiris is working on it, nowadays. some are destroyed by their grief, like Uldren. some struggle to balance the pain and grief of the past with the potential pain and grief of the future, like Elsie and Mara.
i really like the way destiny's overarching narrative frames your choice of how to respond to your grief as the most important thing. anyone can have terrible things happen to them, and we inevitably do. but the action you choose to take in response, whether or not it accomplishes what you hope, is the only thing we truly have control over. therefore it is the most powerful way you can shape the world. maybe it's corny, but i think that's deeply inspiring. nothing wrong with a good bit of corn if you mean it. and destiny most certainly, earnestly does and i respect that so much lmao
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lizzieraindrops · 8 days
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Liminal - Chapter 2 (2034 words)
Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3
Ikora is terrified of losing Eris now that she has become the Hive god of vengeance. The long tension between them has finally been driven to breaking point. Can the two of them reconcile their conflicts and misunderstandings before it might be too late?
Some good old-fashioned monster-loving.
Eris transforms.
Eris stands indomitable in the center of her spell circle, catching her breath as her body attunes to the pulse of ichor and soulfire rather than blood.
She does not turn around. The tatters of her Hunter leathers hang about her waist, girding her full-body chitin plate armor like a Hive Wizard's careless robes.
Ikora steps closer behind her. Boots sound against the stone-flagged floor like a sonar signal. Slow and deliberate, she approaches Eris' broad, spined back.
Hands close on Eris' upper arms from behind in a grip that is firm but not rigid. Eris rumbles in surprise and goes stock-still. She hadn't known Ikora's arms could reach hers, not without impaling herself upon the massive spines that have sprouted from her back and shoulders like raised hackles. Slowly, Eris relaxes somewhat into the touch. Those human hands are ungloved; she can tell by their flush, static friction against the roughness of chitin. Through Eris' modulated sense of touch through her exoskeletal plates, those hands feel different, their pressure spread more lightly but more broadly across the subsurface of her body.
The two of them stand there like a diorama within the ring of columns, unmoving except for their breath.
Stealing a quick glance over one shoulder, Eris catches a startling glimpse of Ikora's face among the forest of spines. Her eyes are closed, her head bowed. Smooth, elegant features have tautened into an expression of deep worry. Her mouth has fallen slightly open, yet her breathing is very shallow.
Eris averts her eyes before Ikora's can open, feeling like she has seen something she shouldn't. She has never seen emotion that extreme writ across Ikora's face before.
In the center of the Athenaeum, their soundlessness is wreathed by the quiet-whispering flames of Eris' spell drawn into the stone-paved floor.
"Eris..." Ikora murmurs.
"Yes?"
But that is the only word Ikora says. "Eris," she says again. "Eris." Her name is a beautiful ache in her mouth. It makes the woman who bears it both uneasy and touched.
"What? What is it, Ikora?" The layers of her new voice tend toward restless dissonance.
Another repetition is her only answer, this time approaching a muted, pained whine. It alarms Eris enough that she lays a rough palm over one of the hands on her arms, then unlatches the other so that she can turn to face Ikora in her morph at last.
The silent tears streaming down Ikora's brown cheeks shock Eris to her core. She takes Ikora's hand between both of her own and weaves her claws carefully around it in a protective net of living chitin.
"Ikora, what is wrong?! Why are you saying my name like that?"
"I am afraid, Eris." Her voice is wet, broken gravel scraping over the raw muscle of Eris' heart. Eris drops her hand with a stab of hurt which is instantly overridden by a wave of complete confusion as Ikora seizes her face with both hands, bare skin against her carapace. Eris stares back into those deep amber-brown eyes, speechless.
"I—I," Ikora says as if choking on the prospect of her own perspective. She takes a deep, ragged breath before letting the words out in a sprawl of agony sharpened by her own reluctance. "I need you, Eris,” Ikora scrapes out as if her throat is bleeding. “And I don't know if you're coming back this time. How many more times can you survive certain death?" Unable to hold Eris' aghast stare, she hangs her head. Her body tremors like a tree in a quake, steadfast yet shaking. Her hands fall helpless from her face to the upper edge of Eris' chestplate where her collarbones have fused into it.
The depth of Ikora's raw pain horrifies Eris. She cautiously circles her armored arms around the shaking form, gentle and then fierce as Ikora throws both arms around her neck and sobs with an ugly sound. Eris bends over as she holds her, as much because her morph is taller than Ikora as to bring her under the shelter of the Harbinger's immense shoulder crests. That great forest of spears points backward and skyward in defiance of any tormented past or presumptive higher power. She barely notices the rumble that emanates from her own chest, half protective and dangerous, half solicitous and soothing.
Their sounds soften as the storm blows over. Ikora's arms slacken in the just-wide-enough space between Eris' neck and the first angular spikes that spring from her shoulders. Sorrowful echoes fade, glancing more quietly off of each green-gilded pillar of the pavilion until they vanish into the throne world's haze-shawled, burning sky.
Eventually, Eris kneels in the center of the Athenaeum holding Ikora's drooping shape against her chest, bearing most of her weight. The claws of one hand dance lightly over Ikora's scalp with soft scratches. Various small creatures chirrup and buzz and rustle in the quiet patches of marsh outside the gazebo. Through it all, that vibrating thrum in Eris' chest never falters, only softens into a more comforting timbre.
Eris will stay here as long as is needed, as long as it takes for the strongest person she knows to be able to stand again.
With a brief articulated gesture of one hand, Eris collapses the glittering portal to the HELM. They need no interruption. Ikora needs her—needs Eris, for once. When she returns to caressing Ikora's head, she leans into the touch.
"Are you well?" Eris says in a rattling whisper.
Ikora's eyes open. "Don't let go," she answers.
Eris chuckles like boulders crashing underwater. She strokes the back of one claw down the side of Ikora's face, making her eyelids flutter. In this form, somehow, some unseen, unspoken wall between them has crumbled and fallen away. "You seek strange comfort. Many fled from merely the sight of my eyes years ago, much less this."
"I never did."
Eris hums a deep harmony. "No. You didn't.” Ikora has never been anything but kind to her even at her remarkably terrible worst self, and her gratitude for that is boundless. So are the depths of her affection, even if she does not act on it, and has never planned to.
In thanks, she bends to touch the crest of her brow to Ikora's forehead. That's all. But when she tries to lift her head away, fingers catch at the ridges behind her jaws. She cannot draw more than a hand's span away without wresting herself loose. She does not want to do so. Ikora's nearness is a balm, one she has never permitted herself to seek. So she gazes back at her in contentment and waits to see what she will do.
Something changes in the bearing of Ikora's supine frame within the unfamiliar cradle of her arms. Her movements become both more tentative and more purposeful. Exploring her craggy face with deft fingertips, Ikora traces the line of her chin, the pitted hollows that pock her cheeks, the bony ridge that surrounds and shelters all three eyes. Ikora's two search every feature with a golden brown gaze as darkly brilliant as sunlight struggling to seep through summer honey. Something that Eris has never seen before floats up through the depths of that gaze as if from an abandoned well. She wants to understand what it is, needs to know with a consuming hunger akin to the exponential voracity of the knife-void that has split open wide within her, clamoring to devour the entire Hive for her divinity.
Those captivating eyes dip toward her shielded mouth more than once. If not for the protective plate covering it, it almost seems as if Ikora would–
Fingers skirt the marge of Eris' mouthplate; then lips brush, once, twice. Eris trills in surprise. Both sensations are strange, yet not unpleasant.
"Ik—what are you...?"
Her fingers run along the seams of the plates of Eris' face and neck, where chitin gives way to toughened connective membrane that yields slightly to the touch. Below those thin bands, the nerves are not shielded by rigid armor. The sustained contact gives Eris chills that make her spines bristle like windswept trees.
"Trying to understand all of you," Ikora says. "Should I stop?"
"...No, but—"
"Then let me. Please." She braces one hand on the flat plate of Eris' chest and weaves the other among the jagged spikes on one shoulder like a curious serpent. She examines each one from multiple angles with both touch and sight, dedicating her every attention to the cartography of Eris' utterly inhuman body like—like—
Even in her most idle, unrealistic fantasy, Eris could scarcely imagine Ikora ever touching her like this, even were she still human. How can she do so now? With greater caution than she would approach the maw of the Hellmouth, Eris eases one palm onto Ikora's hip, slowly wraps her fingers around. Including the talons, her hand circles half of her entire waist. Ikora doesn’t retreat.
"What...why?" Eris asks, but she cares about the answers less and less every moment.
"Eris," Ikora says again, damn her. The rampant want and pain in her voice rends Eris from the inside out like a blade of bittersweet tithe.
An involuntary growl rips out of Eris as Ikora scrapes her nails against the grain of the fine ridges across her chestplate. Although less sensitive than the seams, there are far more tactile receptors beneath each plate, and any pressure activates all of them in tandem. The rattling scrape, multiply so. The combination of the unexpected feeling and their current close situation is nothing short of intoxicating.
Ikora's eyes go wide with surprise, then narrow with a satisfaction approaching smugness. That won't do.
"I-chorr-ahh," Eris says in her deepest growl. She plants both hands firmly on Ikora's shoulders. Her eyes fly open wide again, accompanied by her blown pupils. Eris presses the tips of her claws into Ikora's flesh—not hard enough to puncture skin, but enough to make her freeze. "Are you certain you want what you are asking for?"
In a subtle yet sublime implosion of effortless Void Light, Ikora surges forward and pins her acolyte morph to the floor, bent back over the spikes of its crest in the center of her own spell circle. The mouthplate drops away from the hidden jaw in an appreciative, terrifying grin.
"What I want is Eris Morn. Are you not her?" Ikora retorts. A drop of blood seeps into her pristine robe beneath the indent made by Eris' thumbclaw. With every striving sinew of her Light-suffused body, she challenges the being before her to deny it, challenges herself to doubt it. She is incandescent, powerful, passionate. Beautiful.
Like a whisper from a crypt, a deep chuckle ascends from Eris' throat. It grows louder and redoubles upon itself until she is but the chamber for a choir of pleased humor.
"I am."
The look in Ikora's eyes is both tenacious and tender. And it is completely, entirely for her, as she is.
In a sudden contraction of movement, Eris reverses their positions and fully looms over Ikora. She runs the point of one claw along the entire length of her soft, strong body. They both shiver.
With a casual hand, Eris waves a new portal open, one that leads directly to the private quarters set aside for her in the HELM.
Despite the fact that this netherworld's queen is currently dead, Eris begrudges her every iota of joy she has found in this last life of hers, and she will not share it with her throne of memory. Besides, Ikora deserves better than this accursed place. Eris' morph will last for a little while, outside of the spell circle. Long enough for the way Ikora clutches at the chitin of her shoulder crests, making the muscles attached beneath them strain with sweet pleasure.
With an earthen croon, Eris gathers Ikora up into her arms as carefully as if she were made of orchid petals the color of her robes. Then she sweeps them both away to somewhere more sheltered from prying eyes. The portal winks out in a glimmer of green sparks behind her.
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lizzieraindrops · 7 months
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For the ikoris prompts - ikora helping hive!eris clean / take care of her chitin? :0
tumblr wont let me post for some reason so here have an ao3 link:
rituals (2.2k words)
what if, in juxtaposition with the sword logic, the Hive were actually really big on social grooming just like irl hive insects? and the rituals were intricate
Eris was not interested in transforming back to remove the muck. The black Hive blood was slightly caustic. Her human skin already had enough scars. Well. Patience and tedium it was, then. Her old friends. That was how Ikora found her an hour later, still scraping dried blood out of each groove of each plate one by one with a single claw.
Read on AO3
send me eris/ikora prompts!
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lizzieraindrops · 16 days
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Ikora is terrified of losing Eris now that she has become the Hive god of vengeance. The long tension between them has finally been driven to breaking point. Can the two of them reconcile their conflicts and misunderstandings before it might be too late?
Some good old-fashioned monster-loving.
I simply cannot accept that so few Eris/Ikora monsterfucker fics have been written when Season of the Witch offered them up to us on a silver platter. I had to take matters into my own hands. So I offer you: some deeply fucked-up women who love each other so very much. Absolute shout-out to my mvp of a beta @jazzhandsmcleg.
Liminal - Chapter 1 (1728 words)
Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3
All things considered, Ikora has done a remarkable job of keeping her apprehensions under control. However, after a violent week of tithes and transformations, Eris turns an assessing look upon her as they discuss strategy in the HELM.
"You are troubled by this," she says flatly. Ikora cannot deny it, so she doesn't. Although Eris' posture these days is already impeccable, she draws herself up even taller as if bracing for something where she stands, precisely in the center of the stern wing of the HELM. The shimmer of the Hive portal to the Athenaeum behind her frames an imposing portrait. "Is it the form my vengeance takes that upsets you, or the part of me that chooses to take it?"
The impact of those words in Ikora's chest makes her gape in dismay. "Eris, no, that's not..." The sheer harshness of perspective that only shows Eris possibilities of judgement leaves Ikora at a rare loss for words. She surges a step forward before halting her half-reaching hand, retreating like an uncertain eddy in the water.
"My concern is for your safety, Eris. I have others, but none so pressing as that."
After a moment's consideration, Eris turns away. "Of course it is." She sounds faintly abashed. “Nonetheless, I must press forward. Surely you can see that this is the best strategy available to us."
With another soft step that narrows the gap between them, Ikora dares to lay a hand on Eris' upper arm. Though she is often strict about intrusions into her personal space, Eris merely turns back to her in open surprise.
"As far as I can tell, it is the only option currently offered to us. I don't like it. But it is where we are."
Eris acknowledges her with a nod, but dissatisfaction still shutters her demeanor.
With a light squeeze on her arm, Ikora asks: "What is it, Eris?"
Eris does not meet her concerned gaze. "The shape of my vengeance has not changed, only altered its direction as I have walked its path. This spell unbinds the limits of my body, yes, but the shape I take within it is still mine. It has always been a part of me. Did you know that, before this?"
They do not move except to breathe, drawing neither further away nor closer together. Ikora thinks long and hard, reaching for both honesty and compassion.
"I'm not sure that I can ever know it with the same intimacy that you do. The Hive and their lore have been so intertwined into your life, but...you are the only one who can decide their role within it. They can't. You've clearly demonstrated that over the years. And neither can I. While I don't think I knew the depth of that connection, before, I understand that this is how you are choosing to define it."
Silence. "You didn't answer my question."
Ikora had, but only the surface inquiry, not the deeper meaning beneath it. Do you realize that this monstrosity is not only who I have become, but part of who I have always been? Has it changed how you see me? "You didn't actually ask it," she says quietly.
Eris gestures open-palmed acceptance. In her other hand, her lurid Ahamkara bone casts shadows and sickly green light that wreath about it in perpetual unrest.
Ikora would not make her ask.
"I didn't know, not quite. But all of...this, it makes sense for the Eris I do know. It's everything you've ever striven for since you escaped the Hellmouth. I don't fear that this spell is controlling you, because I know you are perfectly capable of choosing such a drastic course of action all on your own. And I will defend your actions to the others, despite my own fears for you."
Eris lays a gauntleted hand over hers in brief acknowledgement. "I believe you, I think. Time will tell."
Ikora nods. Her heart sinks, but the soft rebuff does not take her by surprise. She had not supported Eris through the relatively tame controversy of acquiring Stasis: why would Eris rely on her now? "Truth in action," she says like a promise. Their old refrain, from long before this; before many of the latest losses in their neverending list. Asher. Sagira. The Traveler itself. Everything they still have to lose looms over them like a promise of failure.
Yet Ikora is rewarded with a faint smile. It only soothes the very edges of her glass-sharp fears, and only for a little while. That is not the reason why she treasures it, why she tucks it away deep within herself where the shards will have to tear through her own flesh before they can take it from her.
___
As the weeks pass and Eris grows ever stronger by the tithes of the sword, Ikora keeps her promise despite her concerns growing in tandem.
She maintains her distance from the throne world. She has many other duties, after all, when she needs to keep her mind off this mission of utmost critical importance. But she remains within close call on comms as often as possible while Guardians cavort through the endless, treacherous floors of the Spire, sweeping across its buried Altars like a wavefront of death.
She has not seen Eris transform since that first time; never up close. But her voice changes as she drinks the lakes of lifeblood Guardians spill upon Savathûn's Altars for her. In its cadence and flourish, it's completely recognizable as hers; but the deepened tone and even fuller timbre buzzes in layered intervals, at turns grating against or harmonizing alongside each other. The sound of it makes Ikora shiver to hear, even over comms. The many voices of the many-mouthed hunger multiply and grow ever more potent. How much more Hive-sculpted power can she possibly contain without searing herself from the inside out?
Yet whenever they meet to discuss strategy, Eris is the same as ever. Perhaps she stands a little taller, now, a little prouder in the shoulder than before. She has every right to do so. She is a god now.
It makes Ikora's heart quail like nothing else has in her life. She is losing her. She cannot stop her. She can only aid her, so she does. She tries. Her chest won't stop hurting no matter how long she ignores it.
In a feeble attempt to wrest a nonexistent solution from an impossible situation, she meets Eris at the Lectern in the Athenaeum to assess her Deck of Whispers. Perhaps before the sheer force and breadth of Ikora's analytical skills, the strange cards' paracausal potential will yield something, anything—anything.
She is losing hope that she can make any difference to Eris' survival. Once more betrayed by her doubts, the shivering of Ikora's traitor heart makes her hands just a little unsteady as she draws a card from the gleaming deck.
Before she can turn the card over, Eris closes her fingers on the other end of it. Surely she feels the tremor through the heavy gilded paper. For a moment, thick silence holds them.
"Even you tremble in my presence now?" Eris asks softly.
"What?" Ikora whispers, crestfallen.
"It is all right," Eris says. Her voice hangs heavy with resignation. Her hand falls from the card as she retreats. "Others who did not shrink from me before do, now. I merely thought...you never recoiled from me even at my worst. But I know what I have embraced goes far beyond what most could condone. I could never expect of you—"
"Eris, do you think that I am—afraid of, or—repulsed," she lets the word fall off her tongue like vomit. "By—this? By you?"
"You have every right to be."
Whatever Ikora had been feeling before, this is far worse. "Eris, no. No..." Ikora puts her card down on the Lectern’s table without even looking at it and reaches for the hand Eris has withdrawn. So gently, she cups those slack fingers in her own palms, as if they were burned and in need of bandaging. "That's not it at all. Please don't think so little of me."
"I don't. I have always thought most highly of you. Therefore, I should expect you to eschew...this."
Ikora sighs. "I may have reservations about the high risks of your strategy, Eris, but that doesn't mean I'm going to abandon you. I won’t listen to you speak of yourself this way." Then again, can she truly blame Eris for expecting more of the same pattern? "I know that my actions in the past have given you reason to expect such disregard. And for that, Eris...I'm sorry."
Eris stands silent for a moment. "That is kind of you to say." Her tone is smooth with sincerity, yet relatively unaffected. What she leaves unspoken sours the air between them like the obscuring cloud of a Wizard's poison curse. Her hand twitches in Ikora's as if to draw away. Ikora wraps her fingers more firmly about hers, but not so tightly that Eris cannot escape.
Desperate not to let any more of her actions drive Eris further away, Ikora speaks before she even knows what she intends to say, only that she means it.
"Will you transform for me?"
Silence rings. Standing perfectly still, Eris stares at her. "Why?" Minimal emotion inflects her voice, neither reluctant nor eager, but more simply curious than anything else.
Ikora chooses her next words very carefully.
"I wish to bring my actions into harmony with what I speak." Her heart is pounding like a premonition of battle, except for the fact that Ikora is afraid.
For a long time, Eris merely watches her. Then, in a strange, delicate voice, she says: "Yes. Then I shall."
A chill like undiffused static runs down Ikora's back, and it is not unpleasant. A gleam of blue catches the corner of her eye among the green chiaroscuro of the Athenaeum. The card she had cast aside lies face-up on the red velvet tablecloth, showing jagged curves that branch off a whirl of crackling Arc energy. She had drawn Liminal.
The spiking electric potential between them reaches a height that makes her skin prickle. For the first time, Ikora thinks she may finally understand the beauty, the glorious inevitability, encapsulated in the prayer and invocation of Aiat.
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lizzieraindrops · 5 days
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[rips my way out of my armor to take my final form]
I'M A GARDEN GREMLIN NOW!!!!!!!
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lizzieraindrops · 2 years
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within reach
Collab with art by @aszeah​ (posted with permission), ficlet by me! Also on AO3
[ID: Sketched artwork of Ikora and Eris from the waist up, standing close together with their foreheads touching. Ikora rests one hand on Eris’ jaw and neck, while Eris rests her hands on that arm at both the wrist and elbow. Both are wearing simple tank tops, which shows the scars on Eris’ arms and shoulders. Ikora has her eyes closed in a tender, aching expression. Eris is not wearing her blindfold and her three glowing green eyes are half closed and downcast in an unguarded, pensive expression. end ID]
Eris drew away from the sleeping form and stood in the dawn-silent room. To her eyes, the dimness was enough to show her every crease of the sheets and every outline of the shape of a woman tangled in them. Padding noiselessly across the room, she looked out the window. She watched the lightening sky until the horizon became almost too bright to bear. By that point, Ikora had wakened and begun to stir. Eris watched her hand reach out and pat the empty place where she had lain. Only then did her eyes half open, scanning the bed and the room until they landed on Eris watching her.
"Eris?" she said in a voice gravelly with sleep. What a precious sound.
"I am here." Ikora shrugged off the sheets and tipped her legs off the bed. Without her silken dressing gown, she was clad in a simple tank top and shorts. She stood and walked around the bed toward Eris at the window. "What's the matter?" she asked from where she paused a few paces away. "Nothing," Eris said truthfully. "Then why are you making that face and staring out the window?" "I am thinking." "About what?" Eris looked back outside. The crest of the east mountains was burning at the edge of their silhouette. "I think, I am..." "... Yes?" "I think I am happy." When Eris looked back, she was startled to see tears in Ikora's eyes. "Oh, Eris," she said, and reached as if she couldn't help herself. Ikora cupped Eris' face in one hand, stroking her thumb along Eris' jaw and tucking her fingers around the back of her ear to caress the tender join of her neck to her skull. Eris rested against that soft, warm palm. She lifted both hands to cradle the arm that supported her. She caught the fingers of one hand loosely but closely about Ikora's wrist. The other, she curled around Ikora's upper arm just above the elbow, resting her fingers in the crook of its bend. Ikora's eyes drifted closed. The sight of the haunting blend of care and sorrow and joy on her face was going to stay with Eris for a long time. Eris sighed and leaned inward. Ikora's forehead rested against the side of hers, just clear of her eye. They hung there still in the balance. "I'm happy, too," Ikora said in a damp whisper. Eris closed her eyes against the finally breaking light. She pulled Ikora into a hug and hid her light-shy eyes in her shoulder. Ikora held her close and absently stroked her back until the sun had warmed their skin.
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lizzieraindrops · 5 days
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Liminal - Chapter 3 (1901 words)
Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3
Ikora is terrified of losing Eris now that she has become the Hive god of vengeance. The long tension between them has finally been driven to breaking point.
Sometimes the scariest part of good old-fashioned monster-loving isn't the monster. Ikora's emotional dysfunctionality returns with a vengeance (ha) in the morning.
Warmth is the unexpected first greeting of returning consciousness. Ikora runs cool, ever since she had first touched the Void—not uncomfortably, but noticeably. It takes a lot to fluster her, in both temperature and demeanor.
The warmth is another human presence: the gentle heat of skin on hers, a more comfortable resting place than her own bed despite the irregularity of shape.
With a simultaneous flush and chill that catches her between flight and paralysis, Ikora half rolls, half falls off of—Eris. Of course.
Eris snaps to wakefulness with all the alacrity of a Hunter's reflexes. She is relaxing her grip on the hilt of a small knife at the bedside—where had that come from?—almost before Ikora registers that she has moved. Ikora draws back for another reason entirely, coiling herself around her own knees at the foot of the bed. The sheet tangles her legs.
Halfway through levering herself up toward sitting, Eris catches sight of Ikora and ceases movement. Free of their bandage at last, her three green eyes blaze bright in the dimness with only a stray lock of her short, straggly hair to intercept their fire. As ever, wisps of ink drip from her eyes like tears. Their dark tracks trail over round cheeks, returned to soft-skinned vulnerability once more—along with the rest of her. Eris' very human body lies there fearlessly despite the lacework of scars that spreads over every limb. For some reason that makes Ikora feel deeply afraid.
"Ikora. It's me."
It is, and oh, Ikora is overwhelmed by that fact, by her nearness, by her own memory of sharp satisfaction in the way claws had clutched Ikora's body close and by her awareness of deft hands that could do the same. By the way that singular voice as deep and resonant as the ocean itself is close enough to feel.
One supplicating hand extends toward Ikora. She cannot keep herself from flinching. Eris withdraws it and carefully lies back down.
Ikora remains silent. Words stopper her throat like something congealed in the neck of a bottle, leaving her mind to spin within like a trapped squall.
"Ikora?" The softer her voice becomes, the harder Ikora trembles. "I will not hurt you. I am sorry, if I—did I...?"
Ikora shakes her head violently. She has never been more keenly aware that a problem is entirely inside her own head. But she still cannot speak.
The knot between Eris' eyebrows eases somewhat. Only one of her brows has hair: the other's had apparently never regrown from the shiny scarring around her eyes. "That is a relief," she says. "But I would still know what ails you. How may I comfort you? Or rather, may you be comforted without me? Shall I go?"
Ikora presses the heels of her hands into her eyes. Light, but Eris is so unfailingly kind, regardless of her bluntness, despite all the violence and hatred she has weathered; despite Ikora's utter emotional incompetence. Ikora loves her for it, and that is the most terrifying knowledge of all.
Ikora forces herself to meet Eris' eyes over her own curled hands. "Stay. Please," she whispers. "Just. Don't touch me." If she does, Ikora might be devoured by her own inarticulate fear warring with desperate need.
Eris nods and pulls her feet a little further away from her, even though perplexion dominates her face. She studies Ikora with all the clever, relentless perceptiveness that she usually bends toward her life's work. That sharp mind has flayed the immortality from gods. Her scrutiny is as unforgiving as truth itself. Little wonder that Ikora looks away as revelation chases the intensity from her features. Whatever softer thing can subsume that, Ikora is not capable of facing.
"You fear this form more than my morph," Eris says in hushed wonder.
Ikora hides her face in her hands again. She would not have put it so, but neither can she deny it. This is Eris, as she has been the whole time. But at least last night, Ikora had been too preoccupied by the newness and dark splendor of her acolyte form to think about the terrible immensity of the feelings she has so long kept in check. Seeing Eris' familiar form before her now, so brazenly vulnerable, brings to bear the years of aching longing that she had never considered might be answered.
It isn't that she thought Eris did not care for her. She knows, in a million subtle ways she has tried not to dwell upon. She just never thought either of them would find room for each other within the straits of their callings. Eris must pursue the fall of the Hive regardless of the risks. Ikora must defend the Last City, and she will never forego her duty to it as Vanguard. Not like her predecessor.
Ikora had not considered the much more frightening possibility now before her: that Eris might accept her and still continue along a path that might yet lead to self-destruction. That Ikora might lose her after being given the briefest taste of knowing what it meant to have her.
"Perhaps this was untimely. Although I do not regret it," Eris says. She runs a hand through her hair with a sigh. "Ikora," she pleads. "Please speak to me."
Ikora nods. She gathers what scraps of clarity she can. "I don't either. Regret it," she adds in response to Eris' confused look. "But I think...you're right. About timeliness."
Eris smiles sadly. "That has always been our problem, has it not?" She curls comfortably onto her side, leaning against the headboard with her head resting on her hands. "Are we too early, or too late?"
Ikora shifts to a cross-legged position and holds her hands in her lap. "Yes? No?" She gives a short laugh as unsteady as a newborn foal. "I don't know. But this feels like it was always inevitable."
"I know what you mean. Yet I thought I closed the door on this path when I awoke the Harbinger. It seems I was mistaken..."
Ikora's heart goes painfully soft, as if leaning into a blow. She should have told Eris years ago, rather than let her think herself unlovable. But would she have believed her, back then?
"Eris," she begins in a low, quiet voice. "Everything you are is dear to me. Even this—even that part of you. Especially a part of you that brings you clarity, purpose. It's just—" Her voice cracks. "I can't love you the way I want to, the way you should be, not when I'm so scared for you."
Eris lets that sink in. "I understand," she says, tender and mournful all at once. "I do not blame you. But I can do this. I can end what the Hive began. And I must."
"I know." Ikora does not know what will happen. She cannot predict any possibility that will reconcile reality with the cry her heart is making.
Ikora looks around the room while she takes slow, deliberate breaths to steady herself. She takes in details that she had been too distracted to notice before. The quarters are modest, but sizable for a ship. Eris has attired it much like the rest of her temporary wing of the HELM. Deep red hangings soften the sharp industrial corners. Another large shelf of books and strange artifacts cover one wall. How had she chosen what to keep nearest? Below a dim lamp with mica shades, her Ahamkara bone rests in a small stone bowl on the bedside table. A cloth has been cast over it to dull its glare. The bed itself is simple but utterly comfortable; the sheets have the feel of linen worn soft with long use, even if they bear a few new claw-torn tears.
Eris heaves a great sigh, then asks: "What now?"
Ikora lies down at the foot of the bed in a mirror of Eris' position, limbs askew. She is only a meter or so away, yet so far out of reach. "I guess we continue as we were. Mostly. Until...after this." If Eris lives. If they both come through this ordeal still capable of loving each other.
"After," Eris muses. "Very well." Then a wry grin tugs at her lips. "It will be terribly hard, though, now that I know the sound of your heart." Dancing humor laces the earnestness in her voice.
"Eris." Ikora laughs into her hands in embarrassment. "I'll have to give you more Hidden work after all this to keep you busy, otherwise you'll break every heart in the Tower."
Eris chuckles, and it raises chills along Ikora’s arms. "I don't think that will be necessary. After." Her hand curls and uncurls beside her face, as if she were refusing the impulse to breach the gulf that separates them.
The brief shared humor fades like ripples on the water. Soon, only uncertainty and stumbling sorrow remain to echo between them.
"Eris?"
"Yes?"
"Can we just..." This hurts too much to leave so soon. "Can we have today, if nothing else?"
Ikora can see the way Eris tamps down her own hope in the set of her shoulders. She despises herself a little for causing that, but not enough to not ask.
"Would that not only hurt more?" Eris says softly.
"Maybe. But I would rather give you a reason to come back."
Eris holds her stare, lips pressed together in indecision. Ikora curls in on herself with shame at her own presumption.
"Oh, come here, my love," Eris relents. She opens her arms.
Uncoiling, Ikora crosses the distance between them. She only hesitates a moment before tucking herself into Eris' embrace, shaky with nervous relief. She presses her spread hands to Eris' back, along her now smooth but still scarred shoulders. Did the Harbinger's spines erupt individually from the lines of those old wounds? "I'm here," she says, muffled against her. They lie there heart to heart, skin to skin. Even channeling Solar light has never made her feel this blessedly warm.
"Just today," Eris agrees.
"Just today." Ikora draws back just enough to look Eris in the eyes. She caresses her face, brushes her thumb across the unevenness of the scars just above her cheekbone. The prickling ink pools thickest there, but evaporates quickly.
"Don't forget that you are wanted for yourself. Not just for what you can do," Ikora says.
With that she kisses Eris deeply, achingly, searingly. Eris responds like a flower to the sun. The sound of unashamed pleasure that hums in her throat makes Ikora feel more wanted than she has ever been. And in this stolen moment, her want is greater than ever, as well. This time she gives it free rein with premeditated intent. She traces her passion along every curve of Eris' mouth, the arch of her neck, even the tender scarred lids of her eyes. She commits every part of her to memory, from her strong, stout arms to her soft, thick waist to the proud arc of her spine below the troubled skin.
"All of you," Ikora breathes. The hitch in Eris' heartbeat beneath her lips tells her she does not need to explain.
The warmth of skin threatens to destroy her as completely and utterly as the crystalline vacuum of space. But as she sinks into the contact, it soon soothes the part of Ikora that is shivering.
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lizzieraindrops · 1 month
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Ikora and Eris return to the library once more, where they discuss many important things that have gone unspoken between them over the years.
Many thanks yet again to my intrepid beta reader @jazzhandsmcleg
Presence and Absence - Chapter 3 (3659 words)
Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3
They were back in the library.
Rather than her armchair, Eris had curled herself into one corner of a long sofa, comfortably lounging against its padded arm. Ikora had settled by the opposite arm with a datapad and a book in tow. That left a comfortable space between them: neither too close and tense nor too far and somber.
They had settled back into this quiet room deep in the stone labyrinth of the Tower libraries. Here they were unlikely to be disturbed. Few aside from the Hidden ever used these hallways, and no debriefs were expected today or the next. A long stained glass window near the ceiling threw colors Ikora had never seen before against the east wall with the afternoon sun: before the Traveler ascended from the City, the daylight had rarely touched it. The unprecedented color cast the retreat in an ethereal, dissonant sense of déja vu rather than comfortable familiarity. 
With a ding from her datapad, a triple-encrypted reply from Chalco arrived via the Hidden communications channel. As usual, her missive got right to the point with minimal preamble or pretention.
The concept that Strand as a form of Darkness could be used to enable true telepathy—rather than the appearance of it, as with your probability-based paracausal prescience—is intriguing and well worth a closer look. We have already seen something similar in the long-distance mental connections formed by the egregore network. That said, the experience you're describing sounds more like an ambient, proximity-based effect rather than an intentional communication.
However—Ikora, I have to ask. Did you really have to do actual telepathy to know how she feels about you?
Rubbing at her brows, Ikora inhaled slowly through her nose. A deeply exhausted sigh soughed out of her lungs.
"What is it?" Eris' question broke into her thoughts. She looked up with a start. Eris lifted herself off the arm of the couch, leaning a little toward Ikora's side of it with a concerned twist to her mouth.
"Just a message from Chalco," she said.
"That more commonly brings a smile to your lips than a sigh. Is she all right?"
"Oh, yes, quite. She's just...enjoying some humor at my expense."
Eris chuckled at that, the menace. She adjusted the hood of her casual tunic—deep green this time—and relaxed against the arm of the sofa once more.
The annoyed look Ikora threw her way was undermined by a budding smile. Hunters. They had a way with humor that she missed when they were inevitably off roaming the system. Or, of course, further abroad than they could return from. Remembering that dampened her smile into something fond yet pained.
"What occupies your thoughts?" Eris asked. Her fingers danced as she ran the ribbon of her bookmark between them above the open ivory pages. It was a stripe of darkest teal, like her talismans, weaving among the many discolored, irregular lines that broke up the tan of her skin. Those scars were so numerous they almost resembled a natural cryptic pattern, like a tiger hidden in the rainforest by its stripes.
Ikora mentally shook herself and answered the question she had been asked. "I've been thinking about the Darkness, among other things." Namely, Eris. But the new revelations of the Darkness had indeed remained in the forefront of her mind, lately. "It's as if its potential applications are ever broadening. First Stasis, now Strand; egregore, and the Veil... It's hard to believe we've learned so much in so short a time. Although we still know so little. And yet..." Ikora trailed off.
Eris' head tilted. The unbroken green of her gaze shifted as if focusing and bade Ikora continue her train of thought. But Ikora had not shared her theory with anyone. She had made some study of Strand, yes, once it was clear that it did not spring from the Pyramids at the behest of the Witness like Stasis. She had even speculated openly with her former mentor Osiris about Strand's strange nature and provenance.
But she had not told anyone that she, too, had come to a quiet yet undeniable certainty about the necessity of the Darkness as well as the Light. As long as she, Ikora Rey, was Vanguard, then that truth could never become public knowledge. That would place her in a very difficult position, indeed. Traveler, she would never hear the end of it if Aunor found out.
Yet...this was Eris. Ikora knew, instinctively, even without assessing the probabilities, that she would understand. Indeed, Ikora's theory dovetailed neatly into the interpretation of Darkness as a neutral tool, of which Eris had been among the strongest proponents since Stasis was first revealed.
She caught Eris' eyes once more. She could whisper this truth to her—to her alone where no one else would hear. And Eris was still waiting: waiting for her, like the second step of a coincidence that could yet coalesce into a new pattern, given a third.
Ikora took a deep breath.
"You were right, Eris."
The glow of Eris' eyes brightened, but Ikora could not tell what emotion made them do so. Still, Eris clearly sensed the gravity of Ikora's admission. "About what?"
"The Darkness. I still don't think Stasis is safe for everyone—myself included, if I'm honest. But neither is the Light. We've known that since—well, ironically, the Dark Age."
Once she started, the words started falling from Ikora's mouth almost as fast as her thoughts. She only hoped they made any sense at all without being inside her head.
"The thing is: if I follow the philosophy of the Light, then I accept that our whole life as Risen is a second chance, regardless of the choices we made before. Then I, too, like the Traveler, must accept the possibility of bad choices. That's what the freedom to choose means. Otherwise it is not free. And that very freedom is what enables change. How else could we ever escape from cycles of destruction? But this requires I trust that the risk of catastrophic failure is worth the hope of potential success.
"Yet after long enough to think on what we have learned of the Darkness—what you have taught us—as well as what we know of the Light: I think I, too, understand the need for a kind of balance between them. Darkness isn't evil or finality or whatever else the Witness has twisted its use toward. Darkness is memory . And remembering is the only way to keep the inevitable bad choices from going worse. The risk then becomes falling into the rut of repetition, failing to allow room for change and growth. That is where the Light enters to let us try again, affording us grace where none exists. And to temper the effacement of renewal, the Darkness is what lets us learn."
Eris stared. It was quite the challenge to resist squirming under that intense triple gaze. But when at last Eris spoke, she did so as softly as if approaching a frightened creature.
"How long have you been thinking about this?"
Ikora dropped her eyes to her hands, curled tightly around the spine of her book. "Quite some time. More often, since you wrote to me from Europa."
"More than two years, and you've told no one." It wasn't a question. "That is a burdensome weight."
"I'm telling you now."
"And I am deeply honored. Will you let me help you bear it?"
Ikora looked up. "How?"
Eris looked up into the distance beyond the translucent color of the window, as if gathering her thoughts. "Perhaps it would soothe you to know that the truth you speak resonates closely with a truth to which I cleave. I have long held that change itself is enabled by accepting and acting upon the very possibility of change. Indeed, that is one of the greater reasons I both accepted Stasis and why I succeeded in mastering it. I chose to approach Darkness as something that need not inherently seed destruction."
Ikora hung silently on her words with a thoughtful nod. After having come to a similar conclusion herself, this made sense. It eased something within her, like a painful knot finally unraveled, to hear the understanding for which she had so struggled echoed back to her from another perspective. She was shocked by how desperately she had needed exactly that. Eris took her attentiveness as a sign to continue.
"I risked much in doing so, and at times despair nearly overtook me. I have no doubt I could have become whatever it is Elisabeth fears when she looks through me. Without the help and guidance of others—Elisabeth herself, the Drifter, the Queen—I would have been lost. The Awoken's unique perspectives on the Darkness and the Light have long been a particular comfort to me, living as I do between both. I imagine Queen Mara might have worthwhile wisdom to share with you, should you ever ask.
"But all this would have been for naught, had I not learned how to accept that support from others. That was the hardest, simplest, and most critical lesson. One that you had the greatest hand in teaching me."
"Me?"
Eris inclined her head.
"How?"
"By continuing to care about me, after the Hellmouth and beyond."
"I was not the only one. Surely Asher–"
"Cousin Asher understood my struggle with the Hive through his own conflict with the Vex in a way no other could; the unique parallels of our trials made us kin. I still mourn his absence dearly. But you had no such frame of reference for understanding what I went through, and yet you still insisted upon caring for me. Listening to me as if I were not mad, at a time when few did. Simply being there for me with compassion, time and again...you made me believe I could trust others again, even if it took me so very long to be able to act upon it. After all the loneliness and betrayal I have experienced, that was as unlikely as my own survival.
"That very relearning of trust saved me in my struggle with Stasis. Your treating me as someone who could be saved itself preserved me, even if neither of us knew it at the time."
"Eris..." Regret and guilt reared their hydra heads. "I'm sorry I never replied to your letter, back then. I didn't know how. I've needed all this time to come to terms with what you discovered on Europa."
"I know. This understanding takes time to truly root itself. I forgave you long ago."
Oh, Eris. Ikora could not have predicted that this day would bring her here, where so many of the things left unsaid between them were finally spoken. It hurt in the way of healing. She could see in Eris' face that she was similarly affected, though handling it better.
But there remained some mysteries that Ikora still wanted to understand.
"What was it you were searching for in the throne world earlier?"
Eris blinked in surprise at the apparent change of subject, but answered readily enough. "I have lived so long upon the sustenance of vengeance, even before this. I needed to know whether I still felt the need to exact it when faced again with the Hive. Whether, perhaps, I had become trapped in their cycle of violence despite all my attempts to open it, to end it."
"...And did you?"
Eris shrugged. "The well-trod habit remains, as will the harm they have done me. But the impulse is mild. I have no need to fear that it will control me against my will. I think I am ready to let it rest."
As the meaning of Eris' words settled upon her, a wish Ikora had never thought to entertain again returned to her. It was still as quietly insistent as ever, even after all these years since she had deliberately rejected and silenced and forgotten it as an impossibility. "Does that mean you are going to stay, this time?"
Slowly, Eris nodded. "Once I have recovered somewhat, I may wander on occasion. I have never been one to remain static. But I have no real desire to leave. Truly, I never have."
"Wait—never?" How could that possibly be true? She had refused Ikora's entreaties to stay so many times.
Eris smiled ruefully. "Why do you think I never lingered here with you before, like this?" She lifted both hands and gestured around and between them, somehow in the articulate arch of her fingers encompassing every bright and tangled emotion that was clamoring within Ikora. "I knew if I did, I could not bring myself to leave, to do what needed to be done: what only I alone could do. But now I have done it. Therefore, here I am."
Ikora looked away from her and stared into the distance, letting the deluge of new understanding wash over her. They kept company in silence for a few minutes.
"When we were walking earlier," Eris began, quiet yet unrelenting. When did she get closer than her end of the sofa? "More than anything else, do you know what I ended up thinking of?"
Ikora froze. "Yes," she whispered.
Despite the certainty of her earlier unexpected revelation, Ikora could not now tell what Eris would do. There were too many possible outcomes after this moment. The unaccustomed buzzing of her mind obfuscated vectors of cause and effect, perhaps because she was still struggling to determine what kind of result she wanted—lack of a clear goal had always made it impossible to call a desired response from the chaos of existence. And yet, maybe it was not that Ikora did not know what she wanted; rather, she had too long avoided thinking about it to admit it.
"Ikora. My friend." That resonant voice delivered the simple address so warmly. Eris reached out to smooth the bent edge of Ikora's collar with a casual hand. The gesture made Ikora's breath catch. "My...old friend," Eris said, as if trying to find the right words. "My ever-ally. My first defender. My always faithful." Struck by her open gratitude, Ikora lightly touched Eris' wrist with her fingertips.
"Faith?" Ikora asked. Her voice caught and cracked slightly on the vowels.
"What else would you call the gift you have always given me? Even when you have doubted, you have never deserted me."
"I... Eris, I couldn't just leave you to do any of this alone. You're the one who..." always left, she did not say. The City. The planet. Me. But that was not exactly true, not anymore.
Eris heard her meaning anyway.
"I know." Sorrow hung heavier than usual in that mournful voice. "The pain I have caused you has always been one of my greatest regrets. And for that reason, I have treasured your faith all the more, bestowed in grace despite my inconstancy."
Words left Ikora. She clutched at Eris' arm to try and stay the rending in her chest. She would almost rather they had both continued to let her efforts go unacknowledged. That way, Ikora could have continued ignoring that pain, too. Now, with this slightest breach of recognition, the long-pent hurt was escaping her control.
Ikora drew labored breaths from the air between them, struggling to master herself.
"Ikora?" Another hand covered hers.
"Why now?" she whispered. Her voice was hoarse.
Inextricable emotions flickered across Eris' surprisingly expressive face, all too quickly to identify. Surely she was trying to voice what Ikora already knew, that things had changed, they had changed, that Eris was no longer bound to her purpose now that it was complete and therefore Ikora was no longer overpowered by the fear of what would happen to her in pursuit of it, and even all that paled like dawn in the face of the fact that they had been dancing around each other for so insufferably long and the incandescent truth of what Ikora had already known this whole damned, Light-forsaken time, that the two of them were–
"My dear Ikora. You are my heart."
Right, Ikora thought weakly. That. She trembled before Eris' ardent sincerity. The tender touch of the hand on her cheek nearly undid her.
So close as they were now, Eris' gaze drew inevitably down toward Ikora's lips, then back up to her eyes. That simple flickering of mutual awareness sang through Ikora like a plucked string of anticipation.
But in that pivotal moment, what Ikora wanted more than anything else was to hug Eris so fiercely and completely—to hold her so close to her heart that she could not possibly doubt how much Ikora loved her.
So she did.
The compression of her arms drove an awkward wheeze out of Eris' lungs and sent her limbs awry. The way her ribs contracted and immediately expanded again beneath her touch to laugh directly into Ikora's ear–
The softness and solidity of Eris' arms curling around her in turn was precious beyond words. Eris placed her palm against one of Ikora's cheeks, and her lips against the other. Then she bent to lean her forehead against her temple, the cloth of her blindfold soft on her skin. Not only was she so close, she was here , with Ikora.
They held each other for quite some time. Then, Eris fidgeted in her embrace and withdrew the smallest distance.
For only the second time in the long intersection of their lives, Eris removed the bandage that shielded her eyes from the light. She did not hesitate, but she did move slowly, deliberately. It gave them both time to remember the first in Eris' initial transformation ritual. This time, it was not an act of defiance, but acceptance. Of trust.
Once the cloth was set aside, scar-roughened yet tender hands cradled Ikora's face.
"It's good to finally see your eyes."
"They do not remind you of my Hive morph?"
"No. Even in your morph, they only ever reminded me of you. That's how I knew the Harbinger was still you."
"I did not know you were such a romantic."
"Eris, I..." Ikora faltered, her heart beating and beating.
Eris placed a single finger on Ikora's lips. Then she looked up into her eyes. "May I?"
She could, and she did.
___
Later, when the prismed sunlight had slid up to the top shelf of books and vanished in a gleam of amber behind the Wall that ringed the City, two women lay side by side on a long couch in silence and comfort. Though they faced opposite directions, leaning on each arm with their legs parallel, their ease in each other's company was self-evident. They lay there dozing together, not touching but merely centimeters apart.
Ikora had surfaced back into consciousness some time ago. The memories of where she was, who she was with, and what had passed between them had returned to her and then left her wondering at the profound awareness of the deepest calm she had ever felt. Like an inverse of the inevitable stillness of the Void, this moment of her existence traced the sheer gravity of presence rather than absence. Furthermore, it was not Eris' presence that applied that grounding weight, although she had been the catalyst.
It was Ikora's.
Ikora was utterly, implacably present in a way that had nothing to do with Light or power or intent. It was like the honed clarity of meditation, but effortless and undirected. It made the simple act of breathing a bodily revelation. Lungs expanded; limbs sank into worn cushions. Skin noted the movements of the air, the flaxen weave of linen or the suppleness of silk. None of it was a warning or a prediction or a goal or a hope. It merely was; and, too, was she.
By contrast, the sudden inundation in her own existence showed Ikora how accustomed to detachment she had become. She did not regret it: at times, such was a necessary skill, and not only for those who shouldered the responsibility of Vanguard. And yet the knowledge touched her with an unfamiliar sorrow.
Still...she hadn't felt anything like this inner gravity for such a long time. In all likelihood, such groundedness had eluded her since before she had taken the Vanguard post in Osiris' stead centuries ago. At the thought, a previously unheard echo of neglected mourning sounded like a distant keen from some deep place lost within herself. Gazing unmoving at the soft arc of cool moonlight over book spines, Ikora rested there with the knowledge that she would need to answer it someday.
But for now, she was here. Eris was with her. She had reasonable hope that they might share more of each other's presence as they moved forward from this confluence of time and space. The world to come was a paralysis of possibilities, most of them worrisome. But then, perhaps that had always been true. In the meantime, this moment was a blessing of clarity.
Eris turned in her sleep. Her knee nudged into Ikora's calf. As her hand encountered a fold of Ikora's robe, she grasped at the hem unconsciously. With the fabric between her fingers, she settled once more. Ikora could just barely see the gleam from beneath her eyelids in the dim shadows.
Quietly, Ikora made minute adjustments for a more comfortable sleeping position without dislodging Eris. Her legs she tucked closer along Eris' to keep either of them from falling off the sofa. A small, satisfied sound burred in Eris' throat. How long had it been since she had felt safe enough at rest to break the instinctive silence of a sleeping Hunter?
Ikora pillowed her head on her arm and breathed her own existence as she waited to fall asleep.
For once, she allowed herself to consider the possibility that the world—and she—might someday be all right.
___
I actually referenced a lot of specific lore in this fic, so here's a lore linkdump: the seminal sapphic Eris/Ikora library lore from Forsaken and Shadowkeep, which Eris actually quoted in the penultimate Season of the Witch radio message (the timing of the music in the background of this vid make me want to cry every time) the ever-relevant Shadowkeep Narrative Preview weblore Eris being a Bladedancer Hunter when she was a Lightbearer and using Blink Eris' letter to Ikora in Beyond Light entreating her to support the use of Darkness in the Regarding Stasis lorebook Chalco Yong discussing Ikora's predictive abilities in The Witch Queen Collector's Edition lorebook (original scans and transcript) and also the ARG that follows off of it, the Hidden Dossier, both of which detail Ikora's new perspectives on Light and Darkness and her theory of memory and grace which I think about every day Seriously, the TWQ CE and ARG are long but an absolute treasure, they are the most important pieces of lore for understanding Ikora as a character in my less than humble onion, in addition to being possibly my favorite Destiny lorebook overall also? if you got this far, thank you!! it's a tough gig being a writer fixated on a femslash ship in a larger fandom with a huge cast, but the few of you who keep on tuning in to appreciate my takes on these ladies really make it worthwhile. so you have my endless thanks and gratitude. i hope you enjoyed this one, it's one of my favorites yet.
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lizzieraindrops · 5 months
Text
Stowaway (4700 words)
The Traveler has left The Last City. Overwhelmed and shutting down, Ikora ends up stowed away on Eris' jumpship when she takes off from the Tower hangar. Post-Season of the Seraph. Not central, but Eris is written as ace and autistic, Ikora as trans and adhd. They're getting a bit spicy but deliberately not sexy. Also, Ikora is a walking emotional dysfunction of a woman.
Eris did not acknowledge the Light-shrouded figure sheltering in the back of her ship's cabin. If it had the vague shape of a crouching Warlock, veiled in Void that tingled like mint at the edges of her paracausal awareness, she paid it little mind. Its self-contained vortex of absence was entirely reflexive, focused only inward in oblivious contemplation. It was no threat. 
In any case, anything that could possibly consider Eris' somber domain a refuge was welcome in it.
In the silence, Eris set about preparing the jumpship for takeoff from the Tower hangar. She did so slowly, in case her mutually ignored visitor was going to disembark. But they didn't. If anything, the concentration of cloaking Void deepened. Her ears popped lightly with the minute pressure change.
The casual impulse to hum to herself out loud startled Eris back into silence. Behind her lips, absent murmurings of her route and destination gathered, waiting to be soft spoken. "Hmm," was all she said. She was long out of the practice of company, had been since the Pit. Much less was she given to these kinds of social mutterings that were more to be heard than to convey worded information. Alone, she much preferred her introspection to take written form.
It had been a long time since she had traveled with a silent, invisible companion just within reach. A long, pained exhale of a weary sigh left her. Her hands halted where they lay upon the console to hold a moment's memory for dear, lost Brya. She breathed in, out. In. Then she continued.
No change or sign of life from the concealed figure. Very well, Eris thought. Come with me. As she spun up the ship's engines, she indulged the atypical inclination to hum tunelessly under her breath.
Exiting the hangar, they ascended from the urban sprawl of the ringed City. The low buildings at its center now lay like a bowl at its exposed heart, the curve of their skyline tracing the absence of the immense sphere that had hung above them for so many centuries. Eris wondered how the gardens there now fared. Surely they were not accustomed to such an excess of sunlight.
Though she had been returning to her post on Luna, she slowed once exiting the thermosphere and eased her ship into a steady orbit. The engines wound down to a comfortable grumble, rather than the roar of effort to escape an entire planet's gravity.
Then Eris waited.
At first, she busied herself checking messages and sending a few short replies flitting away. Soon, though, she simply watched the cosmos outside the small ship: spheres upon spheres upon spheres. Terra turned below as her orbital path curved above it, as Luna arced high round them and as the whole solar system wound ever on; and the galaxy itself tumbled over and onward through the void, all its stars space-bright and unblinking.
At last, a ripple of presence interrupted her contemplation.
In the rear of the cabin, a Warlock had become visible. She sat on the floor with knees to her chest and back to the wall, unmoving. Orchid-colored robes gathered at her waist and ankles. Even their brilliant saturation seemed muted by their wearer's demeanor.
While Eris had suspected the identity of her stowaway, she had never encountered her in a state quite like this. "Ikora?" she asked. No answer. Even when Eris rose to her feet and approached, Ikora's eyes stared past the ship's walls unseeing.
Eris knelt before her. Once more, she spoke her name, again to the absence of a response. Did it feel cooler, in this part of the small cabin? Eris pulled off one bony gauntlet to feel the air. It did. She cautiously lowered her hand onto Ikora's where it lay listless against the metal floor panel. Still, nothing.
On a hunch, Eris tucked a finger under the cuff of Ikora's glove where it flared around her forearm. Ikora's skin was cold. 
Void users. They so easily slipped into that state where chill set in unnoticed: unbothered by the thermal dysregulation, but affected nonetheless.
Eris took off her other gauntlet and pressed Ikora's forearm between her palms. Dexterous leather somewhat inhibited the transfer of heat, but Eris did not presume to remove the glove. She worked her way from elbow to wrist, warming them with her own flesh.
"Eris?" came the muted question, once Eris' efforts had made enough headway into that soul-deep chill.
"Be at ease," Eris said, her voice low. 
"What...?"
"You are safe. There is no one else here. I am with you."
Slowly, Ikora's eyes took in the sight of her hand, clasped between Eris' own. "Oh," she said in the softest whisper.
Bare fingers rested at the clasp on the back of Ikora's glove. "May I? You are cold. I am less so, for once." Luna was ever so, so cold.
Enough of Ikora's focus returned for her to look at Eris and see her. "Why?" she said with plaintive lack of comprehension.
Eris closed her eyes instead of rolling them. Why? Oh, to be asked such a broad question. So many true and tender answers uncurled within Eris' chest. But clearly, in the throes of such self-abnegation, Ikora would take few of them to heart.
"Because you came to me." She opened her eyes and caught Ikora's bemused gaze, held it. Consciously or not, with intent or without, Ikora had come to her in crisis. People often did, these days. Somehow they knew that they could. The work of counsel was challenging, yet it made every cruelty that she had survived mean more than just the pain. Eris needed that as much as they needed her. However, she was not so sure that Ikora's exacerbated self-sufficiency would allow her to admit such a need, even now when it was so evident.
She still knelt before Ikora, still held that unmoving hand and wrist between her ungloved palms. "You are too cold."
"Oh. Yes. Cold..." Those chilled hands lay inert within hers, neither accepting nor denying.
Eris cast about the tiny cabin in vain. "Do you need...tea?" Ikora was always drinking hot tea, was renowned for it. Briefly, she wondered if this was why. "I doubt I have any kind that you favor. But I have some herbal tisanes, and it will be warm." She would find a way to heat some water. 
"No, no," Ikora demurred. "That's not necessary. I—"
Eris cut her off with a squeeze of her hand and a deeply unimpressed look. "Then let me help." 
Slowly and gently, she eased loose the clasp of Ikora's glove. With a sigh of acquiescence, Ikora let the weight of her hands down into Eris' waiting ones.
One leather gauntlet slipped free, then the other. The soft brown fingers they protected were elegant, their cant delicate but strong, like a musician's. Eris sat close and pressed them between her palms like flowers to preserve, warming them in an act of incremental tenderness.
The touch of skin felt so strange, yet familiar. The contact lingered like oil even when she let go, painless but present. Was it a memory from a time when Eris intermingled more easily with the rest of humanity? Or was it something unique to this confluence of circumstance, this intimate moment? Eris could not know for sure.
Thoughtless, Eris pressed the bent knuckles to her own lips, breathing warm air over them. In symmetric response, Ikora gasped a small, silent breath. 
Eris' cheeks flushed. Undeterred, she tried to make use of their warmth by pressing Ikora's half-curled hands against them, concealing them. But that only got the smoky ichor that leaked from her eyes all over them. She showed her face once more and waved the trailing dark wisps away. Then she resumed gently massaging Ikora's palms. They felt a little warmer now.
For the first time in perhaps hours, the Void-stillness broke and Ikora moved on her own. She pulled one hand free—only to return it to Eris' face.
Eris' hands froze mid-stroke as she ceased all motion. Ikora let a few tendrils of dark gossamer curl around one finger, then another. Just below the gauze of her blindfold, the backs of them rested against her cheek. The deep-brown amber of Ikora's eyes had clarified, focusing once more on the here and now. Hazy discharge billowed and ran like suspended ink in the air around the curious thumb that ran through it.
"It tingles. Like anemone barbs, almost. A little numb," Ikora said.
Eris relented from her automatic stillness. "Yes. It does." Her lips were dry.
"You've become accustomed to it?"
"I have." She tentatively resumed kneading Ikora's other palm. "The scar tissue around my eyes has left much of my face numbed already."
Ikora skimmed the smooth backs of her nails down Eris' cheek toward her chin, along a gradient of increasing sensation. Those dark, bright eyes shifted to meet the glow of her gaze, reflecting luminous points of green.
"But not all?"
Eris blinked, moistened her lips. "No, not all." Ikora's stare was so intense, she had to look away. That consuming regard wrung something in Eris' chest like a rag until it dripped longing. 
Yet, when Eris' eyes were drawn right back again, concern pushed aside all other feelings. "Ikora. What's wrong?"
For once, Ikora did not brush the question aside. Her face fell, as if the weight of the world had reasserted itself on her shoulders.
"It's... I don't—"
All at once, bright light reflected through the hull window and illuminated Ikora's stricken face in an unnatural stark white.
As it passed below, the sun shone off the Traveler's gleaming surface in a lancing glare. No longer was it interrupted by the density of the atmosphere down near the Earth's surface.
Perhaps it wasn't the heaviness of the world that left Ikora at a loss. It never had. It was the absence of that gravity, now, the vacuum of uncertainty untethering her from her place in the Tower, her role in all of it. She must have felt so lost right then.
"Oh, Ikora," Eris whispered. "I am so sorry. Truly." She gripped Ikora's hand as hard as she could, but it wasn't enough. Nothing would be enough.
Eris tried anyway. 
She hesitated to follow her instinct for an instant. But the only thing Ikora had responded to so far was sustained tactility. She pulled Ikora fully into her arms.
The moment Eris' arms closed around her, Ikora went limp. It was worse than if she had broken down weeping. As chilled as she was, she felt like a corpse in Eris' arms.
"Ikora..."
Never before had Ikora's voice been anything but beautiful, fluid, harmonious and eloquent, even in moments of utmost strife and fury. Now, simple words emitted from her in a hoarse whisper. "I don’t know what to do." 
Eris breathed against her. Ikora's chest moved so slowly in comparison. "Clarity before action, this time," she said. Her own voice held low and steady, but it shimmered at the edges with emotion. "What do you feel?"
Silence. Then: "Too much. Not enough."
Eris nodded. The motion brushed the fabric of her hood against Ikora's cheek. "I, too, have felt that at times. When the pain is so immense that there is not enough of you to feel it all."
In slow motion, Ikora shook her head. The motion was at first hesitant, then more definitive. "I can't do enough. I have no answers for anyone, not when they most need them. I can't, I don't know, I don't..."
She was spiraling. "Hush," Eris interrupted in a whisper. An echo of words that she had been given long ago rose to the surface of her mind and now found themselves on her lips. "You are more than your uses." Eris' voice carried the faint cadence of an Awoken lilt, in memory of the first time she had heard them spoken, uncomprehending. She had held them close for a long time, until she could begin to grasp their wisdom.
On that long journey of understanding, she'd had Ikora's help, too. Ikora had been there alongside her, through so, so much, from the moment she had learned of Eris' continued existence. She had supported her, defended her, and most of all, believed her when no one else yet would. 
And yet, despite going out of her way to aid others in learning that self-value, Ikora still could not believe such truths of herself, nor that she should ever be cared for in any such way. She would not like to have such a long-held conviction challenged.
But Eris dared.
"Ikora." 
Eris murmured the name like an invocation. Beautiful. Ikora. Surely a variant of Icarus, the sun-seeker who flew too high and fell to his death, forgetting himself in the pure joy of his hard-won freedom. No wonder Ikora held herself so tightly. But her namesake's wings would have melted just the same had he flown too low, too close to the damp, cloying sea.
Eris lifted Ikora up until she could settle her draped across her lap, then gathered her close. Despite herself, Ikora nestled against her chest, with her arms folded in and her head bent to Eris' heart. Eris ached.
"Ikora. How can you not know you are beloved by many? As yourself, as you are."
Ikora shook her head absently, almost resigned. "People need a leader to look to. I've done all I can to give them a worthwhile Vanguard. That is all they see, if even that."
Sometimes, Eris supposed that it was the sheer impossible breadth and depth of Ikora's knowledge that necessitated the balance of such an impenetrable, obstinate blind spot, centered firmly on herself. 
"I cannot speak for them, but that is not who I see," Eris said.
"Only because you came back from the Hellmouth and I didn't turn you away."
Hurt sparked a flicker of anger within Eris. She captured it with a candle, then held it forth to illuminate the space that had always been left shadowed between them.
"Do not presume to tell me that my pain is stronger than myself." 
Ikora did not start, precisely, but some infinitesimal jolt ran through her. 
Despite her ire, Eris continued to hold Ikora against her body like a precious thing.
"And do not presume to make so little of such kindness as you showed me then. Not in this cruel world. It—" Eris broke off. She tried to choke back the sudden emotion, but then—no, she thought. She needs to know. She spoke despite the thickness of her voice. "It was...it wasn't the only thing that saved me. But I could not have been saved without your compassion."
"Eris... Eris, you saved yourself."
Eris shook her head. "Not alone, I didn't. Not even under Luna. I had memories to cling to. And when I emerged, there was you. And my queen, and Cousin Asher, and Osiris, and our Guardian friend. Despite it all, you, especially, have not let me forget that I am not alone. 
"Neither do you have to be alone through this. I am here," she whispered next to Ikora's ear. "Let me be here."
No spoken reply came. But Ikora's breath came shakily, and she curled further into Eris' embrace.
Eris laid one hand on the back of her close-shorn head and held her.
At length, Ikora's body took on a softness that spoke more of relaxation than being utterly spent. Still, doubt clearly plagued her.
"Why are you doing this?" Ikora asked, her voice faint.
"Would you rather I not?"
"...No. But I still don't understand."
"Ikora..." Eris said, at a loss.
"Why do you keep saying my name like that?"
"What do you mean?"
"Like it's so important."
"Have you ever known me not to feel what I speak?" At least where Ikora was concerned, she had long avoided speaking what she felt precisely because of their equivalence. But perhaps that had been a mistake. Despite all the sound reasons that Eris had long spurned all desires except that for her own vengeance, others still existed in its shadow. All the same, she saw now that one, in particular, had even grown. It had vined itself around that ever-growing monument to Eris' grief, had lifted itself into the light until its leaves, too, shimmered with possibility.
Now, Ikora was drawing herself up to look at Eris, truly regarding her with every sense causal and paracausal, as if she had stumbled upon evidence she could scarcely believe nor deny.
"Say it again?" Ikora whispered like a challenge, like a herald.
"Ikora," Eris murmured into the space between them. Perhaps that was all she had ever needed to say. Then—closer. "Ikora. Ikora. Ikora." The name echoed softly in the finally listening ear, then brushed against the jugular pulse of its bearer as delicately as a fox between brambles. Ikora's body froze as her heartbeat quickened against Eris' lips. Eris made to draw back, but—
A now-warm hand wrapped around the back of her neck. Then it curled tightly into the fabric of her hood there and gripped her. Fingertips dug into the nape of Eris' neck, but not as a warning. Rather, as an exhortation.
Eris smiled with teeth. The reflection of her blazing eyes flared in Ikora's wide pupils.
"Is there something you want?" Eris asked in the mildest tone.
Ikora scoffed in complete disbelief and frustration. Then she kissed Eris hard on the mouth.
Eris' world became a whirl of intense sensation. Even before her descent into Luna, she had only ever sought these situations sparingly. Even this simple reverie of lips and hands, of arms encircling, left her limbs like water; anything else would wash her away into overwhelmed dissociation. This was more than enough to leave her nerves sparking with pleasure.
And Ikora could clearly tell. She had always hewn assiduously to the physical boundaries Eris set with the rest of the world. Time and again, she had kept herself just far enough at arm's length to soothe the animal fear of proximity that so plagued Eris in those early years after the Hellmouth. Ikora had a way of knowing what lines not to cross. It's what made her as formidable an opponent in City politics as she had been in the bloody court of the Crucible. 
Given that history of distance, Eris supposed she could not fault Ikora for not having realized that in time, Eris would have welcomed her closer.
Now, Eris could almost feel the way Ikora's regard cast paracausal ripples beyond each potential touch, gauging Eris' most likely reaction before she gave it. Such prescience had long earned Ikora a false reputation for telepathy. However, her closest Hidden knew that she simply had an extraordinary talent for probability analysis of any given situation, paracausally accelerated and honed to incredible accuracy. 
In this vibrant present, Eris had become the focus of her every bent attention, paracausal or otherwise. It was as exquisitely satisfying as her touch.
Ikora's lips were dry and cracked with chill and lack of care. But they were full and fervent as they closed on Eris' mouth to suck sweetly at the lower lip and then the upper. Eris responded in kind.
No longer content to drape passively across Eris' lap, Ikora now straddled her where she sat on the dusty floor of her own ship, unassuming yet intimate. The trusting weight of her seated on Eris' thighs was equally as grounding as the way Ikora pressed her against the cabin wall was exhilarating.
Eris, for her part, trailed kisses along Ikora's razor jawline and returned to her neck where she had briefly been before being so rudely interrupted. Delicious, ragged breaths greeted her as she reclaimed Ikora's fluttering pulse, this time with unbridled intent. 
Before tucking her face into the tall, flared collar of Ikora's robe to explore the crook of her neck, Eris took a moment to shrug off the hood of her cloak. She also loosened the bandage about her eyes so that the gauze fell away freely. Rather than revulsion, Ikora gazed upon her scarred, three-eyed face with recognition. Instead of horror, something more akin to hunger moved within the depths of her brown eyes. She wove a hand gratefully into the short, messy strands of Eris' hair and clutched at her bare neck as Eris resumed her attentions.
Eris tugged at the collar of Ikora's undershirt to expose the soft angle where the tense muscle of the trapezius at the top of her shoulder disappeared between the sharp bone of scapula and clavicle. She planted a few kisses at that vanishing point before moving on to the ridge of her collarbone. Perhaps she didn't need to bite quite so hard as to leave marks, but Ikora wasn't exactly complaining.
Well, not much, anyway.
"Easy, Eris!" Ikora gasped.
Relenting, Eris laid her reddened lips on the marks, all tenderness now.
"I'm sorry," she said, half penitent, half mischief.
"Don't," Ikora retorted.
"Would you like to have Ophiuchus fix them for you?"
"Absolutely not."
Eris chuckled.
"You are a menace."
"You like it."
"I love it. I love—" Ikora cut off, biting her lip.
"Go on," Eris said, breathless.
"—you. I love you. Eris, I've missed you."
"For how long?"
"Since you left the City."
"Since—" Eris reached back in memory. "Since after Oryx?"
"Yes."
"Ikora, it's been six years."
"That isn't that long."
"Perhaps not if you were raised in the Dark Age, old woman."
"Well, how long for you?"
"Since I returned."
"From the Reef?"
"From the Hellmouth."
"From—Eris, that's even longer, you hypocrite." Ikora pressed her palms into Eris' shoulders just below the pauldrons, pinning her in place. Her eyes were intense and beautiful, like the rest of her.
"I was not in any position to become aware of it or to act upon it then, or for many years after," Eris said defensively.
"Then when were you?"
Eris sighed and leaned fully back against the wall. Ikora followed and lay against her, chest to chest.
"I don't know. But lately, I have been thinking."
"Don't strain yourself."
Eris panted a laugh. She gave Ikora a mock gentle shove in retaliation. In the scant space it created between them, she bent and skimmed her teeth over Ikora's Adam's apple again, a threat and a promise that garnered her a sharp, sensual intake of breath.
"I have been thinking of many things. Among them, you have frequented my mind more and more."
"Oh?"
"Yes."
"How so?"
In a slow arc, Eris raised her head to meet Ikora's gaze eye to eye. As if laying hands on a priceless piece of art, she touched Ikora's cheek. "I realized you bring me joy," she whispered.
So close, Eris could see the water building in Ikora's eyes before it spilled over. Her heart clenched in dismay. "Oh, no, I—Ikora, why—are you crying?" In all the decades of their acquaintance, she had never known Ikora to even approach tears.
"I'm sorry," Ikora said in a thick voice. "I just—you came back so hurt, back then. And you've come so, so far. To think that you could be happy again—and that, I would make you feel that way—?" She leaned in close again, letting their cheeks touch. Hot tears mingled with the oily smoke trailing from Eris' own eyes. Stunned, Eris curled tentative arms around her again until she calmed. She held on to Eris, too, with shaky hands that rested on her ribs.
"How could I not?" Eris said in her softest voice. "You showed me how." At that, Ikora’s chest heaved again with emotion. "Are you all right?"
Silent, Ikora began to nod against her, then stopped. Her head twitched sideways in a choked negative.
"What is it?"
"I... This, you, make me…this is…wonderful. I never thought..." She tucked her hands between Eris' shoulders and the wall to hold her in a quiet embrace. "But...I don't think I'm okay, Eris." Ikora's tremulous whisper shook as if she were revealing the universe's darkest secret.
"How so?"
"Just look at how you found me today. I couldn't even hold on to the present, much less prepare for the future. That's never happened to me before. Not like this."
"Neither have any of the extraordinary circumstances we find ourselves in. It is not so strange; a new response to a new situation, particularly one that pains you so personally. Your devotion to the Light and the Traveler has ever been strong."
"That's easy to say."
"No," Eris said. "Witnessing your pain is never easy."
Ikora's posture softened at the tenderness in Eris' voice.
"What if I can't do this?"
"That, in itself, is all right."
"What?" Ikora drew back to stare at her. "What do you mean? You're more invested in fighting back the darkness than anyone. Well, not the Darkness, but—you know what I mean."
"Precisely." Eris held her gaze without wavering. "You are not alone in this fight. I am here, as are many others. And if the way you have been resisting the tide of evil no longer suffices..." Eris closed all her eyes, for just a moment remembering all the changes wrought upon her body, mind, and heart, by others' hands and by her own, sculpting her anew until she considered her old self as dead beneath Luna. "Then you will find new ways. I know you. And I—" she opened her eyes, met the intense brown gaze that assessed her and found her worthwhile. "I will still love you."
Doubt still troubled Ikora's face. But at least now she was less distraught, more pensive.
"You don't need to believe me now," Eris said. "Only think on it."
"All right," Ikora whispered. She hugged Eris once more, and its softness was so intimate that Eris shivered. 
At length, Ikora gathered herself up from Eris' lap and stood. Her stance was surer, steadier once more. She held out both hands and helped Eris to her feet as well. They both just stood there for a moment, hand in hand, searching each other's faces.
"What now?" Eris asked softly.
"I'm not sure. Where were you going?"
"Returning to my post on Luna."
"...Can I come with you, and stay a little longer?" Ikora's gaze skimmed the dusty floor, but she held fast to Eris' hands. "I'm not ready to return yet."
"Of course," Eris said. She would not question this understandable lapse in Ikora's single-minded fixation on her responsibilities as Vanguard: Ikora clearly, dearly, needed it. With an understated smile, she added, "Though I fear you may be briefly stranded with me until a Guardian can fetch you back to the City. My next research project requires careful monitoring."
Nodding, Ikora traced the fingers of one hand over Eris' temple. Then she repeated their same sensory-gradient path from earlier, from the faint tingle at her scarred cheek to the sensitive angle of her chin. "I don't think that would be so terrible," she said. "I would enjoy seeing more of your work."
She laid her palm along Eris' jawline and tilted her own head in query.
"May I kiss you again?" Ikora said, in a voice as soft as cashmere.
If Eris could bury her face in that lush voice, she would. As it happened, she was being invited to do the next best thing. 
"Absolutely," Eris said.
That next kiss was so devastatingly soft and slow that Eris nearly melted back to the floor again, armor and all. It was both startling and utterly unsurprising, the way that such terrible gentleness could so undo her. It was something in the cushioned press of Ikora's lips to her own, leisurely yet urgent; something of a long-unspoken ache relieved but not yet sated; something about being close enough to touch, and hands that wanted to hold her closer.
It was a phenomenon worth some of her time to study. After all, a certain stowaway had expressed a personal interest in her research, and would surely want to know the results.
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lizzieraindrops · 9 months
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"Wing of the Haunted" this "Wing of the Deep" that more like HELM portside Wing of the Banger
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lizzieraindrops · 1 year
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Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
My warlock Cyane for @vanguardvogue's #VVFOTLFashion costume contest! I call this her Dead Thing look made by a dead power in the shape of the dead
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lizzieraindrops · 1 year
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Current fandom meta and fics for Destiny 2!
Meta and lore posts
Destiny is a story about shapes and grief.
Please Don’t Erase Queerplatonic Chalco/Ikora
Ikora’s Ahamkara deal and emotional issues
Queerplatonic Ikora/Chalco canon
Iconic Eris/Ikora pining lore
seventeen (17) destiny sapphics with lore citations
TWQ CE lore analysis (outdated but fun)
Fic (also lizzieraindrops on ao3)
Come Back Different - (3k, G) Queerplatonic Ikora&/Chalco, aromantic Ikora. constancy, change & their unique relationship pre/post Red War
Eris/Ikora:
Liminal - (5.5k, T) SotWitch reconciliation and monsterfuckery with hive!Eris. angst, h/c
Presence and Absence - (8k, T) speaking the long unspoken & having tea in the library post SotWitch
rituals - (2.2k, T) ikora helps hive!eris clean her chitin
Stowaway - (4.5k, T) ikora stows away on eris' jumpship after the Traveler leaves
More than peace - (7k, G) SotHaunted growth & healing aka when you realize you want to reach out
within reach - (0.5k, G) art/fic collab, a soft morning
The Gallant - (5k, T) TWQ ikora being emotionally repressed/self-sacrificing, who'll take care of her?
stormcalm - (10k, G) 5 storms they weathered +1 they didn’t need to. Shadowkeep era.
Confusion lines - (20k, T) eris is both touch-starved and touch-averse; ikora is emotionally repressed. h/c, intense non-sexual intimacy
Concentric - (5k, T) fluff, back massage & non-sexual intimacy, a coda to Confusion lines
Other fic:
The Food Truck - gen (3k+, T) OCs run a food truck. my charismatic hillbilly Awoken herbo, her scrunkly wannabe hipster dreg business partner, & whoever they can rope into their space catering schemes.
Teach Me How to Grieve - eris & ophiuchus & ikora (5k, T) ghostless, bereft eris finally speaks to her partner’s ghost. angsty h/c, also kicking ass on luna
Proprioreception - O14 (3k, G) in the wake of sagira’s death, osiris (the Real one) finds saint in the city. h/c
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