Two words: Fuck. Depression.
20 years ago, Merina
Weaver looked around the room they'd been led to. It was far nicer than any of the rooms they'd rented when they had the money to, and practically a world of difference from the alleys and under-bridges where they'd sometimes spent their nights.
The window at the far edge of the room laid out the city below, the odd patchwork of glass and metal and stone and open green space, each varying in different areas.
But what truly drew her attention was the sky.
"How…"
Clouds drifted above, even as it appeared that something like a sun set on the horizon, auroras and patchwork nebulas blooming into visibility in twilight. How was this even possible?
"We flew through some sort of… gate when we entered the city," Kali said. "I could tell we shifted space, but I didn't think it was for something like this. We must be in some kind of… folded space or something. The distance to the horizon doesn't match the size of Vesta at all."
"You're lucky to be seeing it at all, human," a voice said harshly, and Weaver turned around to look at the doorway, where another Awoken woman in the uniform of the Guard stood. "The Queen will receive you first thing tomorrow morning."
As soon as she finished speaking, she moved to close the door, but Weaver took a half-step forward. "Wait!"
The Awoken stepped back suddenly, her hand dropping to the sidearm at her hip. A panicked look appeared on the part of her face that was visible, and Weaver drew up short. She knew what that kind of reaction meant all too well:
The Guard was afraid of her.
"I… I just wanted to ask, why did you join the Guard?" Weaver asked.
The other woman didn't relax. "To protect my home and the Queen."
It wasn't said, but she could hear the implied, 'From threats like you.'
Weaver didn't move from her position, simply nodding. "Thanks."
The Guard said nothing further as she stepped back again and shut the door to the room.
With a sigh, Weaver collapsed onto the small couch in the room.
She'd known people in the Reef considered Risen to be more akin to demi-gods and warlords that brought chaos with them wherever they went than just a benevolent force, but she hadn't expected fear like that. Or maybe she had expected it, just not at her, not after the months of being incognito, of being treated like a perfectly normal—if secretive and quirky—person.
Was this what she was going to be treated like now? Like a bomb, liable to go off at any moment? Like something that deserved suspicion rather than neutral acceptance? All because they now knew she wasn't Awoken? Or rather, that she was Risen?
Could she even say they were wrong? Her Light was easily destructive and volatile, though these past months of living incognito had allowed her to imagine and refine more subtle uses.
But still, what could she do?
"What do you think, Kali?"
She listened to the soft whir of her partner's shell segments shifting outside her field of vision, her eyes staring at the ceiling.
"About the Queen's offer?"
Weaver hummed in agreement.
"You want to accept," the Ghost said, as though directly reading her thoughts—something she wouldn't put it past them being able to do, now that she considered it. "But you're worried."
Scratch that, there was definitely thought-reading happening.
She felt Kali nudge her cheek and then settle down on her shoulder. "Back on Mars, I don't think I would have understood. But now that we've been here…"
The Ghost paused.
"We're old, you know? All of us Ghosts came into being at once. Some of us found our partners right away, others… Well, you know how I found you.
"A true loyalist would say the Vanguard is the only option, that it's our duty to protect the Last City, but we both know that's stupid. We don't have any obligations besides the ones we create. And I think the search for and finding something worth protecting is just as important as anything else, even if it's not the same as everybody else's."
Kali shifted again, white shell pieces sliding against each other.
"So that means you're alright with it?" Weaver asked.
"It means I understand why you might be willing to take a path less traveled, no matter why," her Ghost said, uncharacteristicly solemn. "And if we do this, there's no half-way."
Weaver sighed one last time, before she rested her head on the back of the couch and closed her eyes. "Yeah, I know."
She stared up into those bright glacial-blue eyes that gave away nothing of the thoughts behind them.
"I accept your offer," she said calmly, knowing that in the end there had been no other choice for her, "… to join your Guard."
This is the path I take.
Training does not start immediately. Even before it can begin, there are qualifications to meet, prerequisites she has no basis for, knowledge that she is woefully behind on.
And other simple things, like a place of residence.
They offer her a room in the barracks, but Weaver refuses. She's relied enough already on the Queen's generosity and hospitality.
Unfortunately finding a place to live in the heart of the Awoken empire turns out to be not so easy when you're Risen.
Go figure.
She ends up reverting to not-so-old habits. Unlike Serenna, Merina's slums are almost exclusively Fallen. Still, she finds an apartment block that is more metal and ship-scrap than the amethyst and marble of the rest of the city, and a room that she shares with a Vandal named Verask for a handful of glimmer a month.
The Fallen know what she is.
There is as much wariness from them as she gets from the Awoken, but they also know that she is the same as them: an outcast with nowhere else to go.
The two weeks of self-driven lessons and testing to bring her up to (minimal) spec with the other incoming recruits is harsh, pushing her mentally if not physically without reprieve. The mesh hammock she sleeps in is not the best, but it is far better than many of the situations she'd slept in on Mars and in Serenna, even with the almost sickly-sweet smell of Ether constantly hanging in the air.
It is almost all overwhelming, in a way that surviving and fighting on Mars or sticking to the shadows of alleys never was.
Still, she hears constant sounds and whispered clicks around her in the Fallen district, some combined with pointing at her or Kali, and the few words that she knows from her time skulking around Serenna (ship, glimmer, shards, yes, no, drink, what) are next to useless here.
Eventually she gets fed up of not understanding what's being said to the point that the next time Verask comes home, she starts pointing at objects and naming them followed by "Eliksni «what»?". She keeps doing it until they finally catch on, showing needle-sharp teeth and growl-hissing each item in response as she asks.
She soaks it up alongside her preliminary training, like it's a matter of survival, like a woman surrounded by possible hostiles who are saying things she can't understand.
It's only paranoia if they're not out to get you.
And she knows that there are those not happy with where she is, what she is.
She passes the screening and exams for entrance into the Guard. Her instructor simply gives her a gruff "Congratulations" when she receives her assignment and leaves.
Weaver doesn't see her again for five years.
And then she learns what Hell truly is.
The Guards are not the Army. She learned that early on, in the lessons of what her newly chosen role was in the overall Awoken military structure. Nor are they the Armada. The Guards' role is to protect the Queen, the Reef, the Awoken. They act as both bodyguards and specialists, negotiators and enforcers.
And they were, to the last, nothing less than the absolute best.
The woman who had arrested her in Serenna (had it really only been two weeks?) had been a Guard. A rogue Lightbearer in the Reef was the exact sort of a situation the Guard were for. Too dangerous for local forces (not that Serenna had much in the area she'd been), and a possible direct threat to the Awoken and the Queen herself.
Kali shifts slightly in the back of her mind, and Weaver almost wishes that she were manifested rather than hidden away. Her Ghost, on the other hand, had decided that discretion was the better part of valor and Weaver couldn't say that wasn't wise.
She was sure they'd be uncomfortable enough as it was without her Ghost floating around.
She hears hushed voices coming from the room as the new boots of her training uniform tap softly on the hallway until she reaches the open doorway, the voices cutting off suddenly.
At first only a few of the Awoken in the room turn to look at her, but the rest follow suit when they don't look away, and soon enough she has eleven different pairs of glowing, colored eyes looking at her. Eleven. All women.
Eleven out of however many thousands of Awoken were out there, however many hundreds tried to enter.
Each one of them is noticeably in-shape and Weaver has to wonder how many years they spent training and preparing and honing themselves just to get here.
With a nod, she enters the room and moves to take a seat, though none of them begin speaking again.
'They're still staring,' Kali says.
'I know,' Weaver replies, knowing that it's better to just let them be and hopefully get it out of their system. She's here for the same reason as them, after all, no matter how different she is.
The room remains silent until their instructors enter.
The first week is evaluations. You might have thought they'd gotten enough of that from the exams and testing, but no, this is for the instructors.
Weaver is by far the best with firearms, and at the top when it comes to outright physical feats, but everything else she is woefully behind in—hand-to-hand, negotiating, general knowledge, knife fighting, archery (which seems to be an old tradition for the Guard), small unit tactics, interrogation, everything. This only seems to alienate her even more from her peers.
She eats lunch at the canteen, the same as the rest, but where the others either form small groups to eat or occasionally all together, she sits by herself, her back to the wall and eyes on the doors. There's an uneasy sense of familiarity she can't place that makes her twitch, always eager to leave as soon as she's done.
The first three months of training they're required to stay in the barracks on-site, which makes her effort to find somewhere to stay in the city seem useless now, but she'd already paid for twelve months in advance.
It's wasn't like she didn't have enough Glimmer, between the amount she'd collected from the Cabal and Vex on Mars, and the two-hundred-plus years Kali had from collecting the stuff for her hypothetical future Guardian.
She sleeps on the bunk in the corner, always facing out.
The training itself is brutal. Her instructors take full advantage of her Light-bolstered endurance and healing (which they've already stopped her from using during the day), giving her no breaks. A few of her fellow trainees even seem particularly vicious in their spars with her, and she learns to avoid pairing with them as much as she can.
She spends her free time everyday on her own. She always devotes an hour to her Light: practicing manipulating the energy inside her, refining her control of it, focusing more on personal effects than anything overt and destructive. Destruction is easy, and she refuses to take the easy route when she knows there's far more to the Light even if she isn't seeing it all now.
Afterwards she goes to the library, trying to learn as much as she can to make up for the decades of education she's missed. Some days she seeks out one of the few Fallen on the base to continue her impromptu unofficial language lessons.
The three months pass, having mostly focused on physical training and discipline.
Her archery is still shit.
Her hand-to-hand is passable, but only because she can outlast her opponents, not because of skill.
She finds it humiliating, and the whispers she sometimes hears behind her back don't help.
Kali is her saving grace, and her conversations and reassurances keep Weaver sane in a way she can never fully repay.
They're allowed to go home, with four days off before they have to come back and continue training.
For some reason, she finds more comfort in the mesh hammock and ether-tinted air, surrounded by six-armed aliens she's only just beginning to understand, than she ever did in that bunk.
She still has nine months of training to go.
Weaver surprises Verask the next day by not only greeting them in Eliksni, but engaging them in a halting and slow, but nonetheless real, conversation about what they'd both been doing the last three months.
She buys fruit from a Fallen stand three blocks away without using a word of Common.
She spends the day wandering around the streets of the Fallen district, listening to open conversations that are almost too fast for her to catch without Kali, memorizing diction and pronunciation as much as she can. Even if she doesn't always know what the words themselves mean.
She does the same thing the next day, and the next, before something on one of the alley walls catches her eyes. She tears the cheap poster off and carries it home to Verask, asking about the words she doesn't know until she finally understands what it's advertising:
A mixed-species bar and open-pit fight club.
Kali immediately wants to go.
Weaver has seen a pit fight before, once, in Serenna. One Fallen up against another, both with spears that crackled dangerously.
She doesn't know what she'll actually end up doing there, but she can't deny her partner, especially after everything Kali has done and been for her.
The next night, they go out, the last night before her return to training, to a squad that is, while not openly hostile, at least uncaring and cold to her.
She walks along the dim alleys until she gets to the entrance, barely managing to follow the ad-hoc street signs the Fallen have put up. It's a simple unassuming metal door, just like all the other buildings, and she could have easily passed it if not for the neon light twisted into Eliksni symbols. Inside is a scene she grew more than a little familiar with in Serenna: dim lighting, 80% Fallen, 20% Awoken.
She's wearing her cloak and unassuming outfit again, bottom of her face shrouded in cloth and Light carefully threaded into her eyes. In an environment like this it almost feels as if she didn't switch cities at all.
Weaving around a couple tables, she heads over to the bartender. They look over at her with a burr in their throat that she's come to associate with unvocalized curiosity.
«Where is fighting?»
«Down,» they start, and then end with a modifier she hadn't heard before but assumes means "stairs" based on where they're pointing with their lower right hand.
«Gratitude.»
'Ooooh this is going to be interesting,' Kali says as they head towards the stairs, and Weaver simply sends her amusement back.
Two flights of stairs later and she emerges into the basement, which is larger than she expected. It's more a cavern than anything, just as dimly lit as the bar above, and smelling like an Ether tank burst. A barely-visible enclosed ring sits at the center, blocked from view by the number of people and aliens around it.
There's yelling and jeering in equal measure, and Weaver threads her way through the crowd until she's able to see what's happening.
At the center of the ring two Eliksni stand, the four hands of one locked with the other's as they both push against each other, wrestling for an advantage. It looks like one finally begins to push the other down, their arms pressing back, before the one below rears back and smashes their head-plate against the other's face, making them stumble back and break the stalemate.
Without mercy the attacker advances, two fast strikes to the left side of their opponents face keeping them off balance before they give a double fisted punch to the other side, needle-like teeth flying out of the their mouth along with a string of blue blood.
The Fallen collapses, and Weaver knows they're not getting up, not with the concussion they likely have. There's screaming until the judge ends a nine-count. The beaten Fallen is dragged out of the ring as the victor raises his hands and strides around the ring to the audience's yells.
Some break away, likely to collect whatever winnings they had from whoever's organizing the betting and leave. Meanwhile the floor of the pit is brushed and then misted with water for some reason.
'It's to keep the dirt packed and solid. So that dust isn't flying everywhere,' Kali says.
There's an odd excitement from her Ghost that she can only characterize as (truly) infectious thanks to the bleed-over.
'I never imagined I'd get to see something like this from up close. Any other Ghosts could be caught and killed if they tried to watch the Fallen like this. But here we are!' her partner adds.
They watch three more fights, the crowd of Fallen and few Awoken around them cycling in and out, before Weaver can't suppress the agitation and antsy discontent she feels and makes her way over to the Fallen who seems to be organizing everything.
«How much enter?»
They stares at her for a moment before cackling. «You want to enter, two-limbs? You will be torn to pieces.»
Frustration, frustration that's been building for so long and is only being made worse by this Fallen not taking her seriously spurs her to reach up and pull her shawl and hood down. «Yes. Want enter.»
"Radi. Lār," the organizer spits before they hiss something she actually understands. "Guardian."
Still, she shakes her head. «No. Queen my Kell. Live here, in Zherran. Heard of me, know. Now. How much enter?»
The Fallen's eyes flick over her face before turning to the slate in their hand. «Two hundred Glimmer,» they finally tell her. «Three more fights at least before a chance for you.»
Kali manifests the money in her pocket and she hands the crystal shards over.
«No weapons. And for you, no Lār-tricks,» says the Fallen.
No Guardian-tricks.
"Eia," she agrees. It's nothing she isn't used to by now.
She can practically feel Kali vibrating in the back of her head in excitement.
Pulling her hood back up but not bothering with the shawl, she moves around the edges of the room until she's somewhere she can spectate while up against the wall.
The next three matches pass, and each one she watches with rapt attention.
The Fallen move in a vastly different way than her opponents for the last three months. They don't hesitate to lower their center of gravity, stabilizing themselves in a half-crouch with their lower arms that can quickly transition to jumping, skittering sideways, or rolling. They favor their upper limbs for anything related to strength, and use their lower limbs to supplement that or for extra mass to help move.
Three matches pass, and it's only because of her catching something relating to a "new challenger" from the announcing Fallen that she pushes off the wall and walks over to the pit entrance.
Weaver's already taking off the shawl and cloak as she enters, throwing them to hang on the pit wall and leaving her in the smooth black and grey skintight armor Kali had fabricated when they'd first arrived, footwear already dismissed.
She pays no attention to the announcer, only studying her opponent. Much like most Fallen, they're slightly taller than her, white plates and leather strips that acts as armor.
«A two-arms!?» They turn to the officiator. «This is ridiculous. It would be like fighting a docked drekh!»
The officiator makes an arm movement that Weaver interprets as a shrug. «She paid.»
Her opponent looks back at her before taking up a stance. «I won't go easy on you, two-arms.»
«Don't want,» she spits back. «Fight me.»
For three months she's been pushed around, beaten black and blue daily, every mark taking its toll even if they were gone the next day. All the anger and frustration she's been repressing comes rushing out at the chance to return that even if only a little bit.
The Light in her flares but she shoves it back down even as her blood boils.
Her opponent makes no motion towards her, simply keeping their position.
"FIGHT ME!" she screams.
The pads of her feet dig into the pit floor as she leans to rush forward, to meet her opponent at the center, and things begin to blur in that familiar haze of rapid movement and adrenaline.
The first strike impacts her forearm as she blocks it, the force and slight pain spreading out familiar and only fueling her more.
She returns the favor by pounding at the armored plates they use to block anything she throws. Her knuckles come away bloody and the white armor stained red, and there's only a small series of cracks in the plate to show for the effort.
It's less painful for her to deflect any blows rather than block, especially those from the Fallen's top set of arms. She takes advantage of an opening she almost misses, stepping in and slamming her closed fist into the exoskeleton where the solar plexus would be on a humanoid, this time leaving noticeable cracks that she allows herself a small bit of satisfaction at.
If the damage hurts them, the Fallen doesn't show it. They fight back just as hard, and she's left with only being able to jab and give sharp knuckle-strikes to the unprotected sections of their arm with the way their reach exceeds hers and is keeping her away.
Sweat beads on her forehead as the Ether in the air clings to the back of her throat. She's not really accomplishing anything now, and at this rate she'll be the one to lose.
Weaver growls.
The only chance to flip this balance is to change the way they're engaging, but how? The impulse of pulling her opponent to the ground and grappling is immediately ignored. This isn't a fight with the other trainees, and she doesn't like her chances at that with a six-limbed opponent that's well acquainted with scurrying around.
The combination of exoskeleton and armor is making it hard to find anywhere that she can leave a mark on that will actually slow them down. Meanwhile, all she has for protection is the skintight armor, even if it does absorb and redirect some of the energy. And much like an exoskeleton, it can only take so much damage. She does have the advantage that her joints are protected while theirs aren't…
Knocking away another arm, she takes a step forward, her toes digging into the dirt floor. To get any chance at damaging her opponent, she has to open herself up. She lets the slight pain of the strikes that reach her fuel her desire to win. Her armor takes the brunt of the force, and allows her to dig her knuckles into the soft flesh on the inside of the elbow of the arm that reached her. The Fallen jerks their arm back with a pained hiss.
The sound is the signal of the fight changing.
The Fallen is aiming at her face now, and she's more defensive than ever while still trying to do as much damage to the joints as she can. It's working just fine besides the aches she can feel starting to set in, until Weaver misses one of the Fallen's fists. Before she can react it impacts her face at full-force.
She steps back, not allowing her footing to falter even with the pain and fuzziness, one of the first lessons she'd learned. Her arms are already back up in guard and she ignores the sudden blurriness in her left eye to knock away the hook the Fallen was following up with.
From there things begin to smear together, the Fallen landing a few strikes to her ribs and another to her face that she's pretty sure loosened a tooth based on the blood in her mouth and could have broken her jaw if she hadn't moved with it. She gives just as good as she gets, though, managing to disable two of their arms, one by dislocating the lower left arm's ball joint, the other by cracking the exoskeleton on the upper right.
She's not sure when, but they end up on the ground in the very position she didn't want to be in, grappling for dominance and to be above the other. Her leg muscles are definitely the stronger between the two of them, and she leverages that advantage for all it's worth, finally getting the Fallen in a submission hold before rapid-punching the side of their head until they go limp, unconscious.
She can't hear anything other than the rushing in her ears when she stands, stumbling for a second from what feels like a ruptured eardrum. The taste of blood is still in her mouth, and she spits it out along with the tooth that had practically fallen out by the end of the match.
It's only when she wipes her mouth that she finds she's been smiling the whole time.
She's fully healed when she falls into her hammock at two in the morning, Kali having tended to her as soon as she'd stepped out of the bar. It's like a weight that was on her shoulders that she'd never noticed is finally gone.
She sleeps the best sleep she's had since she was first revived.
All her fellow trainees look at her oddly the next day, and she realizes it's because of her loose satisfaction—this is probably the most emotion she's ever allowed them to see.
They begin lessons on intelligence and tactics, and here at least she doesn't feel as behind and outclassed. The majority of them are all starting out at the same level, save for the three who have past military experience already.
Now physical training is only half the day, and Weaver knows that's going to make it harder than ever to catch up to the rest in terms of skill.
In every other way, it feels like nothing has truly changed.
Three days later she goes back to the fight club.
This time she has some of the same simple armor plates-and-straps the rest of the Fallen have, placed over top of the skintight suit and modified to match her shorter height by Kali.
She fights two matches this time.
She loses the second, but by the end both of them are grinning through blood and sore jaws.
Somehow, it still feels like a victory.
Lessons and training continue. She spends her free time as before: trying to cram two decades of fundamental advanced knowledge into her head, practicing controlling her Light in different ways, walking around Zherran, and now, two or three nights a week, going to fight at clubs.
Verask gives her a shock-dagger, as a cheeky-but-also-not reward for finally not always stumbling over her words in Eliksni. She still doesn't fully understand Fallen humor, and she isn't sure she ever will.
She wears the knife strapped to her leg, sheathed but always present. It eases something in her she never knew was tense. She's always had the odd knife she's used since Mars instantly available with her Light, but somehow the physical presence of the dagger is soothing.
She's sure her peers notice, but they say nothing.
The Fallen who populate the pits start calling her Mraskis, the Eliksni word for 'weaver', and she's pretty sure it's just because 'Weaver' is particularly hard for them to pronounce, because she definitely gave the organizer her name in Common.
It's three weeks before anything changes.
Draw. Inhale. Exhale. Release. Fourth Ring.
She's gotten bullseyes before, but they're rare and largely flukes, not a true sign of any improvement, though she is finally managing to actually hit the target at fifty meters. At this point she'll take anything she can get.
"Stop. Just… stop."
Weaver pauses, lowering her bow. She looks over at the Awoken woman who'd spoken, a fellow trainee. Sone Vell.
"You're never going to get anywhere without fixing your stance, first of all," she says primly, and proceeds to use her foot to push Weaver's around a bit before she steps back and looks her over. "Right. Now draw."
Weaver pulls a new arrow from quiver at her hip and nocks it, pulling the bowstring back and sighting it.
Sone moves around her, and the other woman's hands reach out and grasp her shoulders, making a number of adjustments to her posture and alignment before making smaller shifts like how far back her shoulders are rolled.
"Do you feel that?"
Weaver evaluates herself. It's like the bowstring and arrow are almost… easier to hold drawn like this. "Yeah."
"Good. Lower the bow and breathe," Sone tells her, and she does, slowly decreasing the tension until it's held easily at waist-level. "Now draw."
She follows the instruction, only to feel Sone's hands poke at her shoulder blades again. "Hold the position."
Weaver does, trying to memorize how each of her muscles feels.
"Now do it again." She does, and once again Sone adjusts her.
They repeat it twenty times before the other woman seems satisfied. "Good enough for today. We'll work on your footwork tomorrow," she says, as if it's a foregone conclusion.
The Risen blinks, lowering the bow. "I… thanks?"
"Hm," the Awoken hums non-commitally, already twisting away to go to lunch.
That afternoon rather than go home and work on her Light, Weaver spends an extra hour in the training rooms, drawing and firing arrow after arrow, paying close attention to her shoulders and torso, her arms in relation to them.
All of her arrows land in the third ring or higher.
Sone keeps her word, and for the rest of the week, the last thirty minutes of training before lunch are spent having her stance corrected and critiqued.
It's not much, but it still feels like something between Weaver and the rest of them has changed.
She continues fighting at night. Over the month and some-odd-weeks she's gotten good enough to start participating in ranked events, even if only at the bottom and usually knocked out by the second round.
It's at one of those that she sees a fight between two Captains, their swords clanging against each other in a whirlwind of steel and Arc energy, the dance they seem to have that is at the same time graceful and nothing but violence. She sees that and she knows that she'll never be satisfied until she's able to fight like that too.
Finding a pair of shock-swords isn't particularly hard. Neither is buying them. Kali helps her modify the swords to properly fit her size, a more complicated problem than changing simple armor plates. She finds the process more enjoyable than she expected, and can't help but think of all the weapons Kali has in storage and the changes she could make to them.
Nevertheless, the next time she goes to one of the challenge-sets that has captains, she waits until their match is over and goes to the victor. The Captain's name is Narisk, and he's won far more matches than he's lost based on the conversations of the Fallen who watched next to her.
Steeling herself, she has Kali materialize her shorter swords and before the Captain can react, plunges them blade-first into the ground until they quiver in the hard-packed dirt.
Weaver holds his gaze, not daring to look away or blink. «Teach me. Please.»
He stares at her. After a minute he looks away, turning to her swords. She releases the grip as he reaches for it, and he pulls the blade out of the ground easily, looking it over.
«Well-done changes. Removed blade-material but kept same balance-point. Very good for not being created this way,» he rumbles, returning to her. «But what about you, little weaver? Would you say you are like this blade? Created for something larger but changed to be wielded by something smaller? Something… once lost, and now making the best of the situation it finds itself in?»
She blinks.
She hadn't expected this to suddenly become a philosophical discussion, especially over a personal metaphor she seems to have inadvertently created. It resonates deeply with her, though, now that she sees the parallels. «Yes. Even if I have to change myself to do it.»
The Captain nods. «I understand,» he says, looking at the sword again. «Yes, I understand that well.» He takes a breath that drags through his mask. «Very well. You change, and I will help you learn yourself in this way.»
Narisk stands, handing her the sword. «You will meet me here tomorrow night. Then you will learn.»
With that he turns and walks away, leaving Weaver holding one sword and the other still embedded in the ground.
'What… just happened?' Kali asks.
'I'm not entirely sure myself,' Weaver admits. 'But I think we just got more than we were bargaining for.'
And so passes another month. Training. Lessons. Archery practice. Home. Study her Light. Learn more of what she can on her own. Every third day she meets Narisk, otherwise she practices her sword and martial forms. Twice a week she goes out and fights, learning a little more and getting a little better every time.
The eleven Awoken women in her training squad have stopped outright ignoring her and begun warming up to her, especially after she shows them the best ways to hold the different parts of a gun as you strip it for field maintenance and how to recognize different kinds of wear and deal with them.
"How old are you?"
Weaver looks up from her food and the data-slate next to it at Nadia. "What?"
"How old are you? We–" she motions around the small canteen at herself and the other Awoken, who have fallen silent, "have got a bet going. So what is it?"
She tilts her head. "I… Kali brought me back ten months ago."
Nadia stares at her. "Not even a year!?"
Weaver shrugs. "Two months on Mars, and then three in Serenna before the Queen found me."
"How did you get here from Mars?"
"It wasn't on purpose. Well. For the most part, anyways. There weren't any ships I could use to get off the planet, so I had to stowaway on one of the Cabal ships. But the only one I could stowaway on with without them noticing me being on board was one that this rogue Valus was going to use…" she trails off, and Nadia sits down in front of her.
"Was going to use to what?"
"To attack Serenna. At least that's what Kali and I think based on their course, but we managed to disable their ship and push it off course enough to crash outside the city, where it wouldn't hurt anyone. After that I just tried to help people in the city the best I could."
"I…" Nadia turns around and looks at the other Awoken in the room with them, sharing something that Weaver isn't privy to. She takes another bite of her lunch before Nadia turns back to her. "I think we might have started off on the wrong foot. My name is Nadia Mere."
There's many responses Weaver could give to that. A good number of them not-so-gracious. She half wants to throw the obvious "I screwed up" right back in their faces. But that would do good nothing for her. Still, she can't find it in herself to completely forgive them, either. At least not now.
Instead Weaver simply raises an eyebrow. "I know. We've been in the same class for almost six months now."
Nadia's pale blue skin flushes slightly and she looks to the side. "Yes. Well."
And then, just to throw her completely off, she adds, entirely deadpan, "That's over half my life you know."
One of the women at the other table—Rini—snorts, and then starts laughing. The rest just look at her until she's able to get her giggles under control. "What, it was funny!"
The woman crosses her arms. "If she's got a sense of humor she can't be that bad," she defends.
Weaver rolls her eyes.
"But Queen's Tears, a year? You didn't even get any basic-ed?" Rini asks, throwing away the polite fiction of them not paying her any attention and addressing Weaver directly.
"The Queen offered me either a ship to Earth or to join the Guard. I—" Weaver pauses, thinking for a moment. "I assumed she meant immediately. I didn't even think about asking to have time to learn and adjust first." But had she? Thinking about it now, the Queen's words seemed more long-term than immediate. Had Weaver completely missed that opportunity because she hadn't even considered it?
"So you don't know anything, basically," another one of the women says flatly. Rella. One of the colder ones, but at least not Vis or Allora.
"I know enough," Weaver counters defensively. "I know how to survive."
"That's…" Quira shakes her head, and Weaver feels a spark of anger at the pity in her white eyes. "Surviving isn't living. And it's certainly not enough for a member of the Queen's Guard."
There's murmured agreement from the rest of the table.
"So what, what am I supposed to do? Drop out to study for five years?" There's a "That's one way to do it." that Weaver knows came from Vis, but she ignores it."Learn on my own? I'm already trying to do that! Why do you think I've been in the library every day?"
Nadia looks at her with wide teal eyes, glancing back at the other group. "We thought… We thought you didn't want to talk or work or eat with us. That you wanted to be left alone. So we did."
Was that really the cause of this? She didn't reach out, so they didn't either? Was it really that simple?
'It seems like it,' Kali says softly.
'We really are idiots, aren't we?'
'Probably.'
"She's less than a year old, she likely doesn't even know how to interact with people normally," Rini says. "If the first months of my life were trying to survive and getting killed constantly on Mars and then I was thrown at a bunch of people I doubt I would either."
Weaver flushes, both at how demeaning that sounds and how uncomfortably accurate it is. All her other interactions to date have been driven either out of necessity to see something through or conflict. The sole exception is Kali, who's Weaver's other half and thus understands her on a level nobody else can.
"Was that it? You didn't talk to us… because you didn't know how?" Nadia asks.
A quiet, "What else could it be," is muttered.
"Just shut up Vis," Rini snaps back.
Nadia hasn't looked away Weaver. "Was it?" she asks again.
Were they seriously doing this?
Weaver breaks the eye contact, anxiety and discomfort that makes her want to punch something roiling in her gut, anger that they're pressing her like this. "Yes. Okay? Yes. Is that all?"
Nadia seems to get the message, because she stands up. "Yes. Thank you."
They let her go back to her data-slate and food, but Weaver knows that the current arrangement as it stands isn't going to exist for very long anymore.
She's proven right the very next day, when Quira sits down across from her without prompting …and starts asking questions about the things she's been studying. By the end of the conversation, she has a list of books to read. Quira says she has more, but 'these are the most important.'
The next week she starts getting quizzed on them.
She reads about things that happened centuries ago, and yet there are people around who can still remember them. She reads of how the Awoken colonized the Reef, the Schism that created the Earthborn and the Reefborn, the assault that followed and prompted the true development of Vesta into something other than another lifeless rock with the help of creatures that made wishes reality at a price. She reads of the wish-cities that were brought into being, of which Merina is only one, but also the only one the Fallen are allowed to enter.
She reads of the quiet years, the time spent building and growing, the betrayal of Azirim and the Great Hunt of the Ahamkara on Venus, the only time the Guardians of the Last City and the Reefborn Awoken have worked toward a common goal.
There is calm, only noted by the expansion of the Awoken and the Queen's realm.
And then come the Reef Wars.
It's strange, Weaver thinks, how much of history is marked by conflict and strife, how those periods and events have so much more detail devoted to them.
She can still remember Marix's description of the events, and the record of the Awoken offers more information, if not the other side.
There's one thing she notes, that stands out above all else. The Awoken did not attack the Wolves on Ceres because they were invading sovereign territory; they attacked because the Wolves would have turned the tide of the obviously-upcoming battle for the City and overwhelmed them.
She can easily read between the lines.
The Queen did not order the attack for her own sake.
She did it to protect the Last City. She does not want humanity to fall. She would fight for them, even if they didn't know it. She would fight for them, even at the cost of thousands of her own people. For all her ice-cold imperial demeanor and facade, she cares.
And that, Weaver knows, makes all the difference.
Years later, she thinks this is the moment she first truly sees Mara as her Queen.
A/N: The foretold (very long) chapter of Weaver's early days is here ...and not even all the way through the year yet. It's... a little rough in areas to me, but I could totally be just imagining that.
To be fair to Weaver here, all of her fellow trainees are basically superathletes and have been seriously preparing for this for years. Going from "literally nothing" to "passable" against them is three months is nothing short of miraculous to her instructors. Of course Weaver can't see that, because she's still losing. :V
As always, please tell me what you think, comments, critiques, etc!
