♠️♥️Avalbane & Six ♥️♠️

“What would you do if we woke up tomorrow and were no longer Guardians?”

He paused before he even got the mug all the way to his lips and glanced over at her, arching a sharp metal eyebrow.

Even Ghost turned around and looked at her.  “I hope this question doesn’t mean anything happened to me,” he stated.

She shook her head.  “No, of course not.  You’re still with us.”  She looked back at Cayde.  “I just meant … if the Light was gone.  From everyone.”

Cayde frowned.  “What made ya wonder that?”

“Humor me?” she gently asked.

“Well, I think it’s pretty obvious, darlin’,” Cayde told her.  “Live.  With you.”

Aislin softly smiled.  “For a man who loves living on the edge, I think you’re secretly someone content to grow old on a porch, just like you are now,” she said, leaning her head back, lazily gazing back out at the sunset.

“Whoa.  Hey now,” Cayde told her.  “Don’t go throwin’ the “O-Word” around like that.”  His tone was light.  Held a bit of humor in it. 

Again, she smiled.

She heard him set his mug back down on the table and shift in his chair, feet coming off the railing as he sat up, leaning forward, elbows on his knees.  “Seriously,” he said, looking over at her.  “What made ya ask that?”

She looked over at him.  “Going back into it all tomorrow.  Knowing Eramis is aiming to destroy the Traveler.  Just …”  She glanced back out toward the lake.  “Remembering being without the Light for a few weeks after the start of the Red War.  Thinking about how life would be if that became permanent.”

Cayde thoughtfully frowned and followed her gaze out toward the lake, watching the rippling golden shimmer on the water’s surface as the last of the light faded away, the irony of what she was saying and the timing of the sunset not lost on him.

Cayde was quiet for a long moment.

Not the easy quiet, either. Not the kind where he was waiting for a joke to finish loading or letting the moment breathe because the sunset deserved it.

This one had weight.

Aislin watched the side of his face in the fading light, the copper-gold of the sky catching along the blue plating of his cheek, the sharp line of his jaw, the little orange flicker in his throat when he swallowed around something he hadn’t said yet.

Rasha’s ears twitched from her blanket, sensing the shift. Ghost said nothing, but he drifted a little lower between the hanging plants, his shell turning in slow, thoughtful increments.

Cayde finally reached for his mug again, but he didn’t drink. He just wrapped both hands around it, letting the heat sit there between his palms.

“Permanent,” he echoed quietly.

Aislin’s fingers tightened around her own cup. “Yeah.”

He nodded once, staring out over the lake.

“Well,” he said after a while, “first thing I’d do is probably say somethin’ real brave and inspirational. Somethin’ like, ‘Ah, hell.’”

Despite herself, Aislin huffed a soft laugh through her nose.

Cayde glanced over at her, the smallest curve tugging at his mouth. “Then I’d probably check on you. Then Ghost. Then Rasha, even though I’m pretty sure she’d be less concerned about the cosmic state of the universe and more concerned about whether breakfast was still happenin’.”

Rasha lifted her head at the word breakfast, tail giving a hopeful thump against the porch boards.

“See?” Cayde murmured, pointing at her with the mug. “Priorities.”

Aislin smiled, but it faded gently as Cayde looked back out toward the water.

“After that…” His voice lowered. “I dunno, darlin’. Depends what kind of world we woke up in.”

“The same one,” she said softly. “Just without resurrection. Without Light. No Ghosts healing us. No abilities. No coming back.”

Ghost’s eye dimmed faintly, not with fear exactly, but with the solemn understanding of a thing he had been made to defy.

Cayde’s thumb moved along the side of his mug.

“Then I’d be scared,” he admitted.

Aislin looked at him.

He didn’t look ashamed of it. Didn’t try to dodge it with a grin, not right away.

“I mean, I’d dress it up real pretty. Make it sound heroic. Probably toss in a joke or three. But yeah.” He glanced at her, expression softer now. “I’d be scared. For you. For Ikora. Zavala. The kids in the Tower who still look at us like we’re carved outta mountain and myth. For every little farm and settlement out there that only sleeps at night because somebody like us is standing between them and the teeth in the dark.”

Aislin looked down at her matcha.

Cayde continued, quieter.

“And I’d be scared for me, too. Not ‘cause I can’t handle dyin’. Been there. Got the punch card. But because this time…” His mouth twitched, humorless. “This time I’d have something I really, really don’t wanna leave.”

Her throat tightened.

The lake reflected the last smear of sunlight, turning the water into a long ribbon of dying gold.

“I remember the Red War,” Aislin murmured. “I remember what it felt like when Ghost couldn’t heal me. When every injury stayed. Every bruise, every cut.  Every broken bone.  I remember still trying to fight like I was immortal and realizing halfway through that I wasn’t.”

Cayde’s gaze settled on her.

“I remember watching people panic,” she said. “Guardians. Civilians. Everyone looking up at the cage around the Traveler like… like the sky itself had betrayed us.”

Ghost drifted closer, his voice gentle. “I remember that too.”

Aislin looked toward him, her expression softening.

Ghost’s shell rotated once, subdued. “I remember trying. Over and over. I remember thinking there had to be something I was missing. Some frequency, some spark, some door I hadn’t found yet.” His eye lowered. “There wasn’t.”

Cayde reached out, and Ghost floated near enough for Cayde to touch two fingers lightly against the edge of his shell.

“Wasn’t your fault, buddy.”

“I know,” Ghost said, though the way he said it made clear he had only learned to know that with effort.

Aislin watched them, heart aching in that warm, familiar way that came from loving both of them.

Cayde’s hand lowered back to his mug.

“Thing is,” he said, “I don’t think the Light makes us Guardians.”

Aislin tilted her head slightly.

He shrugged one shoulder. “Makes us harder to kill. Makes us shinier. Gives us the big dramatic entrance and the occasional lightning tantrum.” He gave her a pointed look. “Some of us more than others.”

Her mouth curved despite the heaviness.

“But it ain’t the Light that makes you step in front of somebody else,” he continued. “It ain’t the Light that made you break into an impossible Bray freezer-box on Enceladus because you refused to let a stubborn idiot die in a Tower infirmary.”

Aislin looked away, but her expression softened.

“It ain’t the Light that made Zavala stand on the Wall when everything was falling apart,” Cayde said. “Or Ikora tear herself bloody trying to get people out. Or Amanda fly rescue routes under fire with no Ghost, no armor, no magic, and more guts than all the Guardians I ever knew over my lifetime.”

Ghost bobbed faintly in agreement.

Cayde looked back at the sunset.

“So if we woke up tomorrow and the Light was gone?” He exhaled slowly. “I think there’d be a lot of fear. A lot of grief. A lot of people realizing the universe wasn’t gonna let us cheat anymore.”

His hand shifted, reaching across the small space between their chairs.

Aislin met him halfway, sliding her fingers into his.

His grip closed around hers, warm from the mug.

“But I also think,” he said, “that after the first panic burned out, people would still get up. Zavala would still organize evacuations. Ikora would still know too much and scare everybody with it. Shaxx would still yell morale into existence. Saint would still punch something he absolutely should not punch. And you…”

His gaze turned to her fully.

“You’d still stand up.  Still walk on out there into danger, bold as ever.”

Aislin’s eyes stung.

Cayde squeezed her hand.

“Might not be with Arc light crawling over your shoulders,” he said softly. “Might not be with a Ward big enough to make the world feel safe for ten seconds or a fire hot enough to rival the sun. But you’d stand up anyway. Because that’s who you are.”

She swallowed.

“And you?” she whispered.

His brow lifted faintly. “Me?”

“Yes, you.”

He looked as if the answer should have been obvious. Then, maybe realizing this was not a moment for flippancy alone, he let the joke sit untouched.

“I’d stand next to you,” he said.

The simplicity of it hit her harder than anything grand would have.

Cayde looked down at their joined hands.

“Maybe I wouldn’t be Cayde-6, Hunter Vanguard, beloved menace, hero of questionable decision-making.”

“Beloved menace is still on the table,” Aislin murmured.

“Okay. Yeah.  That one’s load-bearing.  We’ll keep it.” His smile flickered, then softened again. “But maybe I’d just be Cayde. Your husband. Guy who fixes the crooked fence, grows tomatoes like he’s personally offended by market-bought ones, teaches Rasha tricks she absolutely should not know, and makes sure your ramen and coffee’s made right.”

Aislin’s thumb brushed over his knuckles.

“That would be enough for you?” she asked.

Cayde went still.

Then he turned in his chair, facing her more fully.

“Darlin’,” he said, voice low and certain, “after everything it took to get here? After Sundance, the Prison, Enceladus, Io, every miserable miracle between then and now?” His eyes held hers, bright and steady in the dusk. “A quiet life with you wouldn’t be some consolation prize. It’d be the damn treasure.”

Aislin’s breath caught.

For a moment, she couldn’t answer.

The porch creaked faintly beneath them. Somewhere down by the lake, something small moved through the reeds. The air smelled of pine, cooling earth, matcha, and the faint clean traces of Cayde’s cologne lingering beneath the scent of the garden.

Ghost turned away toward the water, giving them the privacy of pretending he wasn’t listening.

Rasha, less subtle, sighed dramatically and rested her chin back on her paws.

Aislin blinked hard, then gave Cayde a small, fragile smile.

“You always do that.”

“Do what?”

“Say something ridiculous and then follow it with something that makes me want to cry.”

“Yeah, well.” He leaned back slightly, trying for casual and not quite making it. “I’m multifaceted.”

“You’re impossible.”

“Also true.”

She looked down at their hands again.

“I think I’d miss it,” she admitted. “The Light. Not the fighting. Not the wars. But the feeling of it. The warmth. The certainty that, even in the dark, something answered.”

Ghost drifted back toward her and gently pressed against her shoulder.

Aislin lifted her free hand to touch his shell.

“I would miss being able to protect people that way,” she said.

Cayde’s expression gentled. “Yeah.”

“I’d miss being able to protect you that way.”

His fingers tightened around hers.

“Ais…”

“I know,” she whispered. “I know you don’t want me thinking of you as fragile.”

“I was gonna say mortal,” he murmured. “But fragile’s got a worse mouthfeel.”

She gave him a look.

He gave one back, softer than his smirk wanted to be.

“I know,” she said again. “But I almost lost you when you were Lightless. I watched what it did to you. I watched your body fail and your mind try to outrun it. I know we survived that. I know you survived that. But sometimes…”

The words snagged.

Cayde waited.

Aislin looked out at the last edge of the sun vanishing behind the mountains.

“Sometimes I remember how close it was,” she said. “And I wonder what happens if the universe asks us to be that lucky again.”

Cayde was quiet.

Then he set his mug aside, stood, and crossed the short distance between them.

He didn’t pull her up. Didn’t make a joke. Didn’t tell her not to think about it.

He just crouched in front of her chair, both hands coming around hers, holding them carefully between his own.

“Then we don’t count on luck,” he said.

Aislin looked at him.

“We count on preparation. On friends. On backup plans. On Ghost being the smartest little starburst in the system.”

Ghost made a small sound that might have been touched yet offended or touched and proud.  It was hard to tell.

“We count on Rasha biting anything that comes too close.”

Rasha’s tail thumped once, approving.

“And we count on us,” Cayde said. “Same as always.”

Aislin’s eyes searched his face.

He leaned closer.

“I can’t promise the Traveler’s gonna be okay,” he said. “Can’t promise Eramis won’t take a swing big enough to shake the whole damn sky. Can’t promise we won’t wake up someday and find out the rules changed again.”

His voice softened.

“But I can promise you this. Light or no Light, Guardians or not, Vanguard or not, whatever tomorrow looks like…” He touched his forehead gently to hers. “I’m gonna spend it tryin’ to come home to you.”

Aislin closed her eyes.

The words settled into her, not as a cure for the fear, but as an anchor dropped into deep water.

Her hand slid up to the side of his face, thumb brushing along cool metal warmed by the evening air.

“And I’ll be trying to come home to you,” she whispered.

“I know.”

“Every time.”

“I know, darlin’.”

The last of the sun slipped away.

For a few minutes, neither of them moved. The world held itself in twilight around them, the lake darkening from gold to blue-black, the first stars appearing overhead one by one.

Finally, Cayde drew back just enough to look at her.

“So,” he said softly, “in this no-Light retirement scenario… do I still get a hat?”

Aislin stared at him then frowned.  “A … hat?”

He lifted one finger. “Yeah.  A homestead hat. Maybe with a little embroidered chicken on it.”

“In honor of Colonel?” she smiled.

“Well, yeah.  But also, figure, if I’m gonna raise some chickens, might as well have the hat to match.”

“You want to raise chickens?  Not just have one as a pet?”

“Colonel wasn’t a pet.  She was a soldier,” Cayde adamantly corrected, but was smiling.  “Besides, Rasha would love chickens.”

“Rasha would terrorize chickens,” Aislin pointed out, already seeing that scenario play out.

Rasha lifted her head again, hearing her name and looking deeply innocent.

Cayde gestured toward her. “Look at that face. That is the face of a responsible livestock guardian.”

“That is the face of someone who ate a gardening glove yesterday.”

“One of the gloves I risked life and limb to save from the wasps in the shed?” Cayde asked her.

Aislin nodded.

Rasha’s tail stopped moving.

Cayde slowly turned to her. “You ate the glove?”

Rasha looked away toward the lake.

Ghost’s shell clicked once. “She did.”

Cayde gasped. “Betrayal. In my own home.”

Aislin laughed then, really laughed, the sound loosening something tight in her chest.

Cayde looked back at her, and there it was—the little spark of relief in him, the quiet satisfaction of having pulled her back from the edge of a thought that had begun to swallow her.

But he didn’t make light of the fear. Not completely.

He rose and sat on the arm of her chair instead of returning to his own, one arm sliding around her shoulders as naturally as breathing.

Aislin leaned into him.

After a moment, he reached for her mug, handing it to her, then picked up his own.

He took a sip, made a thoughtful face, and said, “You know, if the Light goes out, we’re gonna need more tea.”

She rested her head against his side.

“I can grow tea.”

“Of course you can.”

“And vegetables.”

“Already do.”

“And medicinal herbs.”

“Hot.”

She elbowed him lightly.

He chuckled, pressing a kiss to the top of her hair.

“Quiet life with you,” he murmured again, softer this time. “Yeah. I could do that.”

Aislin looked out at the darkening lake, at Ghost hovering nearby, at Rasha curled on her blanket, at the cabin windows glowing warm behind them.

Tomorrow, they would go back.

Back to Europa. Back to Eramis. Back to Bray secrets and Darkness and whatever waited beneath the ice.

But tonight, Cayde’s arm was around her, the porch was steady beneath them, and the last of the light had not felt like an ending.

Not really.

Only a reminder.

The sun could disappear behind the mountains and still return.