#

The first time that Ikora Rey met Shun Li, she wondered if she might have to kill him.

She didn’t know him, then. She was undercover in the Last City on behalf of Osiris—or rather, the orders that Osiris surely would have given, if he were not too consumed by his theories of the Vex—tracking down a black market where certain unscrupulous Guardians sold forbidden artifacts.

Shun was also undercover, hunting the same criminals on behalf of Owl Sector. But Ikora didn’t know that when they arrived at the same door. She only knew that he was using almost identical forged credentials. For a few seconds, she wondered what kind of criminal he was, and if she would have to dispose of him.

Then Shun—who knew her, despite her disguise, from watching a thousand Crucible matches—smiled at the doorkeeper and lied, saying that the confusion in the paperwork was simply due to them being newly married.

In time, Ikora would come to know many of Shun’s faults, but she would always have to give him this: he never hesitated.

#

Io is silent.

The whole solar system is silent to Ikora now. As Warlock Vanguard, Ikora was constantly aware of the thoughts of other Warlocks, the flow of Light between all Guardians. She felt, endlessly, the song of the Traveler and the whispers of the Void.

Ghaul ended that.

Crippled, broken, diminished—her Ghost unable to do more than whisper—Ikora fled to Io, hoping for . . . wisdom, perhaps. Answers.

Hope.

What she finds is dark skies and silence, the absence of the Light. What she finds is guilt.

Because, stripped of the Traveler’s power, with only one life left to lose . . . Ikora is afraid. She is terribly, terribly afraid of dying her final death.

She wonders if she always has been.

#

It took only a few muttered words for Shun and Ikora to realize they were on the same mission. But completing that mission took much longer.

One night turned into a week, and one week turned into three. They successfully bought eight fragments of Ahamkara bones, but it was always through a dealer. The Guardian (or Guardians) who supplied them did not appear.

In the meantime, Ikora and Shun—in their false identities—became familiar to the black market. They noticed people trying to follow them after they left, to see where they lived.

The logical answer was to make the deception complete. Shun rented the apartment; Ikora could not spend all her time there, given her duties as a Warlock, but she was present as often as she could be. Her cover demanded it. Shun cooked for her, and played an arcophone in the evenings.

It was . . . not unpleasant. Ikora had never had any patience for the civilians who groveled at her feet, but Shun was refreshingly free of such reverence. He was no part, either, of the increasingly fractured Tower: the suspicions about Osiris, the whispers against the Speaker, the worship of both. Sometimes he could be infuriatingly glib, but he had a glittering, eager curiosity almost worthy of a Warlock.

Ikora began to look forward to the time she spent with him, haggling in the black market, betting in illegal games, working out their next move in the investigation. The pressure of his hand clasped about hers ceased to be troublesome and became a comfort.

Then came the fragrant, candle-lit midsummer night when they finally were finally allowed to enter the secret courtyard. When they saw a Guardian—his Ghost bobbing dumbly, hopelessly by his shoulder—hold up Ahamkara bones and offer them to the highest bidder.

Ikora drew a gentle breath and reached inside her coat to cock Invective.

Shun cocked his head, grinned, and grasped his knives.

They both fought in the melee that followed. Shun would have expected no less of Ikora, and she would have demanded no less of him. In the end, the rogue Guardian’s brains were splattered against the wall, his Ghost was in Ikora’s palm, and all the details of what transpired where in Shun Li’s report.

They did not return home at once afterwards—not to the Tower, or Owl Sector, or even their false home. Instead they wandered the City, punch-drunk with adrenaline and success and glory. At two in the morning, they were giggling over ramen together; she called him simply “Shun,” and he called her “Korrie.”

Very, very late that night—or absurdly early that morning—they stumbled into their rented apartment together. They grasped, briefly, at each other’s elbows. Lips found lips, and for one moment as they kissed, the only Light that mattered was what crackled between their bodies.

Then they fell into bed and slept curled around each other, as innocent as kittens.

When they woke, they both remembered their duties, and they didn’t speak of what had passed in the night. At least, not exactly. But after they had both made their reports to the Vanguard and been commended, after they were standing together in the Tower courtyard and were the closest thing to a simple Shun and Ikora that could be imagined in daylight—

Then, beneath the shade of a potted tree, Shun turned to Ikora.

“You know,” he said, “there’s an old City law. If two people call themselves married for at least a month, it’s legal.”

The look he slanted at her was bold and hesitant at once. And Ikora, for one moment, imagined responding in kind.

But she was the Traveler’s chosen, destined to live forever, or else to die in horrifying agony when the Darkness overcame her. Shun was simply, helplessly mortal, no matter how much he had aided and comforted her these past few weeks.

Ikora told him as much. And in the end, he accepted her decree.

#

“It’s time I rejoined my fireteam,” says Ikora to the Guardian, gazing up at the dark-and-glowing skies of Io as she readies herself to die.

She has died a hundred deaths at least, maybe more. All those lives, spent so easily—and for what? For her to cower in the shadows, now that she has only one life remaining to lose?

No. Ikora will fight Ghaul, and she will likely die, but as she stares past Io’s horizon, she knows: she will not be defeated again.

(Not like when she was defeated by the Transmission Crisis, not like she was defeated when—)

#

The last time that Ikora saw Shun, he was wrapped inside the clumsy, padded bulk of an isolation rig as he brought her records containing the dark side of Clovis Bray. The rig was nothing like the simple helmet and gloves that Guardians wore even in hard vacuum. Ikora could see only his eyes through the face-plate, and they were . . . tired.

The last time she heard him was through the comms, as he spoke to her from the hospital.

“Restricted leave?” she asked numbly. “What did you do?”

He sighed. “Forgot to put on part of the isolation rig. Too tired. I can't remember yesterday at all. Ramos will take over the duties of Liaison to the Vanguard. You treat her nice, okay? She's nervous.”

Ikora remembered his hand on her shoulder. His mouth against hers. The thousand words that had never seemed quite right to say.

“You,” she said, “rest well.”

She could almost see the smile in his voice as he said, “I will.”

#

“There will be no coming back,” says Ikora to her fireteam, to all her doubts and fears.

“It’s worth it,” says Cayde-6, fearless as ever.

C’mon, Korrie, Shun whispers in her memories, and in her heart, Ikora agrees.

#

The people of the City spoke as if death were only sleeping; they said that their dead “rested in peace.” But Ikora knew it was not so. She had died, and found only dark loneliness. She had lived, and found the ones she cared for gone.

She remembered, over and over, her fatal conversation with Acting Liaison Ramos:

The Hidden, the Witches, and our research corps may have had a breakthrough, using the information that Berriole has unearthed. We think we can neutralize this mite. The only problem is, we might kill Shun in the process.

Are you waiting for permission?

It seemed respectful to ask.

Do it, and the Traveler's Light shine on you.

But the Traveler’s Light, perhaps, was only for Guardians. The experimental treatment cobbled together so quickly and desperately . . . did not work for anyone still human. The Guardians infected with the Mite were set free. But Shun, cold in his coffin, paid the price.

Ikora, standing in a Tower that now felt strangely empty, tithed on that price over and over.

#

Ghaul has been dead for months, the Traveller and the Guardians restored for that much time as well. Ikora has found a courage that she didn’t fully own before, and it straightens her spine as she stands at her place in the Tower.

Sometimes she remembers Shun Li. Sometimes she mourns him, and wishes he could have been more to her. But Ikora is a Warlock, both the question and the answer. Whatever remains unfinished in her, she will find a way to complete.

At last there comes a day—the air is sweet and lazy with summer—when Ikora stands in the Tower, hands clasped behind her back, and almost does not mourn. Almost, she is at peace.

Five new Guardians have already been raised since Ghaul’s defeat, so Ikora no longer fears that the power of the Traveler is somehow spent. When she hears that a newly-raised Warlock has come to the Tower, she nods and says calmly, “Show him in.”

She will help this new Warlock. It’s her duty and her joy, for which she once abandoned Shun, and she still hasn’t lost that prize.

But when Ikora turns to him, her breath stops in her throat. Because the ragged cloak of a newly-raised Warlock is familiar, and so is the plain shell of the Ghost at his side, but the Guardian himself—

It’s Shun.

Ikora has never believed that the Light and the Traveler have any kindly purpose in whom they raise as Guardians, but maybe now she does.

Maybe it’s time for her to stop being surprised by what mere mortals can do.

“So I hear I’m a . . . ‘Guardian’?” he says, and there’s so much missing from his curious gaze that doesn’t recognize her, but there’s so much she loves and knows still there. “Don’t remember my name, though.”

Quist huffs out a breath. His hands remain steady on his rifle—he's the only one of them who actually knows how to shoot a gun—as he says, "You won't get good grades for stealing a ship from Tower and breaking who knows how many regulations to visit a Crucible arena on Venus."

"And yet," says Beriole, "you're here with us."

"I'm just trying to keep you two Shank-chasing idiots alive," Quist grumbles.

"C'mon, look on the bright side," says Shun, daring to stick his head out for a peek over the nearby ledge.

"What bright side?"

"Ikora might be here?"

"That's only a bright side for you, you cleft of the Tra—"

"Language," Beriole mutters, and then gasps, "Quist! Look!"

"I'll look when I'm— Oh." Quist's rifle lowers as he stares. "That's—"

"—Golden Age cryptography," Beriole gloats.

The two of them huddle together over her notes and the symbols she's scraped clean of moss on the wall. Shun, standing beside them, says, "I guess I'll keep watch, then."

They both ignore him.

Shun is used to that (from his friends, and also his family). Right now, he doesn't care. He's too entranced by Venus: the strange, salt-sweet smell of the air. The very slight, dream-like difference in the gravity. The strange way the sunset light feels like a rainbow.

Ikora has fought here. He has watched her in a hundred matches, and now he wonders if she loved the foreign taste of the air the way he does, or if it was nothing to her, she who has lived centuries and feels the Light of the Traveler in her veins.

He has a friend who has a cousin whose brother-in-law's friend had a sister. The sister died, and was raised as a Guardian.

She visited them a few times, Shun has heard from his friend's cousin's brother-in-law's friend. But she did not like to come back, and soon she stopped. She did not want to be reminded of what she once was—because no Guardian can ever remember the life she had before she died—

It has occurred to Shun, before now, that it's possible he might become a Guardian. But now, when he finally stands in a place where Guardians battle and kill each other, he glances back over his shoulder at his mortal friends.

He doesn't want to forget them.

He doesn't want to forget Ikora.

As he thinks that, he hears a gun cock behind his ear. He turns, and sees—

Ikora. Leveling Invective at his neck.

For the following decade, Shun will regret the words he says next:

"Hey, Korrie."

"It could have been worse," says Berriole, clutching her notebook to her chest.

"You're right," says Quist. "We could have been cut into pieces and fed to the Hive."

"Probably easier to feed us to the Fallen," says Shun, looking out at the gleam of the City beneath them. They're standing in the courtyard of the Tower, after an extremely painful talk with the Vanguard.

Tomorrow they have to report for their orientation as new members of Owl Sector. Apparently the penalty for stealing one of the Vanguard's ships and trespassing on the Vanguard's Crucible is . . . to join the organization that protects the Vanguard.

It's what Shun has wanted for a long time: to serve and to protect the Guardians. But he can't think about them right now. He can't think about the pale, gleaming hulk of the Traveler overhead, either.

All he can think of is Ikora Rey, dragging him and his friends away from Venus. There was a moment when she looked over her shoulder and said, Trespassing in the Crucible? You could have died.

We could have come back as Guardians, Shun had said.

And there was a curious to solemnity to Ikora as she replied, That is not always a blessing.