#Jenev Furnon

[phthalology]

(Ikora Week Day 6: Favorite Ship [Ikora/Guardian])

Jenev couldn’t get Ikora to stop thinking. She had to accept that, in order to calm Ikora such as she could.

Jenev had made herself beautiful on the couch in Ikora’s office, so that when the Vanguard entered tired and dusty Ikora could sink easily against Jenev’s clean skin.

At last Ikora opened her mind and let Jenev hear the mutterings there, the fears and terrible waiting. Through this sharing, Ikora’s body at last relaxed. Jenev, burdened as she was by the strange Warlock murmur like lips right against the gray matter of her brain, busied herself. She tipped her face to Ikora’s lips. Ikora’s gaze softened on the Awoken light slipping in and out of Jenev’s mouth. Ikora’s eyes mismatched her face, sometimes: a youthful vulnerability there belied her ancient age, her muscled body.

Jenev took Ikora’s hand and stroked. The tiny webs of skin between Ikora’s fingers were dry. Up Ikora’s wrist Jenev traced a vein raised against muscle.

Ikora let Jenev lead, simply falling limp against her in unusual surrender. Jenev toyed with the Vanguard’s hands, tracing the mysterious spirals and circles that were Ikora’s stock in trade. The mental mutterings slowed down, differentiated into vulnerable little phrases: the enemy is too strong. zavala cannot help us. was I ever really chosen by the traveler?

Finally, after too much of that, Jenev eased her lips against Ikora’s. Limp as she was Ikora’s mouth parted for her effortlessly, barely a return kiss but an easy openness. smooth. hot like summer sun. she tastes like honey and egregore.

Better. The lips against Jenev’s brain matter pressed a strange kiss there too.

[phthalology]

Your post about Drifter/Young Wolf being the OC/Canon of all time is rattling around my brain for eternity!! So I'll drop that into the ask game mill

Let me just get in my Time Machine and turn this dial to 2018 real quick.

Ship It

What made you ship it?

I just think he’s attractive, it’s not complicated

What are your favorite things about the ship?

(Makes it complicated) It’s the perfect safe transgression, right? The Drifter promises the Guardian that they’re doing something bad. That no one needs to see what goes on in Gambit or in the Derelict. It’s all an elaborate double cross, a veneer of good under a veneer of evil under a veneer of good. And it’s kinda perfect for a Guardian who doesn’t care that much about Destiny The Game, as I believe Drifter does not. Genuinely, Drifter helped me explore kinds of relationships I’d never considered before.

Is there an unpopular opinion you have on your ship?

Drifter isn’t touch starved and isn’t interested in exclusive relationships. Please recall it is the year 2018.

[phthalology]

the only world I can think of where Jenev becomes a vendor is a world where Drifter leaves or dies, and therefore the Gambit announcer/vendor job opens up, which is … well, that could be an AU

[phthalology]

29 for the writer ask game? :)

29. Share a bit from a fic you’ll never post OR from a scene that was cut from an already posted fic. (If you don’t have either, just share a random fic idea you have that you don’t plan on getting to.) :) drifter polycule real

I do love him. For Jenev, it’s a terrible realization. She lays comfortably beside the Drifter, pleasantly warm. Guile’s tail rests over her stomach and Drifter’s back. The Exo is turned toward Jenev and Drifter in his own bed, Atsena’s plump arms encircling Guile's chest. Jenev has different flavors of want for all of them: Atsena’s hands, Guile’s synthetic muscle, Drifter’s showman voice. She admires the marriage Guile and Atsena have, but doesn’t want it for herself. Still, she wants to stay with Drifter, and that means something. She doesn’t overthink it.

[phthalology]

Jenev doesn't identify as an Awoken so much as a citizen of Earth. It's the place she was resurrected, it's the place she remembers, it's comfortable and the air is breathable and food comes out of the ground. So the Pyramids arriving makes her want to quite literally go to ground, to pick a patch of dirt and defend that specifically. But I'd probably need to write the fic to find out where she is, physically, during the invasion

[phthalology]

I'm not sure it's actually in-character for Ikora, but if she managed to let Jenev comfort her they might actually have a pretty healthy dynamic post-Lightfall. Jenev is chronically unruffled by perpetual interstellar war and wouldn't engage with Ikora's attempt to philosophize. She'd just offer distraction and demonstrate how to relax and, at this point, not even really worry about what the two of them are to each other. Jenev has come full circle back to being a fantasy of a person who is chill

[phthalology]

Commissions from @spindlewit of a couple space wizards! I've loved their art for a while and they did a great job on these.

[phthalology]

When the Drifter doesn’t want to be found, you don’t find him.

Except that it’s been mere hours and Guardians are already complaining. Gambit bounties are laying fallow, training hours are being rearranged. No, it’s not as much of a fuss as if the Crucible disappeared, but it isn’t fun. So Ikora goes, unties shield-knots and ignores her Ghost’s dearly spoken warnings and breaks into the Derelict.

It isn’t easy, but by the time she reaches the cargo container, she has no compunctions about simply blasting the lock off. He probably won’t even be in there, he’s probably lit out for Pluto just in time for the Witch Queen to appear behind Ikora’s back —

Except he is in there, food wrappers and books strewn about the bed on which Drifter sits furiously turning pages. He has wrapped a thick, moth-eaten black blanket over his legs along with his usual jacket and gear, as if he’s cold even under all of it.

Quietly he says, “You broke into my house.” There’s some threat and some exhaustion in the low words.

“The Witch Queen is at the front door, and there is a line of Guardians asking me about why Gambit isn’t running today.” Maybe Ikora should have tried out Gambit more herself. She could do with burning some more. Taking some shots, feeling the kick. Open her wings and feel the Solar wind direct her, feel bullets miss as she finds an impossible angle. It’s been a long time since a Vanguard took the Crucible, and she misses —

“Done with restraint, huh?” Drifter looks up with that too-bright stare.

“Don’t you dare tell me to try Gambit when you’re gone — ”

“Oh, you think this is gone?" Drifter says. "You think LEO is gone? I haven’t left out of the sweetness of my cochlea. Just doing some reading for a minute. I never said I’d work 24/7.”

“With no explanation?”

“Well, I’ve been — ”

Ikora senses the incoming transmat, turns with her hand in a fist. Out of the air shimmers Jenev Furnon, Dredgen, who sways forward before all her atoms have hardly been sorted.

“Hey, what the, I’ve been trying to — ” Jenev starts.

“Ah,” Drifter says, and his shoulders and his arms sink until he’s small.

At the tone of his voice, Jenev skids to a stop, Awoken eyes glancing between Ikora and Drifter.

“Ain’t nobody gives time around here,” Drifter complains, eyes on the book again. “I’ll be back soon as I take a pill. Got some kind of disease. You do not want to look at it, sister.”

Jenev sticks out her tongue. “I bet not, but I gotta know what to tell the guys and gals, boss. We opening up today?”

Drifter’s sigh starts out sarcastic and ends up tired. “Yes. Maybe. Soon.”

Jenev toys with her jade pendant, and her mood in the Light is one part anxious and two parts worry. She wants to know whether he’s okay, and he wants to tell her, and neither of them talk like that much.

“I’ll leave you alone,” Ikora says softly. “But get somebody in front of Gambit within the hour, or I’ll send the masses your personal net number.”

“Wait.” Drifter fishes around on the bed. “Jenev. Give this to her.” He comes up with a finger-length feather, iridescent jade and violet.

Ikora’s stomach drops even before the Dredgen shoves Ikora’s shoulder on her way to take it. Jenev looks at the feather with wide eyes, from the open books and scattered pages to the red-and-gold broad wings folded at Ikora’s back. Her lips open and close, and Ikora wants to hurry her up. We all know what it means. But give it some time. It always takes everyone time, especially …

“No,” Jenev says, but hands the feather to Ikora with a sleepy detachment. Takes a deep breath that could presage a laugh or a sob.

Ikora takes it, but she doesn’t hardly have to look at it either. “I’m glad,” she says, “that you didn’t really run.”

“Not yet,” Drifter growls.

Softly, Ikora says, “It would be okay.” Forget Gambit. “Most of them run, at first.”

[phthalology]

Jenev traced the silver light of the Milky Way to the treeline, then followed it down to the blue glow of her Ghost’s eye.

A sliver of setting sun lit the forest and the galactic arm in blue and pink. The patrol had been quiet, the weather lovely. Jenev didn’t even plan to set a fire in the grassy clearing overnight, trusting her Ghost and her own senses. A Hunter could filter out the birdsong and leaf-rustle to hear the particular flatness of a human foot, to hear the sharp-edged snap of false wind transmat made. Tomorrow, if she hiked hard, she could have enough time to wash the smell of the trail off at home and be in a Tower nightclub by the time crowds formed.

Iris looked up from her book as if sensing the attention. “You know I love you, right?” 

Jenev was cutting meat off bone. “And? Usually, when people say it like that, they follow it with one of those hard truths nobody likes.”

To her credit, Iris didn’t ask why Jenev found the affection suspicious.

What do you think I did wrong today? Siding with the Drifter? Taking money from two-bit smugglers? Trafficking egregore? 

One of the Ghost’s flanges rose. “No. Nothing else.”

“So why now?”

“Because the night is beautiful,” Iris said. “And I think we can agree on that.”

“We can,” said Jenev, and liked that she meant it. It was a small thing. When it came to things she had in common with her Ghost, she would take what she could get. 

[phthalology]

Savathûn is not in this story.

The room that once held her is. Ikora and Mara stand in a room half-abandoned. Where Mara is going, Ikora genuinely does not know. The Awoken queen has her own spies, and techeuns besides. Best to let allies keep some secrets, although there are some Awoken Guardians who are also Distributary-born, and this has its uses. Not even all of those know what role they play.

Mara is packing up.

“Some people think you plan to swallow that worm,” Ikora says.

“Would this fit your impression of me? Am I such a snake, that I would unhinge my jaw?” Mara says.

“The Taken King’s corpse-ship still floats in your orbit. Would you become him?”

Mara’s pale lip curls. She looks pale all around, Ikora thinks, inter-dimensional intrigue finally putting a strain on her face. So, even the glamour of Awoken can fade.

“We have barely scratched the surface of how ruined the Hive were by their pact,” Mara says. “Do not think me so power-blind as to enter into one so quickly. I have other plans for the worm. Eris Morn taught me much of weapon crafting.”

That implication delights Ikora, despite herself. She is still a Crucible Guardian, and Eris does specialize in zombie armament, guns with a scrap of life.

Mara can see her relief. Gives a tight smile. “Oh, spy master, do not let me charm you.”

“I hadn’t.” Ikora thinks of saying our enemies can make beautiful weapons or you do have a knack for compliments and insults in one. But I am a diplomat, and if Zavala can keep peace with Caiatl, I can keep peace with the sovereign who has held territory in our planetary next-door yard for as long as I have lived. So she says nothing, and considers that victory.

“One more thing you can trust unquestionably about me, Vanguard,” says Mara Sov. “I certainly do not need a sister.” (AKA OC & Eris & Ikora reaction fic about The Witch Queen's many spies.)

[phthalology]

Kass walks into the Pyramid like the hero into the dark lord's fortress, fresh off reconciling her own philosophy with using the Darkness, while Jenev, tired of being in the throne world, simply wipes the mud off her feet at the edge of the swamp and goes home

[phthalology]

I continue to be a little bit frustrated by D2's attempts at moral dilemmas specifically as they relate to my characters because ... Kass would simply not use the Darkness except in extreme need. (It doesn't really matter what my fan 'canon' timeline is for Beyond Light, but I imagine her as doing that stuff and then just ... leaving Stasis there, as if it's a matter only for Europa.)

Jenev, on the other hand, uses the Darkness utterly without interest in the moral aspect. It's a cool tool and she's there for loot. I realize of all the traits I've given her that are intentionally opposite of most of my characters, she does have the "sense of place" thing, would be more disturbed by the fact that Savathun's throne world looks eerily like Earth. (Sav isn't menacing Earth now, but if she did ... ?)

Neither of them really have a moral dilemma per se, and I'm not going to engineer one to make a better story. But it probably would be a better story.

[phthalology]

I have old headcanon that Jenev staged a distraction while Drifter stole a bunch of contraband from Spider once, so them rescuing Spider at the beginning of this season would be very funny

[phthalology]

The more I write Jenev the more I'm tempted to put in something about Deep Fear of Loneliness or Fear of Responsibility or something but the whole point of this character is to be the fantasy of a generally happy person who feels fulfilled by her physical relationships and who sees indulgence as its own reward; she's supposed to be a sparkle OC on purpose

[phthalology]

“Why are you still here?” Jenev asks one day after the Eliksni quarter has nearly burned down.

The Drifter sits balanced on the railing beside the prototype bank. “Pleasure of your company.”

“Seriously.” She vaults up beside him. “I know you want Orin back. But I also know you want to live through whatever’s coming. And I think Savathûn’s coming.”

“You want to leave?” He looks at her with an unusual level of seriousness, then digs his canine tooth into his lip, nervous.

“No,” she says, and watches his expression reverse back to wolfish ease. “I want to see what happens. They say Savathûn’s song is infiltrating us, becoming more subtle. Maybe that’s true. And I want to protect Earth. It’s the only one we’ve got.”

“The thing is, Savathûn insists she’s a liar. You might need a liar to catch one. But, at the same time, I think she’s calling her own bluff and trying to make it a tall tale. Not hiding her truth nearly far enough under the lies.”

“So that’s why you’re sticking around? To see a lesser liar at work?” Jenev teases.

He laughs. “No.”

“I didn’t think so. You aren’t hiding your long con that far either.”

“How’s that, sister?”

“You won’t leave until the Earth is charred. Afterward, yeah. You won’t turn around and save what looks like it can’t be saved. But you’ll sidle up real close to the edge of the ending, because you’re curious. Like me.”

“A liar and an engineer. You remember what Savathûn’s Song was the first time we heard that name. Her batteries, those crystals what packaged Guardian souls up in a neat little lattice. I could use one of those. Hey, maybe that’s the universal end game. If the Traveler and the Winnower want an answer to their question of what lasts, what lives when the other thing don’t, those unused batteries might be the closest we ever really get to preserving ourselves.”

“It’s not a question of what lasts. It’s a question of who wins. Who’s right.”

“That’s what I said,” says the Drifter.

Jenev runs her hand through her short-cropped hair, trying to remember books and conversations that didn’t matter to her as much as a pine needle bed or the icy spray from a waterfall. “And if you hear that song, I might as well hear it, too.”

Is that loyalty or laziness? She doesn’t know. But she trusts her instincts for feeling out the lesser liar. And feels a heaviness in her chest when she thinks of staying with him for an end of the world he always expected to see.

[phthalology]

3, 23, 30?

3. Describe your writing style

I try for tight, thoughtful and with a good sense of space. I'm inspired by what's being published in general SF/F and tie-in books, not YA or (with notable exceptions) other fanfics.

23. Dialogue or description? Why is the other so hard?

Description! Because I'm a Star Wars fan. Ain't much there to teach realistic or meandering dialogue. This is facetious, but having been watching a lot of Trek lately and wondering how my dialogue might have been different had I been raised on that, it has been funny.

30. Describe a fic that almost happened, then didn't.

The Jenev backstory fic! I have a loose outline for a novel-length thing that would have explained her pre-resurrection backstory. It had cool section titles (one of them was "Railway.") However, it just never had enough plot or even a smidgen of wide appeal for me to go further with it. Now, I've removed all that stuff from her "canon." So there's no real reason to ever consider working on it again.