#it's a beautiful day in a non-femslash-focused fandom and you are a terrible little lesbian here to cause problems on purpose

[lizzieraindrops]

Chapters: 6/6 Fandom: Destiny (Video Games) Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Eris Morn/Ikora Rey Characters: Eris Morn, Ikora Rey Additional Tags: 5+1 Things, Hello destiny sapphics; allow me to introduce myself, Femslash, if nobody is going to write the content i want to see then i will create it myself, listen. it's about perceiving the weak and wounded places in someone you love, and lavishing love and care upon them even when they won't admit they need it, it's about the Mutual Support, it's about being kind to them even when you don't know how to be kind to yourself, Light Angst, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, oh and ikora has the most Distinguished Bisexual energy i've ever seen so jot that down, it doesn't come up but you needed to know, this is all just a bunch of softness and tenderness don't @ me okay

Summary:

Five storms Eris and Ikora weathered and one they didn't need to.

The Shadowkeep weblore lives in my head rent free. Set post-Taken King and mostly during Shadowkeep.

“As I told Asher, there is a storm coming...” “Oryx is dead. We’ve weathered the storm.” Ikora is upset. She has yet to understand the bigger picture. “Yet his sisters would see his will done. There will always be another storm.” “Then let’s weather it together.” -Shadowkeep Narrative Preview #1

Many thanks to @hencegoodfortune for the beta read and of course for the memes.

Chapter: |  1  |  2  |  3  |  4  |  5  |  +1  |

Set just after The Taken King.

Eris knows she is not in the Hellmouth. Although the Tower has never felt the same since her ordeal on Luna, she recognizes it easily nonetheless. At every moment, the freshness of the open air reminds her that she is here, she is on Earth. She has been for some time now.

However, she has never forgotten how to move like a ribbon through the darkness, arcing undetected round predator and prey alike. She doubts that she ever will. Sometimes the habit returns of its own accord, and she’ll find her feet and hands floating weightless as she moves. Joints and muscle and sinew flex in careful concert to absorb every sound before it is made. The lines of lightly tensed limbs spiral seamlessly into the coiled core of her, tethering her in perfect silence. At the same time, she remains ever ready to fight, ready to flee. How often has Eris’ last, Lightless life lay along the knife’s edge of a split-second choice, the divergence between action and stillness, vengeance or survival?

Somehow, the smooth stone of the Tower’s level floors is harder to walk quietly on than the rough winding warrens through Luna’s porous rock. There are no edges to test with the edge of her boot, no uneven surface to ease her soles onto by swift and silent increments. There is only the unsubtle strike of heels on a flat, unforgiving surface. She makes the most of it, as every Hunter here does. Still, it leaves her uneasy. Her feet cannot quite keep to the ground.

Consequently, she often finds herself pacing, wandering from her post in the heart of the Tower whenever she grows restless. Every step falls lighter than the last, chasing silence in a meditation on weightlessness. It does not make her feel any better.

After so long underground, she is unaccustomed to the plenitude of open space here. While she has traced much of the Tower’s perimeters, the negative spaces in the centers of broad rooms and vaulted halls she leaves less frequented. She is too exposed there.

Yet maybe she is less affected by the empty space than the sheer number of souls that so often fill it. After so long so alone, they are simply so many, pressing at her survival-sharpened awareness from every angle. Not to mention she attracts too many of their stares in the crowded plazas. Although detection here is not followed by shrieking howls or the lightning strike of boomers, distrustful eyes still make her hunger for shelter. The choice to endure or to withdraw still needs to be be made. And whether well-meaning or ill-intentioned, a close approach still makes her instinctively recoil.

Eris has scraped out a place for herself here, lingering close enough to share with those who will listen the knowledge she has gained at a terrible price. But it has been made clear enough that she does not belong here anymore, not as she once did. If the condemnation of the Speaker and the only begrudging trust of the Vanguard’s Commander were not enough to tell her that, then the wary regard of most of the Tower’s populace would. So she holds herself back, toward the edges of things. It is difficult to do so at her station so near the Hall of Guardians, the greatest locus of Guardian activity on the planet. She draws herself to her full height and stands there proud, but never takes the ground she stands on for granted. When it becomes too much, like now, she paces.

This time, her pacing has led her to the edge of the Tower where her ship was once tethered. With how wary she has grown of exposed spaces, the open sky above that lays bare every courtyard and balcony should send her seeking cover - and yet, it does not. If anything, its incomprehensibly vast expanse calls to her. Strange.

Eris has traversed the spaces between planets with her own fragile body, with only a ship’s hull to keep the cold from swallowing what remains of her. Yet from Earth’s surface, a few mere miles of atmosphere transforms that emptiness, and its beauty holds her spellbound. It scatters sun into prismatic slices of light. The stars’ unblinking gaze softens into a flutter of eyelashes. No longer can she see the narrow spectrum of colors that humans evolved to discern; it has all faded into endless shades of the same hue. But the contrast of such brightnesses against the dark have become sharper than ever. Indeed, daylight has become a blaze to truly blind her. These stolen eyes of hers were made instead for depths and shadows.

Even so, she often finds herself staring out into the searing sky until her head aches. The sensations make her remember. She is no longer buried beneath stone, lost to this cosmos. She is free now, in some ways.

Eventually, her wanderings bring her back to the shaded refuge beneath the stairs just outside the Hall of Guardians. She is glad for this, too. Her station provides some small respite for her sensitive, ever-weeping eyes. And there she stays, until exhaustion drives her to rest, or else grief or fear or restlessness or her ever-smoldering rage drive her to pacing once again.

It’s true that many other eyes pass by that shadowed alcove of hers. Guardians constantly sweep in and out on either side of her, running and jumping and gliding up and down the stairs with urgent reports and important orders and burning questions for the Vanguard. They are so bright. Few of them spare a glance for her, these days, save for startled new Lights.

There are a few, though, who look upon her not with distrust or fear or begrudging tolerance, but with recognition. Once in a great while, cousin Asher will grace her with his inimitable company. It gladdens her heart, even when he merely stops to exchange research notes or brief insults. He cleaves to his research with a passionate vengeance, as does she. Unlike most, he pays more attention to her knowledge and her current work than her past. With the way he helped care for her in the months after her escape from Luna, she has come to hold him in close confidence.

On occasion, her friend the Guardian, who avenged her fireteam upon the very souls of Crota and Oryx, stops to greet her. Sometimes they bring her news from Luna or Mars. Words are few with that one lately, though. These days, their outgoing ghost is the one who relays whatever tidings they carry. The change leaves a cold shadow over Eris’ heart. Therefore, she values their quiet presence all the more. She fears for them.

Of course, Ikora’s is the kind regard she is subject to most often. Eris has never forgotten that Ikora believed her since the beginning. Most met her genuine warnings of inbound danger from the Hive with distrust, dismissal, or fear. Ikora not only listened, but met her with endless kindness. Even now, as the Warlock Vanguard steps into nearer chamber of the Hall for a brief consultation with Lord Shaxx, she spares a moment and a smile for Eris.

Ikora’s smile has always been warm and real and reassuring, a balm on the fibers of frayed nerves. Among the very few who welcomed Eris back to Earth, that smile was a signal of genuine care and safety that she homed in on immediately. The one directed at Eris now is subtle, a mere quirk of the lips. Yet it hints at the vast depths of passion and compassion below the surface, like a ripple that disappears swiftly on the surface of a deep, deep pool.

Ikora’s outward cool composure that obscures that intensity is not a façade. It is more an ingenius piece of architecture, a mighty aqueduct capable of holding and channelling the endless font of her inner immensities. It is an elegant and functional work of art well-kept and expanded over centuries.

The warmth that must be behind such a small yet genuine smile is palpable; it falls on Eris like the creeping warmth of sunlight, sinking in deep even though it scarcely touches her skin. Even the lower half of her face, where her many layers do not shield her from long-lost Sol, is still sallow and nearly as grayed as the dust of Luna. She hadn’t known at first, with the changes to her vision, not until Asher had told her. He never does shy away from the speaking of truth. In those endless years of darkness, the lack of light and loss of Light took something from Eris, sapped something vital, and left something strange in its place.

Yet Eris can feel the sun again, now. She can walk out into the courtyard at any time of day, find a south-facing wall to lean on, and bask in the radiating warmth like an ectothermic reptile.

Even without leaving the cool shadows of her post, another warmth still reaches her. Ikora offers her one more smile as she goes to return to her own station. Eris stands a little taller under the aegis of her regard, her spine the stem of a sunflower lifting her toward its steady kindness.

Eris takes not a single one of these boons for granted. Each one is a precious gift far beyond what she ever expected to experience again, after her descent into the Hellmouth. Yet none of it can quell her restlessness, for it springs from the same source as her gratefulness. It always comes back to what happened to her on Luna.

Each time she returns to her pacing, the Tower feels a little smaller. The scope of the sky distracts her for a shorter time. Now, even after her sworn vengeance upon the Hive has been fulfilled twice over in double deicide, the path of her vow still pulls her feet forward. She does not know where its shrouded course leads, only that there is still a threat yet to be met along it. More and more, she is certain that she cannot wait here to meet it, or it will be too late.

However, she never expected to leave behind wounds when she leaves. After she departs to sight the next storm on the horizon, she is haunted as often by the surprised hurt that she left in Ikora’s eyes as by the memory of her smile.