#osiris is on his last life but their duties to the city have separated them again | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

dngrs-untld-hrshps-unnmbrd · 7 years

Text

Before the Fall (Pt 1)

Destiny fic. A Dead Orbit scavenger is resurrected as a Guardian hundreds of cycles after her death but can remember everything from her old life. While she struggles to understand why another new Guardian brings back memories of a time Zavala wishes he could forget.

Set in two time periods: during the events of Destiny pre-Red Legion and just before the Battle of Six Fronts.

Author’s Note

Bear with me, I know this first chapter and author’s note are long. Future installments will be pithier.

This is a companion story to After the Fall but can be read as a standalone. It features my OCs Andara, an Awoken Voidwalker Warlock, and Piax, a human Sunbreaker Titan. It’s primarily Andara’s story but will feature chapters in Piax’s POV (point of view) exploring her early days of being a Guardian and why she’s so devoted to Zavala. It will also explore a lot of Zavala’s back story through his POV, including his romantic history. Because I’m allergic to stories without kissing.

OK, so, the lore. This is probably the longest Author’s Note I’ve ever written! Thanks Destiny for your confusing, vague lore XD For those interested, I’ll set out what we know that’s relevant to this story as well as the assumptions I’ve made.

You can totally skip this and start the story if you prefer. I’ll explain things in the story as I go along.

This fic is set during what I’ll call the Early City Age, just before the Battle of Six Fronts, and the Late City Age, just before the Red Legion Attack in D2. Six Fronts was the first big battle to defend the Last City and marked a turning point in the way the City was run. (In Zavala’s Origins trailer it’s the battle he, Shaxx and Saladin are street-fighting in.)

At the time of the Battle of Six Fronts, the Last City was at the mercy of the Faction Wars, there was no Consensus and it seems the Vanguard didn’t exist as it did today. The Wall had been built by the Titans. The Iron Lords were probably already dead so there was a power vacuum in the Last City.

One assumption I’m making is that the Exo Titan Saint-14 and Lord Saladin worked with the Speaker to govern the Last City, but in some sort of unofficial capacity. Saint-14 must have been in an important leadership role because after Six Fronts he vouches for the Warlock Osiris’s elevation to Vanguard Leader.

Another assumption is that because Saladin mentored Zavala and Shaxx and the early days of the Last City were kind of YAY TITANS, Saladin brought his boys into important discussions and decisions. This is long before the rift between Saladin and Shaxx, which happened after Twilight Gap.

The Crucible was founded after Twilight Gap but as Guardians love to fight each other I’ve made up a thing called Skirmishes. Shaxx runs these and they function in a similar but scaled down way to the Crucible.

Thank you to @littleshebear for letting me use her Zavala/Lyssa the Lighthearted relationship headcanons, and for all our endless discussions about lore and the Vanguard and Guardians. Lyssa is a real character in the grimoire, a Sunsinger Warlock like Osiris.

Tl;dr?

Early City Age = the City has a Wall and the Guardians are just starting to venture out beyond it

Late City Age = the setting of Destiny the game

Chapter One

Master Rahool, Late City Age

The little silver Ghost lay silently on the table where the Cryptarch had left it. A Hunter had brought it in a few hours earlier along with a stack of engrams that she’d found on Mercury.

Couldn’t revive it. Looked like it had been there for years, almost buried by a broken Vex gateway. Think you can fix it?

Now he had a few minutes to spare Rahool picked up the Ghost and examined it. Could he? Sometimes he performed maintenance on Ghosts that had received knocks on the battlefield, but they were more cosmetic adjustments. This Ghost could be beyond help, drained of Light and unable to seek out the Guardian it had once belonged to. He or she could be long dead, or perhaps the Ghost had never even found them.

There was a lot of gunk in its seams and Rahool worked at them with a thin silver tool. The Ghost was starting to look clean, but still very dead, when suddenly it lit up and made a whirring noise.

‘Ah, so you’re not dead. How long have you been sleeping?’

The Ghost began spinning urgently and a moment later shot out of his hands. Rahool watched it zoom across the courtyard and then over the Tower railings and out of sight.

He laid down his silver tool and smiled to himself. ‘Goodbye, Little Light. Looks like you’ve got someplace to be.’

Zavala, Early City Age

Twilight was descending and the gates were being readied for closure. The Wall cast its long shadow over the Last City, a sprawling thing of low stone buildings and wooden huts. The Traveler hung in the sky, bright white and silent.

Zavala remembered when the Last City was merely a motley collection of tents and had no Wall to protect it. That they’d managed to cling on in those early days was a miracle. With the Wall to protect them and new Guardians arriving in the City almost every day they could only grow stronger. There was hard work ahead of them and there was hope, and he found himself welcoming both equally.

A pulse rifle in his hands and a stack of other weapons on a trestle table before him, Zavala watched the thin stream of Guardians returning from the Cosmodrome. Two Titans, laughing loudly with their helmets under their arms, greeted Zavala before heading for the Guardians’ Hall behind him.

He’d be out there himself tomorrow but today he had duties for Saint-14, attending to the stockpile of new weapons that the Faction scavengers had traded with them. In the last few years they’d begun venturing outside the Wall, the Guardians clearing out enclaves of Fallen while the Factions looked for supplies.

A slight figure in black armour streaked past Zavala, pulled one of the Titans round and punched him in the face. He reeled, and blood began pouring down his chin. The scavenger started screaming at both of them.

‘How could you? Do you even understand what you’ve done? We’ll never be able to replace the tech that you –’

The bigger Titan, the one who hadn’t been punched, narrowed his eyes and reached for his gun.

Zavala threw down the pulse rifle he was holding and lunged for the Guardian’s arm. He didn’t recognise this woman but she wore a Dead Orbit insignia on her chest plate. If they shot her she would stay fatally, permanently dead. There were already enough tensions between the Factions and the Guardians and the last thing the Speaker needed was a murdered scavenger.

‘Hey. Hey. That’s enough,’ he called, trying to be heard over her screaming. But she wasn’t listening to him and a crowd was gathering.

Turning to the bigger Titan he said, ‘Go and report in to Saint-14. Both of you. Now.’ The Titan with the bloodied lip needed some persuading but finally the two of them headed into the hall.

The woman tried to follow them, still shouting, but Zavala hooked an arm about her waist and pulled her back. ‘No you don’t. I want a word with you.’

She was like him, an Awoken, with knotted purple hair and dusty black armour. A bag was slung over her shoulders and inside he could see it was stuffed with Golden Age tech. Good tech. Things the City needed. There was an auto-rifle holstered on her back and a knife at her hip, though even in anger she hadn’t drawn them. She didn’t want to fight, she wanted to be heard.

‘Want to tell me what that was about?’ Over his shoulder he could sense onlookers, but ignored them.

The Awoken finally seemed to realise he was there and spoke in a tight voice, her fists clenching. ‘I spent two hours clearing all the Fallen off a Warsat and those … those knuckleheads jumped in and destroyed it. I want to fucking kill them.’

A Warsat. They were precious to Dead Orbit and their mission to get a fleet off the ground. The Guardians needed them too if they were ever to reconnect a communications network. At the moment they were living blind and that was dangerous.

‘It’s a terrible waste. But things happen in the field –’

‘They destroyed it on purpose.’

Zavala pressed his lips together. They wouldn’t have. Would they? ‘If that’s true then it’s unforgivable. I’m sorry.’

‘It is true.’

Then I’m going to need to talk to Saint-14 and Saladin about this. The chain of command between the Speaker and the Factions and Guardians was blurred with all groups feeling like they knew what was best for the City, but if Titans had screwed up then it was clear what needed to be done.

He reached for his datapad. ‘One of the Hunters came back to the City with a suspected Warsat sighting yesterday. I know it won’t make up for the time you spent on the other one, but it’s something.’

It was quite a lot, actually. They could have swapped this intel with the factions for more weapons or tech.

She examined the coordinates, her expression tight but mollified. ‘I know the place. Thank you.’

‘Be careful. That place is infested with Fallen.’

But the young woman was already striding away, her hand tight around her bag strap. ‘I can handle myself. You handle those numb-nuts.’

Zavala grimaced. Something to look forward to. If he had his way he’d send the two Titans who’d destroyed the Warsat with the scavenger to help her get the new one, but Saint-14 was wary of getting too involved with the Factions. They do their thing and we do ours, and keep our people strictly separate lest we start bleeding Guardians to their causes.

It was true that the Factions’ aims were vastly different theirs, and each others, but they had to think in terms of the next few hundred cycles. Pushing back the Fallen from the Cosmodrome, getting airborne again and protecting this City was going to take everyone’s efforts, no matter their loyalties.

He turned back to the pile of weapons and saw that the cluster of onlookers had dispersed except for an exceptionally large Titan and a Warlock in canary yellow robes. Shaxx and Lyssa the Lighthearted. Lyssa was looking at Zavala with the smallest of smiles on her lips.

Shaxx watched the scavenger disappear into a side street on the far side of the square. ‘That was a good punch she threw. Shame she’s fallen in with those scrounging bastards.’

Traveler’s light, he was getting sick of this sort of talk. ‘We need Dead Orbit. The supplies they bring in are helping the City get off the ground. We don’t have time to scavenge ourselves.’ And if the scavengers were willing to risk their one life in the Cosmodrome they deserved respect for that, at the very least.

‘Not far enough off the ground for them though, is it?’ Shaxx grunted. ‘You handled her well.’

‘I didn’t handle her. I just did what needed to be done.’ Zavala turned his attention back to the weapons. He’d finish up here and go and talk to Saint. No, he’d talk to Saladin first. His mentor always had something sensible to say. He wished the Iron Lord would lead the Titans instead of the Exo, but Saladin had said many times that he was an old wolf and didn’t have it in him. Not anymore.

‘I’m going to get something to eat if either of you need a break,’ Lyssa announced.

Zavala pushed the pile of weapons to one side, sorting through them. Only two auto rifles, and in terrible condition. Later tonight he’d strip them back and see whether he could fix them.

‘Zavala.’

There was an edge to Shaxx’s voice and he looked up. ‘What? Oh, goodbye Lyssa.’

The Sunsinger headed for the hall with a flick of her yellow robes, and Shaxx sighed. ‘You are an ass sometimes.’

Three pulse rifles. Five sidearms. ‘Am I?’

‘Lyssa. She wants to get to know you better.’

He’d heard that before. Guardians wanted to get to know him into order to grill him about his fighting techniques. Or at least that’s what it felt like. ‘She’s already bested me in the Skirmishes.’

The look of shock on the Titan’s face was comical. ‘She did? When?’

It had been about a year ago, and the Sunsinger had burned through him like he was nothing. When he finally felled her she’d leapt up again before he’d got his breath back and knocked his legs out from beneath him. Aiming an empty sidearm at his head she’d whispered ‘pew, pew,’ and he couldn’t help but grin up at her.

‘It didn’t show on the tally. She was out of bullets.’ But they knew, and ever since when she overheard him talking about the Skirmishes he thought he saw a secretive, pleased smile on her lips. But she hadn’t told anyone, so neither had he. ‘Shaxx, move. I want to get this finished.’

The larger Titan folded his arms and looked at his friend. ‘I wasn’t talking about the Skirmishes. Why is everything about fighting with you?’

‘That’s rich,’ Zavala murmured at his datapad.

Shaxx grinned. ‘I know how to have fun. And Lyssa wasn’t thinking about besting you. Not in the Skirmishes at least.’

Zavala finally looked up. ‘Then why did she …’ But the knowing grin on Shaxx’s face made him trail off. Oh, like that.

‘Bald, blue and apparently pretty thick. I don’t know why she’s interested either, but I’ve never wasted much energy trying to understand women.’ Shaxx clouted him on the shoulder and said as he walked away, ‘Go and talk to her.’

Finally distracted from the pile of weapons Zavala looked toward the hall. Was he hungry?

He could eat.

He was just putting down his datapad when Osiris appeared across the square, the Warlock’s long, thin figure upright and haughty. He walked past Zavala and entered the hall.

A cloud passed over Zavala’s good mood and he suddenly remembered why he didn’t see much of Lyssa. Everywhere she went her mentor seemed to be, crooning at her like she was a pet. Something about the man got Zavala’s hackles up and he turned back to the weapons with a frown, finding that he wasn’t hungry after all.

You made it to the end, thank you! I hope you’re enjoying it so far. Leave me a comments and let me know what you think. Huge thanks to @littleshebear for beta-ing and checking my lore.

#destiny fanfiction #destiny the game #destiny 2 #commander zavala #lord shaxx #oc: piax #oc: andara #commander zavala x female Guardian #before the fall

19 notes · View notes