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“Happy Dawning, Arach!” A Hunter bounds his way, any hint of faction colours obscured by all the glitter and shimmer of her finery. Her dark eyes gleam at him from beneath a fur-lined hood. There’s a small tower of packages in her arms, and she deftly adjusts with each step so that none tumble loose. Fresh from a few hours of helping his mechanics in the hangar, Arach Jalaal tries not to envy that utterly thoughtless grace and poise.
“Happy Dawning,” he responds, digging out a name to put to the face. Such a memory does not come naturally to him, but it’s a well-honed skill that no Arach neglects. “It is good to see you... Zahra, yes?”
“Yeah!” Her face lights up. “Yeah, I know I’ve missed a few of the...” It’s the kind of thing one only notices after talking to enough Guardians, the momentary pause and flicker of her eyes as she confers with her Ghost. Then she winces. “...A few years of meetings. Sorry!”
“You have a life,” he says, waving it off with a thin smile. “You must remember – when the Fleet leaves for the stars, everyone is welcome. If we demanded attention, attendance for all... we would not even have anyone left to fly.”
Truthfully, it’s a wonder she made it to any of the meetings. Many Guardians treat the factions much as they would the weapons foundries, showing allegiance when they feel like it but mostly when prompted by a new gun or some engine tweak that can be adapted to a Sparrow. When he had first witnessed it, it had felt like an insult. Sometimes it still does; it is the flippancy, the careless way they don and replace causes, interests, as if they are as fleeting and ephemeral as some Crucible trick.
But what is existence to most of them but chains of moments, death to life to death to life again? And their Ghosts are all but yoked to the Traveler’s presence, besides. What kind of future can someone like that envision? Not one of far-flung peace and prosperity under new stars. It is no wonder that they flit in and out, rarely lingering even when loyal – and it is no surprise, too, that they flock more to the other factions’ banners, where strength and firepower are never set aside.
So he welcomes any that can shrug off the doom that has shaped them enough to listen, and tries to muster gratitude for the hefty amounts of Glimmer the less dedicated provide. To turn away from Earth means they must turn even more towards people, and not indulge ill feelings and grudges. One must trust others – a warning to the embittered and an imperative to the stranded.
“That’s good,” Zahra says, cheerful now that the momentary shame of forgetting about Dead Orbit has been banished. “Since I’m probably going to keep missing them. Not that I want to! It’s just... stuff. You know.” At his nod, she barrels onward.
“But since it’s the Dawning, and I’ve been making cookies for everyone I could think of anyways, I figured I could show you I really hadn’t forgotten about Dead Orbit –”
It’s as he’d feared – all those brightly wrapped packages are not just gifts, but specifically cookie tins.
He holds up a hand to forestall her. The Tower has been drowning in cookies of dubious provenance every year, and while some turn out not just edible but tasty (owing, he thinks, to the baker’s actual culinary skills) they are often... a little strange. The last time the Consensus had to accept them from the Young Wolf during a meeting, they had been half-burnt and left a sharply electric tang in the mouth for hours. Those without the Light’s benefits shouldn’t deal with paracausal energy lightly, and he certainly tries to avoid eating much of it.
“There is no need of proving anything. But I am honoured you thought of us, Zahra.”
She ducks her head into her voluminous cowl. “Well, still! I made a lot, since I know the technicians are always working. I’ve never seen you guys take a break.”
If it had been truly just for him, he might have held strong and turned them aside somehow. Real, thoughtful generosity, though – that must be cultivated. He will simply have to endure the results. “We are always busier during the City’s festivals, with fewer hands available. But thank you,” he says solemnly. “I will be sure to pass your gifts along.”
This is all the encouragement she needs; Zahra hands over a small pile of her packages, taking great care with each one and leaving her own stack not much reduced. Jalaal smiles wanly all the while. It is a little ridiculous, but festivals always are. He’d scorned that, once.
“Happy Dawning, Zahra. I hope we will talk again.”
“Yeah! I’ve got more of these to deliver, but I’ll try to come by,” she agrees, and then pivots on her heel, dropping into the weightless leaping run that Guardians favour. Just watching it makes his knees hurt.
Newly burdened with his own armful of tins, he strikes out across the Tower at random. He might stay true to his word and keep some of them for his people (especially the younger and more adventurous cohorts, or those most enamoured with everything Guardians do), but he can hand off at least a few. Banshee, industriously still at his station and wrist-deep in an esoteric gunform, mumbles a thanks, eyes flicking upward from his work for only a second. Likely having witnessed the whole thing, Hawthorne calls him over and takes a tin with unveiled amusement.
Up ahead, Jalaal spies another familiar robed figure moving through the courtyard. Ducking under dangling strands of lights, he hurries after her.
“Lakshmi! A moment, please!”
“Arach Jalaal,” she says, turning smoothly to face him. If she’s surprised to be accosted by him, she doesn’t show it, the blue light of her eyes calm and steady. “Greetings. What does Dead Orbit need?”
“No, nothing! It is not need, but a gift,” he assures her. “I thought it would be in the spirit of things – to offer a token of appreciation. From my faction to yours.” Out of the heap of tins he’s still awkwardly holding, he plucks one up to offer to her.
“It is a kind gesture. Thank you, Arach,” she says, taking it without a pause. “I admit... I am surprised to see you taking on the holiday spirit. I did not think you cared for such things.” The wave of her free hand encompasses the twinkling lights and false snow and the passing blur of a Guardian leaping from a balcony (once again Jalaal feels his own knees twinge).
“For what is ultimately frivolous nonsense?” He says it mildly.
“Just so. Dead Orbit is focused in its own way. Focused on the wrong thing, yes, but a focus that does not abide... distractions. Usually.” She tilts her head. “Am I wrong?”
Because he knows her, he can be blunt. Hideo might use his words against him later – Lakshmi is too sure of herself to do so. Not when he knows it is a matter on which they are aligned.
“No, you are not. I do not care so much... but participation does not require that, does it? It is enough to be part of things, to be reminded.”
“I cannot think you get many new recruits during the Dawning. People who are enjoying the moments they have here will not be thinking of your escape into the stars. You are too serious, too grim.”
“True,” he admits. “All true. But I do not mean to remind them of Dead Orbit, but to be reminded myself of... this.” A struggle to find the words, to grasp the very idea. He too gestures at all the glittering, brilliant stuff around them, the distant bustle from this more secluded courtyard. “It feels like farce, doesn’t it? A celebration of clinging to Earth another year. Papering joy over fear.”
Her eyes have brightened. “As I called it. A distraction.”
“But it is very human, isn’t it? To need distractions. The City, the factions... we ask so much of people: your research and devices and the ever oncoming war, our work with the Fleet. The City most of all, to live and place their trust in us, no matter what lurks beyond our walls. And we hold ourselves apart.”
“Only because it is necessary,” Lahsmi says, swift and unerring. “Someone must find the path forward.”
“As we must,” he agrees. “But we do not do it alone. It is good to be reminded of that, to see this togetherness. Humanity needs brightness – even foolish, even frivolous – against the dark. If the people do not have such chances, our causes will lose them.
“I do not care much for festivals. I take strength from the past humanity has endured, and what is to come. Those losses, that suffering... it must mean something.” He tips his head back to look upwards, though the sight of the battle-scarred moon and the looming Traveler has long been etched into him. “I could not stand here if it didn’t. But to so many, it is this joy that reminds them of the same. If their lives cannot be celebrated now, how can their futures matter enough for the risks we ask?”
He takes a breath. Lakshmi’s expressions are always difficult to read, but he thinks the tilt of her head now is curious, or perhaps thoughtful.
“The Dawning may always feel like a farce to me, but I must value it. In the purpose it serves for everyone, if nothing else. I know I need such spirit, such resolve, whatever form it takes.” Nor could he ever think to prioritize his feelings and thoughts over that of the people he oversees. There is only one kind of unity a tyrant provokes.
“Not wrong, in the end,” she says. “Ultimately it is a matter of politics.” Lakshmi turns the tin over idly in her hands. “Indulge my curiosity, Arach; do you think you will still find it so necessary once you leave? If you were to have everything you hope for: to be unchained from Earth, safety in some distant system, an ideal new home ahead, will the spirit of humanity still be something to cultivate and nourish?”
It is a strange, difficult thought, which is of course why she asked it. But he had begun this honestly, and would finish it the same way. “I think there will be festivals on the ships, once we leave. I only hope I no longer must pay such close attention to them.” If he will even be there at all. He wonders that often, these days. If the flight from Earth does not happen within his lifetime, the burgeoning chaos aimed at Sol makes any further chance seem increasingly unlikely.
These darker thoughts are also an Arach’s duty, if one that he has intention of sharing with Lakshmi. So much of his role, of all their roles – the Vanguard included, he hopes – must be about balance. Sometimes he still feels as if he’s only ever clambering towards it, never quite reaching. According to the records of his predecessors, it is better to strain towards it than to be certain.
“I see,” Lakshmi says, as if this has proven something to her.
Arach Jalaal shrugs. “If that is answer enough, I must bring these back to my office.”
“Of course.” She bows her head in a gracious enough farewell, but Jalaal knows her well enough to predict what comes next, only a trace sardonic. “Happy Dawning, Arach.”
He takes it in the spirit (he hopes) it is meant, common ground as much as a subtle jab.
Bit by bit the cookie tins dwindle, passed on to acquaintances and fellow faction members. The rest of his evening fills up with chance encounters and preludes to meetings, and it is only much later that he finally sinks down at his desk and has a chance to unwrap the tin he’d laid claim to. This too he would not have admitted to Lakshmi despite their shared cynicism; sincerity and sentiment could be more than tools or points of leverage, and there is merit in meeting them earnestly... especially when it costs him so little.
Zahra’s cookies are round, frosted white and dotted with chocolate shavings to shakily form Dead Orbit’s logo. They smell strongly of sugar and nothing else he can discern. Despite his trepidation, his lips twitch.
Thinking now and always of the future, Arach Jalaal takes a bite.