Take a Chance on Me

Red’s fist comes down again. “Weak?” He shouts, his knuckles smashing down on the warlock’s cheekbone. It crunches.

“You gonna call me weak?!” Red yells, his voice breaking.

The guardian beneath him reaches for their gun, arm flailing and hand scratching at the concrete beneath them. Red snarls, the sound filled with static. His fist comes down again.

“Stop! Let him up!” The warlock’s ghost begs, flitting around Red’s head and smashing her shell against him. Her voice is high and desperate, single optic blown wide and terrified.

The arena around them is silent as the other guardians stare, all keeping their distance from the bloody scene before them. The only sound in the bombed courtyard is the wet smash of Red’s fists and a ghost’s pleas.

Red finally tries to wave the ghost away, the red paint of his hands smeared darker and the joints full of flesh. “Stop- shut up- just listen to me-“ Red cries, grabbing for the ghost. He catches her as the warlock throws out a hand, weakly grabbing Red’s collar.

Red brings his fist down again.

The warlock’s nose collapses beneath the point of their own ghost’s shell.

The sound is deep and meaty, the ghost dead silent. Red’s breathing is hard and fast, looking down at the warlock’s destroyed face. His shoulder aches as he brings his fist down a final time, their ghost still in his fist. Red’s vision turns blurry, his breathing frantic as he sways backward, stomach flipping. The world is gone, replaced with the vision of the guardian’s face. His hands shake, fists tightening. He can’t hear the ghost’s single plea.

He’s crying. He cries as a sharp, piercing sound starts. It shakes him, the sound. His mind clears enough to begin to turn towards it, beginning to speak as the sound abruptly stops and-

Red doesn’t hear the blast of Shaxx’s shotgun as it blows the back of his head open.

Cayde steeples his fingers as he examines the guardian before him, taking a deep breath.

He’s a hunter. He’s Cayde’s responsibility. It’s up to Cayde to clean up this mess and, oh, what a fucking mess it is.

“You gonna talk to me?” Cayde asks, narrowing his optics at Red Danger-5. The other exo sits across from Cayde in the waiting room, hands in his lap. He hasn’t looked up from the ground for the past hour, even when Lakshmi raised her voice enough to come through the wall.

Was it any other day, Cayde would say Red isn’t half bad looking; his body is painted a deep true red, optics orange, and he’s shaped all for agility and speed. He’s just got a very hunter look about him. Or would, if his silent stare wasn’t empty in a way that makes Cayde itch.

The thick, drying blood splatters covering him aren’t really helping anything.

Cayde’s seen plenty of blood. Blood is nothing new. It’s that viscera in the joints of Red’s hands that really bring the violence home.

“Look, buddy,” Cayde sighs heavily as he throws himself back in his chair, swinging his feet up onto the seat across from him, “you gotta talk to me. Why? Because I’m the one standing between you and exile.”

Red doesn’t look up. Cayde grinds his jaw.

“Listen to me,” Cayde makes his voice hard, pulling on the memory of all Zavala’s lectures. “Shaxx is in there and he isn’t painting a pretty picture. I need you to work with me. We can swing this; we get you grounded instead, banned from the Crucible probably,” Cayde talks faster, eyes brightening with an idea, “but that won’t happen if you don’t talk and gimme something to work with.”

Red’s ghost- Wisp? Wisty? Cayde doesn’t bother to remember- finally looks over to them from where she floats by the room’s window. She hasn’t come any closer in the past hour, hasn’t looked at either of them.

“Talk to him, Red,” The ghost says, her voice small and lost. “Talk to us.”

Red finally looks up from his hands, optics painfully bright. “I’m tired of being weak,” He tells Cayde, voice dead and flat.

Cayde looks up to the ceiling as he drags a hand down his face. He closes his optics against the sight of Red’s own empty ones. “Shit. You’re not just an idiot, you’re an idiot with something to prove.”

Red’s optics go dim, jaw grinding. He leans forward slightly, hands gripped together tight now, and is about to speak when the little waiting room’s door opens suddenly.

Cayde glances over his shoulder, ready to tell Zavala he needs just a few more minutes, that this one’s a hard one to crack, that- Cayde scrambles up from his chair immediately as the Speaker acknowledges him with a nod.

The Speaker’s hands hang easily before him, sleeves arranged carefully. He looks from Cayde to Red, a tilt of his mask. Cayde can feel the measure of his gaze.

“So,” Cayde mimics a gulp, “they called in the big guns?” He asks with actual worry beginning to grab at him. He wasn’t joking about the exile thing being on the table, sure. It isn’t everyday the Consensus gets together to talk about you. But seeing the Speaker here, feeling his heavy, quiet presence? It makes it all feel much more real.

Cayde looks back to Red. He tries to put on a stern yet brave expression, the type Zavala has when giving a speech.

Red is so fucked.

Neither of them speak, sitting on either side of the long conference table. The eastward wall is just window, the angled glass looking down on the city below; its lights twinkle and shine distantly.

The Speaker rests his hands atop the table, relaxed as he looks at Red silently. Red hunches down in his chair as if hoping it will absorb him, take him away from the unmoving gaze of the Speaker’s mask.

“This has happened before. You aren’t the first,” The Speaker says. There is no judgment in his voice. This is calm fact, his voice says, as if it’s common knowledge that a guardian can snap and beat another to death without warning. Red can’t help wince at his few words.

“The consequences have changed through the years,” The Speaker continues. “There was a time when you would be executed.”

Red’s attention snaps to the Speaker’s mask, finally looking at the Speaker directly, his optics wide. The Speaker’s mask tells him nothing, staring back blankly. “What about the ghosts?” Red asks, his voice hoarse.

The Speaker looks away to where Wisteria floats by the window, turned away from them. “They were given a choice,” the Speaker says.

Red barely keeps his jaw shut.

“Not all of them made the choice you would think,” The Speaker says, a soft sadness edging his voice.

“What-“ Red clears the static from his throat, “what are the consequences now?”

The Speaker looks back to Red, sliding his hands off the table. “Exile is the Consensus’ favored choice,” he says. “Your Vanguard is doing his best to argue your case, to protect you from that.”

Red frowns, looking to the room’s door. He can’t hear Cayde through it, can’t hear any of them. It makes him itch, not knowing what they’re all saying about him. He looks back to the Speaker, who he expected to be part of that conversation.

“Why aren’t you in there too?” Red asks.

“Because I believe you regret your actions.”

Red stares.

“I believe you acted in a moment of anger. I believe you sit here, brought low by shame and sadness, that your ghost refuses to look at you,” The Speaker says. He looks away from Red, back to Wisteria, back to the City. “The others who have stood across from the Consensus to face their fate? They did not feel regret. They felt a righteous ownership of the power to choose between life and death.”

The Speaker looks back to Red, his voice calm, his voice gentle.

“Do not think I am showing you mercy. To live branded as a guardian killer is a weighted fate. Others will look at you with disgust, with fear. I am offering you the chance to live with your regret, with your choices.”

Red rubs his bloody palms across his thighs, voice tight as he says, “You’re offering me a chance to redeem myself.”

The Speaker inclines his head. “Because you see it as such, yes.”

“How did you know I’d think of it like that?”

The Speaker’s mask looks back at him, an empty shield between the two of them. “I didn’t.”