Eris's apartment sat as she had left it: unkempt, chaotic, and somehow, welcoming. Despite the hive artifacts, ancient pages, and strange weaponry strewn about the rooms, the sunlight lazily drifting through dusty curtains draped the surrounds in a warm glow. Hawk noticed a tea set resting by a single chair, and felt a pang in her chest with the regret that she never gave Eris a reason to set out another. She brushed her fingers along the walls as she walked, coated in a fine layer of incense and dust, as if trying to discern memories from the reminisce. A small pile of pillows and blankets lay in a shaded corner, edged by bookshelves and drawers, scattered where Eris had left them just that morning. She felt gentle eyes following her around the room, and glanced up at a worm in a glass cage, blinking slowly at her. Frowning softly, she made a mental note to send someone to feed it, but then saw pellets beside it and instead sprinkled some in. It gurgled in excitement. Hawk wished she felt the same sentiment.

 

A strange artifact caught her eye as she moved through the apartment, but she left it for now and moved to the desk centred in the main room. An old radio sat there humming in the dust, and she turned it on. Eris's voice came out. With each word, each syllable, Hawk felt her weight shifting further into the floor, and the corners of her eyes twitching. She spoke of her friends, her triumphs, her life, wishing not for sadness, but for thankfulness. She made it sound so easy. Hawk had been here before, standing solemnly, listening to the words of a dead friend. It felt easier and worse all at once. Caydes' words all those years ago had given her peace, but she had already had time to mourn when she heard them. These words left her feeling unfinished, and with each name spoken, she felt the weight of another task adding to her shoulders. At Drifter's name, her lips trembled, but at her own, she felt resolve.

 

When she had left her ship and entered the city, drifter had called her killer, not hero. It had been a long time since she heard him use that name, but it never stopped being whispered from the mouths of others. It was the foundation of her self. A dead thing, made to kill. She hardened herself around this one thought, honing it into a dagger. A dead thing does not feel.

 

—

 

At the artifact, Sloane's words only strengthened her resolve, strengthened the walls she was building around herself. She did not need a moment, she needed vengeance. She needed violence. She needed anger.

 

She marched with determination out of the apartment, past the restaurants and shops that Eris must have frequented. Her strides held so much force and darkness, that the curious stares that greeted her arrival, now slunk back into the shadows in fear. It was with so much single mindedness, brute determination that she walked, that when she met Crow's eyes in the courtyard, she felt like she had slammed into the wall she had built. 

 

That's all it took. Once glance.

 

He held her gaze solemnly, and she couldn't bring herself to pull away from it.

 

And like the walls in her mind, she too fell.

To the ground.

In tears.

 

In a moment, he was there, and she realised a moment wasn't enough. So in his arms she gave herself another, and another. 

 

And another.

 

She did not stop for a very long time.