What if? [DESTINY OC STORY]

17- Gwaine

"What?!" I yelled, but an instant too late. Mara and her Techuns glowed like the light from a thousand white suns. I squeezed my eyes shut, bringing an arm up in an attempt to block out some of the light. It made the skin beneath my armor feel as if it were being slow-cooked.

The light faded. Everyone opened their eyes. "What... What happened?" Evelyn asked, groaning. My lips felt chapped and my throat was sore. Evelyn sounded worse off than me- parched. She hardly drank water as it was, so I could only suspect that was the reason. "No... no!" Mara cried, guise breaking. "We're trapped." Elsie ran up to her. "Wait- you split it? You split the timeline?" Mara shook her head. "I meant to reset it! It should have-" She whirled around to Elsie. "Did you-" The exo shook her head. "No- never." She responded surely and stoically, back to business. Mara cursed, tugging at her hair. "We are doomed."

Vulkan shook his head from beside me. "Maybe not- there has to be a way to fix this." Mara met the exo's courageous eyes, and shook her head. "No." Her arms lowered from around her head as she sagged, Techuns hunched over around her. "We are now at the whims of this universe's corrupted form. Whatever happens to Arjun cannot be changed." She turned towards the exo standing beside her. "Elisabeth, it is over. You must leave before it's too late." Elsie clenched her fists. "Maybe. I'll... I'll have a better chance in the next timeline." She held her head in her hands, taking a trembling breath. "I was so close..." Her arms went limp. "I just wish..." She looked up at me, our eyes meeting and hers full of hard-to-read sorrow- exo's are generally hard to read unless you hang around them enough. Elsie's lack of facial movement didn't help. But I could hear the heartbreak in her voice. "Tell Arjun... tell Arjun I'm sorry." I could only nod as she then tread towards nothing, dissipating into a mist of Vex data. She would not be coming back.

"What do we do now?" I asked, feeling an odd sense of emptiness to my words. I knew I wouldn't be getting any sort of directive, but I felt as though I needed to try, at the very least. "Whatever you wish to do when the universe is about to end." Mara replied. I frowned and shook my head, denying her loss- the fact that she was just going to give up. It irritated me to no end, but Arjun would call me a hypocrite for thinking that way. "I'm going to them." I told her.

"They may not be so fond of you after what I just attempted, Shadow."

I tensed at the name. I didn't know how to feel about it, with how rarely it was used. "I don't care." Was my response to the Queen. "I'll figure something out." I transmatted from the ship, not allowing myself any time to hear Mara's response. But later it would be told to me.

"Without your Ahamkara aiding you, I doubt it will end as well as you'd like."

___________________

Arjun was no longer on Europa. So Merlin and I tracked them to the other places they might be.

Now I stood before a beachside church, the thundering notes of a dramatically played organ escaping the closed doors. They were rarely the melodramatic type, so I expected things to either be horribly wrong or simply laughable. I hoped for the latter. "They're here." Merlin announced anxiously. It had taken the two of us a little over a week to find them. I was slow without my gauntlets- it didn't help how scrambled my mind was. Scrambled and sluggish. I hated every minute of it. It made me realize how much I had grown to rely on the Ahamkara. But there would be no end to it, unless I found a way to save Arjun, or if I died my final death. Either way, there would be nothing lost, in my opinion.

I took a deep breath, pressing my hands against the door. I hadn't a clue what to expect.

It didn't matter. I shoved the grand doors open in a wide arc.

Within the church were the makings and aesthetics of Savathun's Throne World. Arjun sat at the end of the chamber, back turned to me, playing a modified church organ. The doors slammed shut behind me. I nearly jumped out of my skin with how much the boom had startled me, whirling around to see intricately carved doors chained shut with Hive runes. "Where are we?" I questioned aloud, raising my voice so I could be heard over the roaring piano. "We're in Savathun's Throne World." Arjun told me without skipping a beat. After a moment I frowned, recognizing the song. I couldn't believe it- of all songs, why that song? "Is that- are you seriously playing-"