Eyes Up, Guardian

Chapter 12

     "C'mon! Just one mission." Tessa practically wailed, feeling desperate and childish as she shadowed Cayde around his workstation. "I promise I'll stop bugging you."

     "I'm sure you have at least twenty other things you could be doing." Cayde said, leaning over his map.

     "Yeah, but all those things involve raid groups or fireteams or getting kills in the crucible." She complained, rolling her eyes at the last option. "I want to do something fun, by myself, just me and Echo, and whoever's on the comms."

      Cayde glanced towards Lord Shaxx, who was- luckily for Tessa- too busy yelling at other Guardians to hear her complaints about the crucible. "Why don't you go on patrol?" He suggested, "Go loot some chests, put your subclass to good use.

     "But that's so bor-"

     "Guardian!" Cayde practically shouted, throwing his arms wide towards someone behind Tessa. "You're just the person I wanted to see!"

     She turned, seeing Damian descending the steps towards them, brows raised in curiosity.

     "You're going to give him a mission and not me? Aren't you with the Hunter Vanguard? Shouldn't you be giving missions to Hunters? Like me?" Tessa said, crossing her arms in frustration.

     "I'm kidding." Cayde said with a laugh, "But, Damian, Zavala does want to see you." He said, he hooked his thumb over his shoulder to point at where Zavala was waiting at the end of the table. Damian shrugged, walking over to Zavala as ordered. He'd walked into weirder circumstances before.

     "And as for you," Tessa stood a bit straighter when Cayde addressed her. "I will give you this." He picked up a piece of paper from a pile beside his map. A list of names scribbled in Ikora's handwriting. "It's a list of high priority targets on mars and Phobos. But-"

     "Thank you, Cayde!" She exclaimed excitedly, reaching to grab the list from his hand.

     "But," he said again, pulling the list away. "You will stop bugging me."

     "Forever?" She frowned.

     A heavy sigh, soft mechanic whirs sounding with it. "For a week. I will give you missions when I have missions for you. Otherwise, I'm sure Eris would be happy to give you something to do." She grimaced, and Cayde smirked at her, offering the list again. Eris tended to freak Tessa out a bit, especially when she was supposed to be doing something important.

     She sighed as well, but nodded, taking the list. "Thank you, Cayde." With the list in hand, she wandered away from the table, absentmindedly leaning on the wall as she read over the plethora of cabal and vex names.

     "What was that about?" Damian's voice suddenly sounded beside her, causing her to jump. He only shot her an amused smirk, still waiting for her to answer.

     They'd recovered from their previous misunderstanding quite well, and had soon got back into the swing of things, and then had made a new swing of things. They went on two or three missions together a week, just for the fun of it. Tessa didn't ask any more about his past, and he didn't tell her, simply because it didn't matter. They'd gotten more comfortable with each other, and sometimes when they'd take one ship to do a mission together, the other would crash on the couch or the floor afterwards, because they were just too tired to take the time to go back to the Tower.

     Kylie and Echo seemed to like each other as well, and once or twice Damian and Tessa had caught them gossiping and had decided to quickly stop their conversations before they said something personal. Not that the intentions were bad, of course. "You're supposed to be my Ghost, not my mom." Tessa had told Echo when he'd promised he was only going to tell Kylie about her diary. She stopped writing in it, she'd already been planning on stopping, Echo had just pushed her to actually do it.