You've Got Time ( a Destiny Story)

Inside My Head

Well as a child, I mostly spoke inside my head
I had conversations with the clouds, the dogs, the dead
And they thought me broken, that my tongue was coated lead
But I just couldn't make my words make sense to them
If you only listen with your ears, I can't get in

The Mute – Radical Face

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Tevis was a... strange person. Confident, powerful, yet quiet and prickly. He was a notorious figure among Hunters, earning grudging respect from the older ones and avid awe from the younger. Yet he didn't seek glory or recognition.

There was certainly an air of mystery about the fellow. Perhaps his connection with the Void was a part of it, but his cageyness didn't help much. He had a weird wavelength. He'd say one thing and mean three other things. Sometimes he wouldn't say anything at all, like his eyes could talk. Really, it was a wonder he was a member of a pack at all. He seemed the loner type. Didn't like chatter. Didn't like questions.

Well, really, he didn't like dumb questions, which was understandable. The issue was Tevis seemed to consider a lot of questions dumb. He said he didn't like his time wasted and he had better things to do than to walk idiots through basic logic. Azra had told him that sounded Warlock-like, and he'd shot her an icy glare and told her about how class divisions were only important when you let them be.

So he could be a bit of an ass. He did get pestered a lot. He had the celebrity status of being one of the most powerful and accomplished Nighstalkers alive. On top of Nightstalking being a notoriously tricky art, his Dark Age pedigree made him the go-to guy for asking advice on a dozen topics ranging from the Dusk Bow to Rasputin to the Dust Giants. Azra herself had to avoid some bothering about the whole Arcstrider thing, which gave her some sympathy to his issues. A topic which might be curious at first got really old when you spent half your time talking about it.

Perhaps that was why he got along so well with his pack. They were already on his level, so to speak. No asking why the Golden Gun was Golden or why we call the Fallen the Fallen or 'how can I make my grenades faster'. Cayde still asked plenty of dumb questions, but that was more for the entertainment value of Tevis' barbs than anything else, and he took the casual insults well.

Azra quickly learned the rule with Tevis was think before you speak. Think long and hard. Only ask for his help when you actually need it.

It could feel incredibly vulnerable, coming to him with a legitimate issue or failing, a metaphorical chink in your armor. He usually was so snide and cutting. But Azra had also learned his paradoxical softer side. Come to him with your guard down and show him your loss, he wouldn't hesitate to help. The key was the difference between 'help my gun is jammed' and 'I cannot for the life of me get this open, could you try?'

So Azra was nervous, but not too nervous, when she decided to ask for help with the Bow. She'd tried, hard. Spent a long time mulling it over. Asked around for help from other sources first. But a lot of Nightstalkers were too busy, or had egos the size of Old New York, or weren't sure they could help.

And if he said no, well, she'd just go back to doing her thing.

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July 14, 2872, 10:43

They were sitting in the Crew's camp. Azra had become a semi-regular figure around, between all the pre-ops briefings and the post-ops crashes. It was nice. Quiet in the way the City never was, even when Cayde was being his loud self. This current iteration of the camp was sheltered in a thick stand of pines on the slope of some minor mountain in a landscape littered with minor mountains. They were smack dab in the middle of no-man's land- not even the Fallen had claimed territory here.