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It’s been a long time since the Guardian had anyone to really care for. They’ve done their fair share of whipping unwitting civilians out of danger in the Dregs, but they never really had to care for them. It’s easy enough, on the surface, to simply help where needed and ignore the gnawing pain of being a guardian with nothing to guard.
They were a guardian, once, a real one—and they were damn good at it too, if not for the curse even they couldn’t fight. Their life is full of regrets and unfilled pits of shame where their love for the people they cared about should be. Love, really, is what made them so good at it in the first place. They like the people here, but no one has quite come close to the way their entire being felt right when they could look after their family.
It’s a small surprise—small, because the Guardian admittedly ended up here under similar circumstances—when they stumble across a stranger on the furthermost side of the island, not far from where the ocean has been desperately tearing at the coves and cliffs standing over it. They’d say he seems a little worse for wear, but that’d be an understatement; they find him looking, for lack of a better word, rather dead, face-down in the mud and unresponsive to the rain lashing at the sodden cloak on his back. It’s only because they actually lean down to check that they know he’s alive at all.
The Guardian, as their name would suggest, does what they do best and carries him back to the village. No one bats an eye at this—most probably assume it’s another villager in their arms, someone else stupid enough to try surviving the wasteland beyond their walls. They don’t correct them.
They fuss about their little apartment while they wait for a sign of life from their new patient. It’s been so long since they had to care for someone that they feel awfully flustered, only half-remembering the things they need to help. Considering the deaths of their partner and child weighs on them like a rock on a spindly bridge of sticks, they seem to have done an terrible job remembering how they ever kept them alive in the first place.
Not that it matters, it would seem. They leave the house for twenty minutes, and when they get back the stranger is gone. The Guardian does note, however, that the now empty bed has been made.
They spot him around the village sometimes, ducking into shops or talking to citizens or disappearing into the Dregs. That last one worries them, but he always comes back in one piece. A little bloodied, perhaps, but considering he returns at all they’re not convinced it’s all his.
His presence in their home is that of a ghost at first. They barely ever see him but things move about the house whenever they return—a cloak moved from bedpost to hanger, a new blade tucked neatly into the wardrobe. More than once they’ve come home to find their latest project in a different spot, clearly picked up and studied.
It doesn’t take much to deduce that the man is a drifter. The Guardian would spot one of their own from a mile away. They recognise the thirst for knowledge, the interest in the wider world, the prowess in battle if nothing else. They’ve come across him outside of the village. They’ve seen how he breezes between enemies like the whole thing is orchestrated, an elegant dance of hyperlight and blood. They’re a little too stiff nowadays to pull fighting off quite so smoothly, but watching him work his way through a string of opponents is almost enough to make them nostalgic for a time when they could do it too, when life was simpler, when it was to protect someone other than themself.
He’s sick, that much is evident. It explains why the Guardian found him they way they did. It doesn’t take long for them to realise that it’s the same wretched thing that infects them, infected their family. Some nauseous feeling of pity twists uncomfortably in their stomach at the thought. He seems to be a lone traveller, but they were too after they had nothing to stay for in their hometown. They sincerely hope that drifting is the only commonality they share.
He doesn’t seem to entirely appreciate their concern when he coughs for a second too long, so they take to keeping their distance and listening carefully for any signs that a slight cough is turning into something worse. It only drags consciousness from him once in the house, a thankfully easy fix, but they’ve come across him in the Dregs more than once, much like they did on the outskirts. It’s a miracle, in their mind, that he hasn’t just succumbed to hypothermia yet.
They don't stick around, not at first. At most they'll adjust how he's sat, move him to a safer spot, drape their own cloak over him if they're feeling brave. They do that a few times until the day they misjudge how long he's been out, and turn around to find him very much awake and watching them. It feels like they've been caught committing a crime, knowing how adverse he is to the mere whiff of companionship, but he just gets to his feet and hands their cloak back to them. He gives them a slightly longer, deeper nod, sank in quiet gratitude, before simply continuing on his way.
It takes a couple of weeks for the Drifter to start appearing in the house at the same time as the Guardian. It’s only when he comes through the door for the first time, giving them a short nod in greeting before turning for the little bedroom, that it occurs to them that he’s clearly been avoiding them. They couldn’t say how he knew when they were in, but clearly a tiny little hurdle has been leapt over. The warmth at knowing they’re slowly winning over this elusive kindred spirit is a surprise, albeit a welcome one.
The Drifter is still on edge with them for a long while, even after the blatant care they've sank into his wellbeing. They’re not sure what else they can do to make it clear he’s safe, that they’re not a threat. He’s finally in the house with them but he drifts, ironically, seemingly lost in his own world as he cleans his weapons or fixes his companion bot.
Even though that slight uncertainty is still lingering, the Guardian has to admit that their entire life feels like it’s flipped on its head. They like their home, of course, but it always felt too quiet. The air was always still when they sat at the table before, the atmosphere almost thick with silence. Now, though, the quiet presence of someone else seems to have breathed life into the little house in a way the Guardian was never able to place as missing.
It takes almost a full month before the Drifter returns from one of his endless adventures, shooting them his usual tight nod before making for the bed and flopping down.
They approach like they would a stray cat; they don’t want to startle him out of this sudden casualness he seems to have discovered. They watch from the corner as he sheds his boots and cloak and tucks himself under the covers. They draw away, not wanting to bring attention to themself, and he stays there for what must be hours. The only obvious conclusion is that he’s sleeping—something he seemed physically incapable of in the Guardian’s presence before. They tinker with their projects with a smile on their face that evening. It feels like their title is finally starting to suit them again.
They still happen across him in all sorts of places. He goes from avoiding them entirely to slowing down when he sees them, something the Guardian more than takes in their stride. Sometimes they share stories with him, personal anecdotes torn from their life that, to their now trained eye, endlessly fascinate him. He sits with them as they trawl through their past; he waits, respectfully listening, as they force themself to relive the loss of their family, like confessing it to someone they care about now will forgive the sins they committed against those they cared about then. It doesn't, of course, they know that. But it almost, almost, feels like it when the Drifter meets their admittance with a gentle pity and a considerate dip of his head. It's a kindness that the Drifter would take this role on in their family's place, to forgive the Guardian of their grievances, even if he doesn't entirely know it.
Pink diamonds, too, have started flickering alight in the ground since he appeared here. The Guardian would be stupid not to notice. The centre of the little village holds an overgrown product of a technological past, a past well beyond anyone’s memory. It’s lain dormant for years, most assuming that whatever powered it had died, but now children play over the new lights to send a shock of pink snaking up their legs. Adults seem a lot more apprehensive of this sudden activity, but no one says anything. No one wants to. The Guardian isn’t sure they want to either.
The Drifter doesn’t acknowledge it. He sometimes wanders over to take a look at the pillar that’s risen in response to whatever he’s done, scuffing his feet through the tangles of ivy wrapped over those little pink diamonds, but otherwise he doesn’t seem to think much of them. The Guardian would think he’s uninterested if they didn’t know any better; if they didn’t feel the tempting hum of something down there calling them, too.
The house feels more and more like a real home as time drags on. The anxieties of worrying for his life—or the exhaustion of such—seem to slowly lessen as the two share the tiny space. They always knew the Drifter was a Blu; it was difficult to miss with the bright skin and the unmistakable bumps under his hat, but he seems to get more and more comfortable showing it. The Guardian understands his apprehension at first—the gunsmith isn’t a good example of tolerance—but once he realises the Guardian doesn’t care, he doesn’t either.
The cloak gets shed at the door more often than not nowadays, the Drifter’s tail sweeping to and fro as he sets his hat on top of the discarded robe to free his ears. In a surprising show of companionship, he starts settling at the table opposite the Guardian. A very new behaviour; while he seemed to mostly put up with the fact he was sharing such a humble abode before, he now seems to have taken it in his stride. He never has much to say, but the company is more than enough for the Guardian.
Finally, after what seems like an overly luxurious amount of time, something seems to finally click. They both sink into their routines, in and out, rotating between the bed and the table. If the Guardian pauses their progress on their work and strains their ears into the next room over, they can sometimes hear a quiet buzzing noise—purring, they deduce. Sometimes the Drifter sits with them at the table while they work, ears attentively pointed towards them as they speak, tail settled in a friendly question mark around the back of the chair. Tiny little changes in his behaviour that, to the Guardian, sound like a victory they didn’t even know was possible.
Whether it’s the comfort of their presence or the safety of their house, they don’t care. The Drifter has been won over.
His sense of time seems to quicken as the weeks of his stay turn into months. His illness gets worse, more frequent, more debilitating. The raised pillar in town becomes three in half the time. He gets more and more adamant that he needs to pay back a debt to the Guardian that he’s absolutely certain he owes.
He doesn’t owe them a thing, the Guardian often reminds him, helping people is what they do. But the house gets periodically tidied. Bowls of stew from the nearby food stall get shoved into their hands. They keep finding unfindable parts for their projects magically appearing on the table.
He seems anxious that his time is short—a feeling the Guardian is all too familiar with. They’re not sure how else to tell him to not worry about them, but these casual repayments seems part of a little ritual he has to make peace with the inevitable. They’re not one to get in the way of that.
One day, the hum beckoning them from under the town is louder than ever, and the Drifter makes an uncharacteristically overt show of friendliness. He’s sat down with them before, sure, but he’s been here for a couple hours now, sat across from them as they fiddle with their latest project, his eyes unabashedly on their hands and a corner of his cloak rolled back and to between his fingers.
Is he nervous? The Guardian can’t imagine him being nervous about anything. He always seems so sure of himself, of everything, but he’s clearly so deep in his own head now that it feels ridiculous that they ever thought that. What is there to be sure of when the end is drawing closer at a rate you can’t even fathom?
The Drifter comes across them one final time in the South. They’re not proud of how he finds them—exhausted, palms and lips painted crimson, slumped ungracefully on the ground. They’d care more about appearances were he anyone else, but the tiredness, bloody episodes, the graceless posture; none of it is anything the Drifter is unused to. It’s just a little more real this time.
In a way, they’re glad this curse is claiming their life first. They’d always shouldered the crippling knowledge that they couldn't save him. They could never save their family. Hell, they couldn’t even save themself, even when the answer was calling to them from right below their feet. The don’t think they could handle another loss of someone they care so dearly about, as selfish as that thought may be. They’d never taken him in with the assumption he’d repay their goodwill with heroics and a saviour complex, anyway. They are simply two people, afflicted with the same disease that tears lives and people indiscriminately apart.
The Drifter seems to understand. He doesn’t say anything as he settles at their side. He never has, nor needed to. Now, just as ever, they’re simply glad for the quiet company of someone who finally, really understands.