Cookies with Eva
The sounds of the Tower trying in vain to pull Diana’s attention from the vast sky, dotted with snowflakes as they lazily danced to their resting place. Passing conversations, yelps and cries of victory as the “whump” of snowballs found or missed their targets. A few people had tried to speak to her, to wish her “Happy Dawning”, and she had successfully ignored them into leaving her be. Only one showed concern for her out of ordinary eccentricity, Shaxx had tried to convince her to her feet or at the very least to sit up and look at him properly rather than lying on the ground above the Eververse shop. He had been the only one Diana had not been successful at ignoring.
“I’m fine, Shaxx.” She told him flatly, looking blankly up into the orange and white helmet.
“I would believe it if you were running about and trying to hit someone with a snowball like last years Dawning.” Shaxx boomed at her, his hands curled into fists at his hips. “You’ve laid here for hours, just…watching. That’s not like you hunter.”
“Maybe it’s a new me.” Diana sighed, folding her hands onto her stomach, “Maybe I’ve calmed down a little.”
“A little would look different.” Shaxx persisted, his helmet cocking to the side. “What’s got your mind so snared?”
Diana sighed heavily and closed her eyes, struggling to find a way to put voice to the feelings whirling around inside her mind. She didn’t want to admit to them, if she didn’t give them voice and identification then she could not admit to their existence. Shaxx waited patiently for a response, a retort or a snap but Diana laid there with her eyes closed. She didn’t bother thinking about time, and when Shaxx gave a dissatisfied grunt and his footsteps faded away, Diana was upset she didn’t feel any better.
“Hello my dear,” The warm, elderly voice took Diana by surprise. She opened her eyes to see Eva standing over her with her gentle hands clasped in front of her. “Happy Dawning.”
“Happy Dawning Granny.” Diana sighed, feeling too pre-shamed to no reply to Eva. “Are you here to set up for the Festival?”
“Oh Yes,” Eva looked behind her, and Diana was forced to sit up and look behind her to see several manual worker frames carrying supplies. “This year I decided to set up over here, it’s closer to where everyone will come home, but out of the way enough that people can visit without making too much fuss.” Eva turned and gestured in her slow, matronly way for the frames to get started setting up the temporary shop where she would be staying.
Diana finally climbed to her feet, noticing that Shaxx and Banshee were watching from afar. When she took notice of them, Banshee raised one hand in silent greeting and turned to go back to his shop, leaving Shaxx standing with his arms folded across his massive chest. Diana raised a hand as Banshee had and the former warlord gave a tip of his head before leaving his spot to return to his designated area.
“I think you will like this year’s festivities,” Eva said softly, touching Diana’s elbow, bringing her mind back to the present before she could slip into voidless thought. “I had so much fun with you last year, baking treats for everyone and more people have decided to help—so I had a commission made for a bigger oven.” She pointied to a large, blue pot like oven with Dawning symbols painted white to make them stand out against the blue and dark metals. “I’m afraid my little lantern oven just wouldn’t be enough this year.”
The elderly woman smiled but Diana couldn’t find the heart to force a fake one back, which drew the older woman’s attention and concern. “What’s the matter my dear? You look so glum?” When Diana couldn’t meet her yearning eyes, Eva put a hand under Diana’s cold metal chin and lifted her head. “How about you make some cookies with ol’Eva hm? And you can tell me what is bothering you?”
“Granny I’m fine, I’m just a bit down right now is all. Tired I guess.” Diana lied and replaced her gaze to the ground.
“Nonsense.” Eva scolded lightly, waving a finger at the exo, “You are the liveliest person I know. Come, we will make treats and you can tell me what is really wrong.” Diana looked up and was shocked to see that the frames had worked quietly and deftly, constructing the makeshift shop with ease. They were in the process of hanging the curtains and cloth that would keep the chill and wind down while standing at the shop and two frames had just finished constructing a pull-out table which Eva assembled and began covering with ingredients and utensils.
“Come my dear, I am afraid my joints won’t let me go quite as hard as I used to.” Eva began pouring dry and wet ingredients into a bowl before picking it up and placing it and a whisk into Diana’s hands. “You want it to be nice and thick dear, so don’t over work it if you please.” Eva turned and busied herself with the oven, leaving Diana to start mixing the mixture in the bowl.
“How is the city Granny?” Diana asked, the pressure of silence occupied only by the sounds of work too much to bear quietly.
“It is recovering,” Eva smiled over her shoulder as she placed logs in the oven. “People are getting things back to normal after the Red War. What about you? How are you with everything?” She closed the oven and stood, glancing into Diana’s bowl as she approached to show her work. “That’s good love,” She sprinkled flour onto the tabletop and took the bowl from Diana who moved to the other side to assist. “I know at the Festival of the Lost you were not quite as…present as you were at other years.”
“I…had a lot going on.” Diana tapped the side of her metal head. “Been uh.” She glanced around as Eva worked, “Been missing Dad a lot lately, been…messing with me. Just didn’t fee like partying as much this year. But it looked amazing as always Granny. So does the Dawning.”
“I had a feeling it had to do with Cayde’s passing.” Eva sighed, watching as Diana fiddled with one of the cookie cutters. “DD.” Diana looked up, her hands freezing. “Cayde would not want you to carry on like this,” She reached out and cupped Diana’s cheek, “He wouldn’t want to see you this way. Missing out on times with your loved ones and beating yourself down.” She watched Diana closely, “You know he does not blame you, he told you as much, did he not?”
“Granny,” Diana’s voice broke, the pressure swirling around her threatened to crush her into scrap metal.
“You hunters,” Eva removed her hand from Diana’s cheek and waved it in a circle as she went back to prepping her surface, “You have this…debt ritual you go through yes? When someone you love is killed in cold blood and you…oh how did Cayde say it?”
“Settle the debt.” Diana finished, “Yeah. We uh, we avenge…or get revenge, depending on who you talk to.” She watched as Eva put the cookie dough onto the table and rolled it out with a wooden rolling pin. “That’s just the thing Granny.” This made Eva pause as she put away the rolling pin, “I went through hell to find Uldren Sov. I took down every one of those Barons he made and put a stop to them. I killed countless Scorn to work my way up to Uldren.”
Eva worked more slowly, listening as Diana ranted, her eyes unfocused and staring into nothing as she continued. “I pull him from the maw of a giant meatball with tentacles and teeth and put one of three bullets into him myself.” She lowered her voice, the feeling of pressure shifting from an overwhelming, towering force into the pinpoint of a knife in her side. “But that…that bastard.”
“DD.” Eva scolded lightly, watching as Diana began pressing the cookie cutter into the cookie dough a little to hard, the tone in her voice shifting from loss and pain to anger and hatred. Her posture went rigid, her arms shaking slightly, causing objects on the table to rattle slightly.
“Uldren Sov, is walking around…hiding out near the city…as a guardian.” Diana finished, going still, the cookie cutter still pressed into the dough. She waited a few moments before pulling it free and moving on, making more. “It just…makes me so angry to think that he, he of all people Granny, gets to come back as a Guardian. The one who took away one of the greatest Guardians of all time…” When Diana had reached the middle of the dough, she let Eva take the cookie cutter from her and start on the other side. Di busied herself by placing the freed cookies onto a pan to be put into the oven, grateful that Eva wasn’t trying to lecture her the way some of the Warlocks and Titans had when they had witnessed her reaction to the rumors.
Neither spoke for a while, finishing the prep work for the cookies and sliding the pan into the new oven before taking up the task of cleaning up the station. A few people stopped by to wish Eva a Happy Dawning, get recipes and ask about cookie deliveries, offering a nod and a Dawning greeting to Diana. Some had remarked how they were happy to see Di up and moving again rather than lying in a open, strange area as she had taken to doing when she had no work to be done.
When the timer on the counter buzzed, Eva turned it off and removed the cookies from the oven before lying them on the counter to cool. Diana watched as the old woman worked, making icing in different colors and preparing bags to start decorating the cookies with. It wasn’t until she started washing dishes in the small make-shift sink that she spoke again, drawing Di’s attention.
“I understand how, complicated the matter must be.” She offered as Diana picked up a rag and began drying the bowls and utensils they had used. “You had a lot of justified hatred toward the Awoken Prince and his Scorn.” She said the word with a level of distaste that surprised Diana. “And you ‘settled the debt’ as Cayde would say. But…” Eva dried her hands and sighed, “The Traveler thought that one worthy of fighting on the side of humanity.”
“He—” Diana felt the rage boil inside her chest, an itch to her finger that longed to kill something that deserved it.
“I said ‘that one’, I didn’t say Uldren Sov.” Eva warned her with a stern look. “When you Guardians are woke up, you don’t remember anything of your past life. You wake up with no identity and a clean slate, right? You do not hold any grudges toward anyone you would have known in your past life.”
Diana said nothing, she had heard others try with this reasoning before, but she wanted to hear nothing of it. She was still too angry, too hurt to admit that there was truth behind it as Eva continued. “His body might be up and moving around, he may even still look the same, but he is not Uldren Sov anymore. If he is hiding out, he is probably too scared to come to the City. I would say that those who had taken notice of him and know what Uldren Sov did while he was alive, have tried to settle the debt again.”
As she spoke, Eva tapped the cookies, testing their temperature before handing Diana a bag with the end clipped off, black icing inside. She started decorating her own portion of the cookies, covering them in the black icing before using a small metal stick to fill in all the holes and move on to the next cookie.
“He has no memory of what he did to Cayde because the man who killed Cayde is dead. This is a guardian. Not Uldren Sov.”
“Just the meat-suit,” Diana mumbled, remembering something that Cayde had told her long ago, before the Red War—when she was still new to being a Guardian and didn’t understand the new concept of Death to the world.
“I don’t like to word it quite like that…but yes.” Eva offered, nodding her head as she swapped bags to a red one and began decorating the outer edges. “Cayde’s debt was settled and while it does not mean that you should go out and be best friends with this new Guardian—I think it does mean that you need to learn to let go of some of that anger concerning Uldren, my dear.” Eva glanced up as Diana’s hands stopped moving, her cookies less immaculate than Eva’s. “You did your part. Uldren paid his price. You wouldn’t want to be held responsible for something you feel you didn’t do, would you?”
Diana closed her eyes, and felt the twist of the knife in her side, how could she start to feel guilty about holding a grudge now? To him? She remembered the shock on his face, the way he replaced his helmet and how deftly he had gone into hiding. Rumors hadn’t circulated in a while about a new Hunter on the edges of the city. Would she ever be able to forgive the walking body that had been Uldren? Would she ever be able to look at him and know him by another name? Or would he always be Uldren Sov. Reef born Awoken Prince. Cayde’s murderer?
Diana slowly went back to working on her cookies, lining the sides with red and attempting the lions crest that Eva walked her through as her mind walked in circles. The knife pain subsided, the pressure faded away as Eva loaded the cookies into a box and held them out to Di. On the box was a little sticker, a label written. To: Zavala, From: Diana-3.
“Oh no,” Eva complained as she looked through the cabinets the frames had constructed, “I am out of ingredients.”
“I’ll get you some Granny.” Di offered as she lowered the box to her hip level, “I think I need some fresh air anyway.”
