It's difficult to be furious with a man who is already hanging himself out to dry. Ikora wants to scream "Where were you?" and "How could you let this happen?" Any assortment of recriminations.

She knows herself better than that. Knows the sharp cut that has opened a raw wound will ebb into a burning ache soon enough. Knows that whatever she would ask of the Drifter is truly what she wants to ask of herself.

Where was she? How could she let this happen?

Eris was right. Ikora would have kept her safe, and she would not have been the same Eris again.

"Thank you," Ikora tells the Drifter instead. "For carrying the news. I know… you did what you could."

He looks like she has struck him, regardless. Perhaps he would have preferred that. He tries, visibly, to say something, and words fail him. Words fail them both. Ikora can't excuse herself fast enough.

"He wanted you to yell at him," Ophiuchus says later. "He's looking to get himself hurt." Ikora understands but isn't sure if she's helped or hindered his self-imposed penance.

She wants to make herself titanium and fury, undaunted and vicious, to tear through the resurging Taken and pay loss out in violence. But she is too used to squashing it down, and now more than ever, she cannot leave her post. With responsibility has come the weight of age.

Instead, for a little while, Ikora lets herself have sorrow.