"How many lifetimes have you lived?" someone will ask, and the answer always depends.

Most Ghosts will say that their Guardian has lived two lives: the one before their first resurrection, and the one they're living now. Some Lightbearers go by the number of times they've fallen in battle, knowing that the count doesn't end unless their Ghost is ended first.

Exos like Cayde-6, have it the hardest—which might be why he likes to keep everything in one place, between the pages of a journal.

His mentor, Andal Brask, exists only in his memory and the strokes of a charcoal sketch that Sundance claimed "looks nothing like him." So Cayde drew her too, agonizing over the precise angles of her shell and the special way her Light refracted at dusk and dawn.

There's a poem about all his Vanguard paperwork, and a disclaimer beneath it that he is not—and never will be—a poet.

Entire pages dedicated to half-remembered dreams of the Golden Age, and a family that he fears is only wishful thinking.

Physical mementos, too, tucked between the pages or fastened to them. A ramen ticket. A feather from the Colonel. A playing card stolen from a deck that he and Shiro once shared. Wild sage grown in the mountains outside the Last City, where he and Sundance used to escape when the Tower started feeling like a tomb. When Cayde rubs the brittle leaves between his fingers, they crumble into a mealy dust. Its smell makes his heart ache.

Crow does not ask Cayde how many lifetimes he's lived, although he's curious what the answer would be. He also does not ask where the journal came from, or why it might be here in the Pale Heart with him.

It's a question that would inevitably lead to others—and neither of them are ready for that conversation. Even if they both know it must be coming.

So he gives it to you. To hold onto.