Our Family, An Ascension
is a Destiny fanfic by JaxxCapta on Archive of Our Own.
Tensions are rising in the Last City as Human and Eliksni alike huddle under the Traveler, awaiting dawn to break over the Endless Night.
Set during Season of the Splicer, the story follows Eido, daughter of Mithrax, as the House of Light struggles to adjust to life in the Last City after being invited to take shelter. Sadly, old bloodshed gives way to civil unrest as many refuse to share their home with their former enemies. As Scribe of House Light, Eido must navigate this choking atmosphere while the City threatens to break under the pressure.
However, in the wake of a great tragedy, the Eliksni are left to wonder whether Mithrax's faith in Humanity may have been misplaced.
As of November 17, 2021, the fic has been put on hiatus. The hiatus ended on January 12, 2022.
This fanfic contains examples of the following:
- Adaptational Angst Upgrade: This fic's Mithrax experiences a lot of tragedy during the Endless Night and has more reason to be disillusioned with Humanity due to his daughter being killed by a mob incited by Lakshmi's antagonism towards the House of Light. He even temporarily gives up on the idea of the Eliksni living peacefully in the Last City and becomes bitter from the increasing violence experienced by House Light from Humans emboldened by Lakshmi's bigotry.
- Amnesiac Resonance: After becoming a Guardian, Eido is surprised to discover that she can still understand Eliksni and is able to identify certain social cues despite having lost all memory of her previous life and receiving most of her knowledge from Peach's Human software.
- Ascended Extra:
- In the games, Eido was an unseen character and the player's only interaction with her was through her voice recordings scattered throughout the Eliksni Quarter. Here, she's the main POV character.
- In canon, Peach was an unpartnered Ghost who only appears once in one of the lore books for the Forsaken expansion. Here, she plays a bigger role during the Endless Night when she revives Eido as her Guardian.
- Back from the Dead: Eido after she's brought back to life as a Lightbearer by a Ghost.
- Bait the Dog: The one likable moment Lakshmi seemingly has is when she contacts Mithrax to offer her condolences after Eido's death. Considering her rhetoric was partially responsible for his daughter's murder, Mithrax is uninterested in anything she has to say and hangs up on her. Then it turns that Lakshmi was counting on him to blow her off and uses this encounter to attack his credibility as a leader by publicly decrying him as "impulsive" and "overly-emotional".
- Big Damn Heroes: On her first day as an official Guardian, Eido gets separated from Crow and is nearly subjected to a Vigilante Execution via vehicular homicide after a human influenced by Lakshmi's propaganda wrongly accusing her of stealing from a clothing store. Thankfully, Saint arrives in time to shield her with his forcefield and defuses the situation by forcing Eido's attacker to back off. After making sure that she was safe and finding Crow, Saint personally escort her to the safety of the Botza District.
- Breaking the Glass Ceiling: Eido ends up being the first Eliksni to be resurrected as a Guardian by a Ghost. Given the bad blood between Humanity and the Eliksni combined with the Last City being worked up in a violent frenzy by Lakshmi's rhetoric, both Zavala and Ikora recognize how dangerous it is for her to walk around in public and try to keep her confined to the Tower for her own safety.
- Buried Alive: When Eido is first revived, she finds herself trapped inside a coffin and buried underground. After some initial struggling, she manages to remove the lid of her coffin and dig herself out.
- Chew-Out Fake-Out: One of Mithrax's fondest memories of his daughter was when, during a meeting with the Spider, Eido called him a "wannabe aristocrat with a toddler's understanding of art". To avoid angering the crime lord any further, Mithrax scolded her and warned her never to repeat those words again. However, when they returned home, he rewarded her with a treat and admitted that he thought her insult to the Spider was the funniest thing he had ever heard.
- Closed Circle: After numerous incidents of violence against his people and his daughter's death, Mithrax is forced to acknowledge that the Last City is no longer a safe haven for the Eliksni and has his crew scout out the surrounding areas for a new hideout where House Light can lay low until tensions cool off. Unfortunately, when his scouts return they reveal that just about everywhere else is either controlled by the House of Dusk or the remnants of the Cabal. Since the House of Light is primarily made up of civilians, they would stand no chance against any well-armed forces. Chapter 14 ends with Mithrax coming to the realization that there is nowhere else for his people to go and his House is effectively stuck in a city with an increasingly hostile population.
- Conspicuously Public Assassination: In chapter 15, a Human sniper emboldened by Lakshmi's propaganda tries to assassinate Mithrax while he's giving a public speech pleading for unity between Humanity and the Eliksni. Thanks to the intervention of a newly-revived Eido, the assassin misses his shot and only succeeds in lightly grazing Mithrax's neck before he's pushed out the window from his hiding spot and falls to his death.
- Darker and Edgier: The fic goes for a more grounded and serious tone by having the story be about Mithrax and his people's struggles for acceptance in the Last City. While threats like the Vex do exist in the setting, the main conflict comes from the xenophobia sweeping over the Last City's populace, something that can't just be solved by having the Guardians blow it up like they do with most of Destiny's antagonists. The fic also goes into a lot more detail about House Light's struggles with Fantastic Racism by showing it as it happens through the eyes of the Eliksni themselves rather than through lore books like in the games. Death is treated much more seriously here since the Eliksni can't self-revive like the Guardians.
- Death by Adaptation: Eido is killed during the Endless Night when she is chased down and beaten to death by a group of racist humans while trying to find her way back to the Eliskni Quarter after the vigil she was attending was attacked by an Angry Mob.
- Decoy Protagonist: The fic initially appears as though it's going to feature Eido as the main character as she is the main viewpoint character for the first seven chapters until she is killed during a riot by a mob of humans. Following her death, Mithrax takes over as the main protagonist and the story becomes about him as he struggles with his faith in humanity after losing his daughter. This gets subverted after Eido is resurrected as a Lightbearer.
- Endless Winter: Due to the Vex's Endless Night simulation removing the sun from the sky, temperatures dramatically drop and the Last City is thrown in the middle of a perpetual winter that steadily worsens.
- Fantastic Racism: Lakshmi-2 is every bit the paranoid bigot towards the Eliksni that she was in canon. Her very first appearance has her harass the owner of a yarn shop for welcoming Eliksni customers and accusing him of being a Category Traitor. It's also stated by Kestrel that Lakshmi had previously been visiting any store that welcomed Eliksni to intimidate the storeowners.
- As the Endless Night drags on and Lakshmi ramps up her fear mongering, her prejudice spreads to many of the Last City's citizens to the point where it's considered unsafe for Eliksni to travel outside the Botza District without fear of being attacked or going "missing". By the time a revived Eido returns to the City, it's gotten so bad that when she purchases new clothes with Crow, she is almost immediately accused of theft and nearly gets run over by a car.
- Forgot About Her Powers: A justified example occurs in Chapter 20. In a previous chapter, Eido discovered that she could make herself invisible by channeling the Light and even uses this to get the drop on a would-be assassin. However, when she is chased down the streets and nearly run over by a car, the thought never occurs to her that she could easily evade her pursuer by going invisible. This is explained away by her being an inexperienced Guardian who had been recruited less than two days ago and was still getting a handle on her new powers. Not to mention the fact that she had been caught in the heat of the moment and was too scared to think anything besides "run". This is internally lampshaded afterwards by Eido, who remembers that she can turn invisible and reflects on how she probably should've just used her invisibility trick to escape.
- Hero of Another Story: Olympia-4 is a Guardian who befriends Eido and Mithrax. She is also all but stated to be the Young Wolf and is often absent from the story due being away on missions in the Vex network.
- I Want My Mommy!: Not long after being revived as a Lightbearer, Eido dies several times in a row after her Ghost convinces her to take a shortcut down a mountain by repeatedly jumping off the ledge. Eido quickly becomes traumatized from experiencing death multiple times and, upon her next revival, curls up in a Troubled Fetal Position before eventually whimpering to Peach "I want—I want my mom."
- Invisibility: Eido gains the ability to turn invisible after she's revived as a Hunter. She first uses it to get the drop on a sniper trying to assassinate Mithrax during a public speech.
- Jaw Drop: When Zavala first sees Eido post-resurrection, his mouth drops open in shock.
- Kindhearted Cat Lover: After moving into the Eliksni Quarter, Mithrax found a clowder of stray cats already residing there and took them all in as his pets.
- Lady Swears-a-Lot: Peach is rather vulgar for a Ghost and she makes frequent use of the f-bomb. Since Guardians primarily learn how to speak by absorbing their Ghost's vocabulary, Eido also inherits Peach's propensity for swearing after she's revived, much to the initial surprise and discomfort of Crow, Zavala, and Variks.
- Loss of Identity: After being revived as a Lightbearer, Eido experiences this as she has no memory of her past life but finds herself surrounded by people who knew her previous self, including her own father. It's especially notable since Eido had previously been the House of Light's scribe, whose job is to preserve Eliksni culture for future generations via memorization. Post-resurrection, Eido's worldview and thinking is more in line with a Human's since everything she knows was absorbed from her Ghost, who only had "Human software" downloaded. When Ikora and Zavala asks whether she remembers anything about being an Eliksni, Eido admits to knowing nothing aside from how to speak their language and instinctively recognizing a few social cues.
- Lower-Deck Episode: The entire fic acts as one for Season of the Splicer. The events of that season are shown through the eyes of Eido, a minor character who only appears through voice recordings in the games, and the reader learns what it was like for the Eliksni living in the Last City during the Endless Night while the Young Wolf was busy overriding the Vex domain.
- Meaningful Rename: After joining the Guardians, Eido changes her name to Ephys. While this was mostly done to hide her former identity from anyone who might recognize her, it also symbolizes how she's trying to move past her old life.
- Mythology Gag: After Eido is brought back as a Lightbearer, Crow and Variks try to help her come up with an alias to hide her identity from the people of the Last City. One of the rejected proposals was Rahndel, a nod to the famous Randal the Vandal.
- Named by the Adaptation: The Young Wolf is named Olympia-4 in this fic.
- No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: How Eido is killed. Fleeing a violent mob, she nearly makes it to safety of the Eliksni Quarter when the mob catches up to her and relentlessly beats her to death with rocks and a metal pipe in front of the other horrified Eliksni. Although Eido tries to fight back with a switchblade, she is quickly overwhelmed. Despite trying his best to save her, Saint arrives too late and Eido succumbs to her injuries.
- Noodle Incident: It's implied that Mithrax had some sort of falling out with his fireteam, explaining their absence for the story. When they message him with their condolences for Eido's death in Chapter 11, it's revealed that this was the first time they had contacted him in months due to Mithrax being angry with them for an unspecified reason.
- Pet the Dog: Despite his hatred of the Fallen and distrust towards the House of Light, Saint-14 consoles a grieving Mithrax after Eido is killed and even personally delivers food to him after hearing about how he was Too Unhappy To Eat. Later, Saint takes it upon himself to safely escort Mithrax to the funeral home holding Eido's body.
- Right for the Wrong Reasons: Upon realizing that her newly-found Chosen is a Fallen, Peach warns Eido to keep a low profile until they can speak to the Vanguard to avoid causing a mass panic. This was because Peach was Locked Out of the Loop regarding the Vanguard's alliance with House Light and assumed that the other Guardians would kill Eido for being a Fallen. Even though the Vanguard accepts Eido after getting over the initial shock, this was still a good idea as the Last City was caught in the middle of an anti-Fallen fervor that had seen several Eliksni civilians (including Eido) being killed on the streets.
- The Speechless: Olympia is an Exo Guardian who is unable to speak for reasons that are unknown to herself. According to her Ghost, she was like this ever since she was first revived and they theorize that there is an emotional reason behind it.
- Too Unhappy to Be Hungry: Mithrax loses his appetite as part of his fall into self-neglect caused by his grief over his daughter's death. When Saint-14 hears about this, he personally delivers cooked food to Mithrax's home.
- Troubled Fetal Position: When Eido is resurrected as a Lightbearer, she finds herself atop a mountain and has to make her way down by repeatedly jumping off the ledge at Peach's insistence. After dying and reviving several times, Eido becomes emotionally overwhelmed from experiencing death and curls up into a ball while gasping. When Peach checks up on her, she only hugs her knees tighter and begs her to not put her through that anymore. Seeing Eido in this state convinces Peach to let her rest and make the rest of the journey down the mountain by foot.
- Voice for the Voiceless: Since Olympia is a mute, she relies on her Ghost to speak for her. At one point, Olympia's Ghost even explains to Mithrax that "[they're] the conversation while [Olympia is] the muscle."
- Weather Dissonance: It's mentioned that it's supposed to be the summer in the Last City, but the Endless Night has drastically affected the weather and changed it to the dead of winter.
- Wham Episode: Chapter 7 ends with Eido being killed by an angry mob after the vigil she was attending is attacked.
- Wham Line: Eido delivers one to Mithrax at the end of Chapter 15. Upon seeing his deceased daughter seemingly alive and well, Mithrax tearfully runs towards her and embraces her. However, Eido reacts with confusion and asks "Who are you?" while a Ghost hovers behind her.
