Summary: One, two, three, four - repeat. Battle is a dance and Emile knows the steps. SHORT
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Notes: Phone posting while I am supposed to be studying, so typos and/or formatting errors might occur. Short because my phone doesn't allow a lot of text in the box.
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People say that battle is a terrible, awful thing, something that ruins and destroys everything it touches. Emile doesn't agree, can't understand their angle, doesn't want to. He knows battle, unlike its critics, and he has lived it, breathed it, felt the ice in his veins and the burning in his lungs. He has never known anything else and doesn't want to. For this he is branded - he becomes a warmonger, a bloodhound, insensitive and cruel; it is this perceived insensitivity that allows him to not care, for he and his brothers and sisters in arms understand, and that is more than enough. Sometimes 'people' forget who Humanity is fighting - they forget about Harvest and every other gut-wrenching massacre that has led up to Reach - and, most of all, they forget the reason. The who adn the what doesn't matter so much as the why; Emile stopped caring lon ago. Battle is a dance to him and he knows all the steps.
He takes pride in his prowess, as any warrior should, and he knows why he's good. He knows why he just might be the best - or maybe not the best. It isn't humility, it's recognition of the facts, something that the Spartan is very good at. He loves his job, loves seeing a Covenant enemy fall, loves seeing a thousand - a hundred thousand! - enemies fall before him, knowing that he is the victor. Emile pitted himself against them and everything they had to offer, and came out on top. Isn't that something to be proud of? He knows it; doesn't care that others don't. They say it's about a cause - about saving Humanity. But what is a cause but one more battle? Emile muses of this in the quiet hours, which are few, so he muses very little.
For his dignity and his superiority he keeps strict discipline - no women, no alcohol, no drugs, no insubordination, no problem. Not that he ever wanted any of those things. Some would say he must be a lonely man, with no family and no lover and only the ghosts of his past and the dried bloodstains of the dead to accompany him. They who say these things forget that he is a Spartan - a Spartan's only family is his brother and sister Spartans, his only love is the battle that spawns craven urges in his abdomen, he has no ghosts because he has no emotions to create them. The bloodstains are there, it is true, but they are trophies of battle, something that Emile is proud of, not ashamed.
In the end, battle has always been enough for Emile. It is his life and his love, and he never wants to live another. To say so would be heresy.
Emile is no heretic.