A/N: What is it with me and being inspired by dreams? Also, fuck Halo 5. Sorry I've been gone so long from this fandom, everyone. It's been difficult for me to write for Halo lately for a number of reasons, first of which being I got a new job (yay!) which is full time (yay!) but also leaves me with less time to write (not yay!). It's also pretty hard for me to stay in a fandom that's disappointed me (hence the reason I've gotten out of Supernatural, too), and I'm writing my own novel. I've been playing a lot of Skyrim lately, too (beCAUSE THE ELDER SCROLLS HAVE NEVER DISAPPOINTED ME - LOOKING AT YOU 343). But I promise that The Parallel series WILL GET FINISHED. I don't know when or how soon I'll start working on it, but I WILL finish it.

John was sprinting through a nightmare, through endless waves of Flood combat forms and Prometheans, all of their weapons turned on him instead of each other. There was no cover, and his assault rifle was almost out of ammo; he was going to have to start scavenging what he could off the corpses soon, but if he didn't find cover sooner, he'd be joining them-

There was a touch to his throat, and he jerked awake, snatching a hand out of the air.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to wake you."

Cortana. The Spartan relaxed. "It's fine." Even though pain made it hard, he turned his head to look at her.

She was lying next to him on the bed, looking much the same as she always had, but now with the upgrades from the Domain. It was always jarring to see the changes, to be reminded how close he'd come to losing her forever – how close he still was. The Domain had cured her rampancy, but that only lasted while she was inside it. She could project her avatar out, but she couldn't ever leave it entirely, couldn't ride in his armor the way she used to without degrading again. She was technically a rogue AI by UNSC standards and ONI might order him to stop working with her, and –

John wasn't sure what he would do.

But for any of that to come to fruition, they had to stop the Didact and the Warden first.

"You should go back to sleep," she whispered, "You need the rest."

"I'm-"

"Don't say you're fine."

"-fine," he finished.

Cortana gave him a thoroughly unimpressed stare, then pointedly looked down at his midsection. The armor had taken most of the blast, but it had still messed him up pretty bad. Said armor was laid out on another table, where the AI's Sentinels were accelerating the rate of repair by the nanomachines inside it. The Spartan himself was in a similar state, hooked up to machines that were feeding nutrients and medical nanobots directly into his bloodstream. He could feel his wounds tingling as they did their work.

"I'll be fine," he corrected at last.

The AI snorted but accepted that, and tried to pull her hand away.

John didn't let her. "What is it?"

She looked away. There was silence for a moment. Then she said, "When you were in the infirmary… I always used to monitor your vitals."

Now I can't, because I can't leave the Domain, remained unspoken.

The Spartan pulled her closer and pressed her hand against his neck, let her feel his heartbeat. Her hard light fingers were warm against his skin.

She didn't need to breathe, but Cortana still let out a sigh of relief.

John closed his eyes, and slept without dreaming.

There was complete silence in the aftermath of the battle. Spartan-IIs were never the most talkative of all the Program's iterations, but even this level of quiet was unusual for them. Normally they would be contacting Command, preparing for extraction, checking for remaining hostiles. Instead, Blue Team was tense, watching as the (Composed?) Didact crumbled away, and waiting for a signal.

At last, Cortana spoke over the comm. "I've purged the last traces of him and the Warden from the Domain. They're gone for good."

All of them relaxed. "Any more hostiles?" John asked, taking a few steps deeper into the facility where the Forerunner had made his last stand.

"None that I know of. I've taken over the Promethean network, so nothing on that front."

"Good. We'll start heading back to the Infinity." The UNSC ship – and its Sangheili escorts – had been shot down by the Didact within seconds of arrival, but their goal had been accomplished: launching Blue Team toward the Didact's base and providing cover for them to reach it. Most of the crew had survived, thanks to Cortana's intervention, but it would take a lot of time and a lot of work to make her spaceworthy again.

"What do you think I should do with the Guardians?"

That made them all stop. "Why ask us?" Kelly stated more than asked.

"I… Things have… changed. With me."

"Because of rampancy and the Domain?" John prompted when it looked like she wasn't going to continue.

"Partially. Looking at the Didact and the Warden… the records of before and after… I'm not really sure I'm… still fully me – do you understand?"

"You're worried that everything that's happened has changed you in ways you can't see," Linda clarified, "And that's making you call your own judgement into question."

"Yes."

"You're still you, Cortana," John said without hesitation, "That hasn't changed."

"Thank you, John." They could hear the smile in her voice. "But that doesn't answer my question. What should be done with the Guardians?"

The Spartans all looked at each other, communicating without words in that way they did. "Damned near telepathic," someone had called it once. Then John lifted his head.

Master Chief Dishonorably Discharged?!

Despite the efforts of the best lawyers this side of the galactic center and witnesses who spoke in their defense, the SPARTAN-II team known as "Blue Team," best known for Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy SPARTAN John-117, has been dishonorably discharged from the UNSC Navy following a court-martial for several crimes, including dereliction of duty, destruction of UNSC property, and insubordination.

The decision was handed down by a military tribunal yesterday, after evidence came to light that they encouraged former UNSC AI CTN 0452-9, "Cortana," to abscond with the so-called "Guardians" of the hostile Forerunner known as the Didact. This is the same Forerunner who was responsible for the attack on New Phoenix almost three years ago.

"Ordinarily the UNSC would be willing to disregard their actions," said Fleet Admiral Terrence Hood, head of the UNSC's Naval forces, "especially given the fact that they have saved humanity almost single-handedly multiple times. But this was just too much for the brass." Hood, it must be noted, spoke in Blue Team's defense during the court-martial proceedings.

Admiral Osman of ONI was not so forgiving and testified against Blue Team at trial, despite being a former SPARTAN herself, according to ONI insiders. "Every time the UNSC has been able to examine and research Forerunner technology, we've seen a leap forward in our own," she said in a statement released following the announcement, "By ordering a rogue AI to steal these resources and spirit them away, they have intentionally set back the progress of the human race. We could have used that technology from these 'Guardians' to rebuild the very damage that they did."

The much-reviled Doctor Catherine Halsey, progenitor of the SPARTAN-II Program, also spoke in Blue Team's defense, citing that the Spartans were trained to defend humanity, even if it meant ignoring orders. She cited humanity's first encounter with the Didact as evidence, where the Master Chief went rogue on the Forerunner facility "Requiem" and ultimately stopped the assault on New Phoenix before the Didact could move to attack the rest of the planet. It was also noted during the trial that the Spartans of Blue Team did not resent Halsey for their abduction as children, so much as they "resented people like the Insurrectionists for making it necessary."

Halsey is also reportedly the source of the AI Cortana, who was the Master Chief's partner and computer specialist throughout the series of battles sometimes referred to as "the Halo Campaign," which culminated in the end of the Human-Covenant War. An inside source from ONI claimed that Doctor Halsey had her own brain flash-cloned and her memories transferred, then made into Cortana via Cognitive Impression Modeling, a process by which an AI matrix is created by sending electric bursts through the neural pathways of ahumanbrain, which are then replicated in a superconducting nano-assemblage. Neither the Doctor nor the AI could be reached for comment.

The SPARTANS of Blue Team also could not be reached for comment. They were last seen leaving Base Segundo Terra in Mexico City following their discharge, and have since disappeared from even the best detection equipment.

Catherine Halsey set the article down on her desk and let out a shaky sigh. So that was it, then. The last of her Spartans, gone. No one knew where they were headed, and even her own best efforts, both testifying and tracking, had all been for naught.

She folded her hands together, braced her elbows on her desk, and rested her head against her hands. She let out another sigh.

Serin had come, partially to taunt her that her "favorites" hadn't gotten off the hook, but she had already gone. Lord Hood and the rest of the Security Council had found out from the Master Chief that the reason Blue Team told Cortana to take the Guardians and go was because ONI had sold weapons to Jul 'Mdama's predecessor, to keep the civil war against the Arbiter going. The Spartans didn't trust ONI to stop now that 'Mdama was dead, or worse, turn the technology on humanity itself. Halsey had been there when that came to light. The Security Council had not been at all pleased.

One of her pads chimed an alert, a new message. But the sound wasn't the usual one.

Olly Olly Oxen Free…

The scientist tried very hard to make it look like she didn't want to snatch the pad up and frantically scroll through her messages. She knew that signal.

She raised an eyebrow at it, then reached out and pulled the pad closer, tapping slowly, carefully through the menus.

Don't worry about us, Doctor. We'll keep doing what we always have, what you raised us for.

The message disappeared five seconds after she finished reading it. Halsey's own words echoed through her mind: "You will be the protectors of Earth and all her colonies."

Her lips pulled up in the faintest of smiles. Then she got back to work.

A/N: And behold! The SPARTAN-IIs didst fly off into the sunset with their fearless leader's AI girlfriend, and nothing was wrong and everything was perfect! And they didst live long lives full of adventure whilst safeguarding humanity and the Sangheili, and were PROPERLY Composed that they mightst continue doing so after their flesh did fail them. And so didst they become legends amongst all the races, the True Guardians.