A/N: So, here's our first combined effort to be published here! Yay!? Anyway, we hope people enjoy this, and that the fandom itself continues to grow, and that reviews be plentiful…(hint hint).

Disclaimer: I do not own the Halo franchise or any of its associated characters or plotlines.

Solace

Chapter 1- Hope?

"Chief!"

He glanced toward the voice, grimacing slightly at the foreign feeling of moving his head without his helmet. The voice belonged to a Spartan IV, a young woman in full armor whose scars reminded him of Kelly. She halted and snapped off a crisp salute. "Sir. Dr. Halsey would like to speak with you."

He nodded, but absently. He wasn't sure he wanted to talk to Halsey-not so soon after losing…He himself didn't know how he would handle it, how he was handling it. And he didn't know how he felt about the way he was made, and what he was made into; a man with so little emotion that his AI had jokingly asked which of them was the machine on more than one occasion. A conversation with Halsey could have unintended effects, effects that could be more dangerous than the Didact.

"Sir?" The Spartan IV was still waiting, a carefully neutral expression plastered on her face.

He sighed. "Lead on, Spartan."

Walking behind the Spartan, he distracted himself by observing the peculiarities of the woman. She wore Spartan IV armor, but had little in common with them aside from that. The scars she bore set her apart from the rest of the IVs, who had only recently been put into rotation, and that mostly in peacetime. She was also taller than the IVs, almost identical to a II in stature. But the biggest difference was her eyes, those intensely dark, dilated pupils surrounded by a thin band of grey-blue. She threw a cool glance at a group of recruits who whistled as she passed and they scattered, some of them tripping in their haste. He thought he heard a low, sardonic chuckle from the woman, but he couldn't be sure.

She was certainly odd, but he ran out of time to think about it when they arrived at the basement laboratory. The woman turned to him and spoke again. "Dr. Halsey has been arrested and tried for her actions following the fall of Reach, as well as for her methods for gathering the subjects for the Spartan II supersoldier project. I don't claim to know how you feel about that, but please keep it in mind"

He stared at the woman for a moment, feeling a little confused. What…? He wasn't going to pick a fight with Halsey over how he'd been created; it had been wrong, but she was still the only mother figure he had. She cared about the Spartans, even felt guilty for destroying their lives. He was no saint; who was he to judge? Her actions had ended up saving mankind, after all. He forced out a short laugh, smirking as the Spartan frowned. "That was the last thing on my mind."

She nodded shortly, turning and punching in the code for the door. She led him into the lab, motioning for him to halt a few steps inside. "I've brought John, Dr. Halsey."

"Brought him? Even you couldn't have brought him against his will." Dr. Halsey appeared, nodding her greeting. "It's been a long time. John."

There wasn't much to say to that, so he just nodded. "You wanted to see me?"

"Cortana didn't survive her rampancy, did she? You need another AI."

Right to it, then. He didn't want another AI. And he definitely didn't want to argue about needing another AI. Especially with the woman who'd made…She'd created them both, ostensibly to be efficient at the cost of emotion, but they'd both been compromised. He didn't believe she'd be pleased to hear that, or sympathetic. Not in the least. "Negative. With all due respect-"

"You were attached to Cortana, weren't you?" She gazed at him, one eyebrow arched slightly as she appraised him. "You can have another Cortana model, if you like."

"No!" He slammed his fist into the wall, aware that the other Spartan had tensed up, her hand dropping to the holster on her thigh. He tried to compose himself. "I don't want another Cortana."

"John." Halsey was remarkably calm, especially compared to the two tense Spartans in the room. "You need a new AI to consider serving. Integration would be easiest with another Cortana."

He remembered staring at Cortana in horror after the Didact had used the Composer on the Ivanoff Research Station, when she'd told him that they would pair him with another AI, maybe even another Cortana model. That it wouldn't be her. "I won't replace her. I owe her too much."

"…If you won't accept another AI, you'll be discharged. You know that, right?"

He paused; he had been a Spartan for as long as he cared to remember. He'd never been anything else, didn't know how to be anything else. Had never wanted to be anything else. But without Cortana, everything was different. He wasn't sure he knew how to be a Spartan anymore, not without Cortana. "I know."

She nodded, curtly. "Very well." She crossed the room to a computer terminal, tapping the screens to life quickly. "Sophie, bring Shelke to me."

The Spartan behind him flinched. "But…Dr. Halsey…" She bit her lip and stared down at the floor, struggling with whatever dilemma she faced.

"I just need her for a little bit, to get back to that section of the Librarian's index." She half-turned, gazing at the Spartan. "We'll discuss any extensions on that soon enough."

Sophie nodded. "Yes ma'am." She stepped around John and crossed to the terminal, pulling a chip out of her neural interface. She plugged it in to the holopad in front of the terminal, then stepped back to give Halsey space to work.

An AI blinked into view, a glowy blue female even smaller than Cortana. She glanced at John, as if curious, then to Sophie. Her eyes softened.

"John? This may take some time, logistically speaking, to arrange." Halsey didn't look at him as she spoke, her eyes fixed on the screen as the AI Shelke manipulated some data. "Why don't you go down and do some target practice?" It was friendly, almost maternal, but he knew it for what it was; a dismissal. He snapped off a salute and exited the lab, heading for the firing range. He of all people knew how easy it was to lose oneself in the sound and fury of an assault rifle; he could use some of that.

John-117 stared intently at the shooting targets at the far end of the practice range, patiently counting down the seconds until they began their movement routine. It had been many years since he'd had the opportunity for traditional target practice. This was going to be far too easy.

His comm unit lay discarded by the door, beeping quietly. It was always beeping now. There was no more sarcastic female voice to relay communications transmissions. Funny how he hadn't minded the transmissions when she'd been the one relaying them. But that was a dangerous line of thought. The targets began to move and he narrowed his eyes, index finger flexing slightly on the trigger. This too was an unfamiliar sensation. He almost always practiced without gloves, as a reward to himself for the years spent in Mjolnir armor.

The door behind him opened with a quiet hiss of compressed air and he fired, nailing the bulls-eye of the farthest target. He fired again as the intruder approached him from behind, heels clacking on the tile floor. He turned, not bothering to check whether or not he'd hit his target. That fact at least was assured.

"Down here again?" The scientist was a woman, one with whom he'd had relatively little interaction since he'd been on Earth. He'd noticed her in the labs though, noticed her short hair and the scar that ran from the corner of her mouth and curled over her ear. Now that she was in front of him, he noted that she was easily six and a half feet tall in heels, though he was pretty sure that she's still be over six foot without them. He didn't answer and she let out a slow breath. "Halsey wanted to talk to you." He grunted wordlessly and she sighed. "Will you see her?"

He made a broad sweeping gesture with the hand that wasn't holding the rifle. "Lead the way." She turned with a huff and started towards the door, pausing only long enough for him to retrieve his comm unit. It was still beeping.

Halsey didn't even look up as they entered her lab. "I found him Doctor." John shivered. He'd never liked her lab: the shiny tools and clean white surfaces brought back too many unpleasant memories.

She finally looked up after finishing the paperwork in front of her. "Thank you Irene." She laced her fingers together, looking at John with a peculiar expression on her face. "You remember what we talked about earlier?"

He nodded; familiarity was not something he wanted with this woman. "Are you going to try to change my mind?"

"I'm going to give you a choice John." He frowned slightly, brown eyes narrowing. "You don't want a new A.I. And I have stumbled upon a bit of tech that may augment my Spartan program."

"What kind of tech?" His voice is dangerous, lower than its already baritone range.

"Irene?" The other scientist stiffened. "Take out your contacts and come show John your eyes." There was a sigh and then hesitant steps as she came to stand in front of the Spartan. He was again struck by her height before focusing on her eyes. They were flat grey color, utterly normal. Then she ducked her head, taking her contacts out. He took an involuntary step back when she raised her head.

Her eyes were the same glowing icy blue as Cortana's with data swirling and being processed in plain view.

"This is Smart A.I. model CTN 0452-13. She was put into service two months after your Cortana, earning the designation Irene for her role in peace negotiations with the Covenant."

"This is not funny Halsey!" His voice is bristling with anger and his clenched fists are trembling. "I'm not replacing Cortana!" He pointed at Irene. "She may be the same model, but she's not her!"

Halsey sighed. "That wasn't the offer I was making. Irene's too valuable."

Irene held up her hands in a placating gesture, revealing the digital lines glowing under her skin that reminded him painfully of Cortana. "Look at me. I can't go into combat as an A.I. But think John, just think. I know it's a lot to take in, but think about how I look and what I am."

He was silent for a long moment. "How do you have a body?"

Irene smiled, but didn't lower her hands. "My rampancy progressed unusually fast for a Smart A.I., so in an effort to save my skills my consciousness and processors were linked in this form." She lowered her hands. "This body was originally a Spartan II named Blythe. They were about to pull her off life support when I needed the body." She looked down, seeming ashamed.

"What does this have to do with Cortana?"

"The Didact's ship is still just outside of our atmosphere. It may be possible to use another A.I. to retrieve the fragments of Cortana from the ship." Halsey leaned back in her chair, crossing her arms over her chest. "We can flash clone a body, which should restore her pre-Rampant mind. We can also modify the body to bear separation from Cortana herself, allowing you two to function in combat as before, though combat is unlikely in these times of peace"

"Which A.I. would I take?" It went without saying that he would be the one to reclaim her.

Halsey nodded to Irene, who let the Spartan IV from earlier, Sophie, into the lab. "Sophie will accompany you. Shelke will gather what's left of Cortana and reassemble her using my Index as necessary. Once she's whole again, we'll put her in a mostly human body to stop her Rampancy."

"When can we go?"

"Are you sure about this? I'm giving you hope, but it's a very slim chance that there will be enough of her left to reassemble back into the Cortana you knew."

"That's a chance I'll take."