A STORY SET IN THE HALO-VERSE – WHAT IS A WARRIOR TO DO AFTER THE WAR IS OVER?

The Human Race has much to be proud of.

In spite of all odds, we have won the war against all our enemies. The Elites became our allies and helped us bring down the Covenant leaders who tried to destroy us. At this time, we have a pretty solid alliance with the vestiges of the Covenant hierarchy. With the Elites help, we put enough pressure on Guilty Spark and his Sentinels to convince him that it was a good idea to help us take down the Flood – without destroying all life in the universe. At times it looked like we would fail, but we triumphed in the end and survived the fight.

It is this victory, this survival that has been hardest for the Spartans. We have tried to stick together through these times of peace, but we have no common ground in our daily lives any more. The common ground we do share today, we'd rather not dwell on.

We have found out the hard way the difficulty of peace; we have discovered how useless warriors feel without a battle to fight. Our abilities to perform seeming miracles to save humanity many times over are not needed now. Our talent for killing earns us only distrustful glares and shuns. People fear us as they always have, but now we are not useful, so they hate us. They wish we would go away so that they don't have to remember how many died for this peace they enjoy.

Not that I mind their hatred or their glares; I am not thin-skinned and would do my duty again in spite of their feelings. It is the inactivity and the worthlessness that bother me.

For years, I was at the forefront of Humanity's efforts to protect their existence and I did all I could to make sure I succeeded so we could live another day as a race. Now, that feeling of being needed is taken from me as easily as Cortana was after the war. I have been tossed aside and told to "try and live a normal life."

A normal life! What is normal for a warrior who has known nothing but fighting since his childhood? How am I supposed to adapt in a peaceful world, when I have never known peace?

I wonder if Dr. Hasley and her supporters realized what they were doing when they trained us to be Spartans – if they ever realized that we would forever be freaks. I wonder if they knew how impossible life would become once the war was over.

I was never trained to do anything but kill and fight and so now I have nothing to help me in the universe of today. There are no grand battles to fight; there are no enemies to defeat. The only enemy is the politician or the tax collector and force cannot be used against them.

The universe of today has no place for wandering, confused warriors with no cause and no preparation for a peaceful life. I wonder if the Elites face this same problem, but for some reason I doubt it. They are not the freaks of their society; the Spartans are.

I don't want to be bitter, for I would fight the same battles again for the sake of Humanity. I do wish however that there were a place for the Spartans in a peaceful universe.

I feel useless and so alone. I find these feelings more frightening and taxing than anything I have faced during the war.

Please, tell me: where is the peace for the warrior during peacetime?