Vanessa Kimball has been awake for thirty-five hours when the guard at her door radios in. "Someone to see you."
She combs fingers back through her hair, scowling at the mountain of intelligence reports on her desk, and makes a mental note to call in for something to eat at some point in the not-too-distant future. See if she can beg another stim off Lady Bones. "Look, nobody comes in without an appointment. I'm sorry, but it's only been one week since the ceasefire. Open-door policy's gotta wait until people stop trying to kill me."
A pause. Her guard's voice comes in strained. "Uh. He's... very persistent, ma'am. It's the colonel."
The... colonel. Right. She takes a moment to hunch her shoulders, pressing the palms of her hands against her eyes until sparks flash across her vision. She's not entirely sure whether this is better or worse news than Carolina coming by with yet another crisis. "Better send him in."
Her door flies open a moment later. "Darn right, you better send me in! This is important! This is vital! The fate of the universe could very well rest on what happens in the next minute!"
She leans back in her chair, waving a hand to dismiss the harried-looking guard in the doorway. "Have a seat, Colonel. I've got some tea somewhere."
He turns a chair backwards and straddles it. Even behind his helmet, she can sense his wary expression. "Uh. You got any Strawberry Yoo-Hoos?"
She's not entirely sure whether he's trying to throw her off or whether the question's genuine. She opts to treat it as the latter. "I'm afraid not, Colonel. I think Lieutenant Smith has a stash of Kool-Aid somewhere."
He fidgets. It's strange to see a grown man in full battle armor fidget. "Oh, it's just not the same," he says. "Look, when Grif's not around, call me Sarge."
"Uh," she says. "Okay." She wonders whether his closest friends get to call him Private. Hiding a grin behind a yawn, she leans forward. "What can I do for you, Sarge?"
He raps his knuckles against the back of his chair. "It's Grif. He keeps saying my promotion doesn't mean anything."
Vanessa swallows a remark to the effect that Grif is a very perceptive guy when he puts his mind to it. "I believe General Doyle was the one to issue that promotion."
"Right. Which means I'm a colonel in the wrong army! I can't boss Grif around like this!"
Vanessa squints at the blank surface of his helmet's visor for a moment, then shrugs. "Okay. I'll put the paperwork in. Welcome to the New Republic, Colonel... Sarge."
He puffs up his chest in outrage. "And furthermore, I—" He pauses. "Oh. Great. Thank you."
"If you had a persuasive speech planned, I can hear you out," Vanessa offers politely.
She thinks she catches the flash of a grin under the visor, but Sarge only shrugs. "Nah, I'm good."
"All right, Sarge. The paperwork should go through in the morning." She bends over her datapad, vaguely aware that he hasn't moved from his chair. "Is there something else?"
"Uh," he says. "Yeah." The sound of his helmet's seals opening draws her attention back to him. He looks exactly the way she'd expected: his hair's a perfectly regulation buzz-cut, black silvered with grey, and his face is criss-crossed with a combination of scars and little indentations from his helmet. He looks sheepish, almost embarrassed, and he scrubs a hand down the side of his face. "Uh," he says again. "You know what a sim trooper is?"
"A simulation soldier," Vanessa says.
"Yeah, that. That's part of it." He fidgets again, kicking at the leg of the chair, his eyes downcast. When he looks up, his gaze is sharp. "Here's the thing," he says. "My entire military career was a lie. I was ODST, once, but something happened and they shipped me out to that dadgum canyon in the middle of nowhere full o' those idiots. The dirty Blues. And then they're telling me we were just cannon fodder for the Freelancers to practice on! That there's no real difference between Blues and Reds! That none of it was real!"
It's nothing Vanessa didn't know already, but she says, "I'm sorry," all the same.
He gives a heavy sigh. "I'm not trying to say I know what's going on in your head right now. That Felix fella is a real sonuvabitch."
Vanessa stiffens. "Sarge," she says, "no offense meant, but I'm exhausted and I have a lot of work to do. If you don't mind..."
Sarge straightens in his chair. Vanessa is half-convinced she hears tinny inspirational music being piped through his helmet. "I'm trying to say I get it. Being manipulated for someone else's sick war. I dunno. Maybe that's part of being a soldier and we're all just fooling ourselves. But you're not the only one who knows how that feels. So maybe you had to put up with a betrayal. Maybe you're stuck trying to figure out how much is the hate you feel and how much is the hate someone else gave you. But I'm telling you you're not alone with that. You got us now, whether you want us or not. We'll figure it out together." He grins, crooked and vaguely terrifying. "And most important of all, no matter how bad things get, at least you outrank Grif."
Vanessa snorts. Her face feels strange, like smiling's something she hasn't done in a long, long time. "There is that. Thank you, Sarge."
"Anytime. You're not half bad, Kimball." He grabs his helmet, pushes it back over his head, and stands up. He hesitates in the doorway. "I don't suppose you'd consider demoting Grif even further...?"
"He earned that rank," Vanessa says. "Trained for it and everything."
"Hmph," Sarge says. "Well, nobody's perfect."
When the door closes behind him, she folds her arms on her desk, rests her head against them, and laughs for the first time in weeks.