AN: Nice to see you again Spartans.
This story is one I've had sitting around for quite a while. I've been looking for a way to have something to write to help me clear my head, so that I can focus on, and do a better job with, other stories. As such, I don't think this story will ever truly be complete. My idea is to continue it effectively until I completely run out of ideas, or it drags on for long enough that I stop and start a new story in a similar fashion.
This story will basically contain a lot of my drabbles for various ships I enjoy writing for. I'm hoping to include Vaz/Naomi, Dare/Buck, Palmer/Lasky, Fred/Kelly, and of course John/Linda, as well as any others that come up and any OC characters I decide to include. This will probably be, in general, a great deal more domestic than anything else I've written, but don't count out the occasional action sequence. It's all going to be very AU, so be advised, for the purposes of this story from this point forward anything that happened past the ending cut scene of Halo-4 is officially declared non-canon unless I decide otherwise.
I hope you enjoy Spartans.
Every war has its losers.
When a conflict is examined by history, usually a quick distinction can be made between who won and who lost by the body count, the land taken, or who simply lasted the longest. Usually it's never that simple to the men and woman who fought those battles. How can a soldier count a battle a victory, just because a useless patch of land was taken, when someone they loved was killed taking it? How can a commander count a battle a victory if his troops feel that he sent too many of them to their deaths?
John-117 began to wonder, after drifting in space for what felt like days, or weeks, or months, if that same conundrum hadn't just showed up to bite him.
"Infinity? Pelican six-niner, we've found him," came a staticky voice over John's radio, the first sound he had heard since he had been ejected into the vacuum of space.
He knew he should have been happy to hear any sort of sound, but he felt little, if anything, upon hearing his rescuer's voice.
How could he feel anything after losing Cortana in such a way?
She had saved him, and for what? The Didact was defeated and the war was over. He was just a relic of an age long past when men like him could have made a difference.
She should have saved herself.
He wanted to give up. He had lost too much in this war. Maybe he could convince the pelican's crew to leave him here and let him drift in peace while he made sense of all that had happened to him.
He had no idea how long it would take for him to make sense of what Cortana had made the wrong choice, hopefully it was more time than the amount of oxygen that remained in his suit could support.
The pelican's flood light shone brightly on him, and he watched as an ODST drifted into his view of the blackness, the retro rockets of his jet pack obscuring the once bright stars with flashes of hot, clinical light. The ODST gave him a thumbs up sign, which John did not return, and hooked a tow cable to the back of his armor.
He felt a slight jolt as the pelican began to reel him into its troop bay. He heard a dull thud as he hit its floor, and a slight hiss as the cabin around him pressurized.
He didn't move from his seated position as two additional ODSTs came into his view, looking down at him intently.
One of them removed his helmet and smiled down at him, an action John could hardly comprehend at a time like this.
"Well would you look at that, the savior of humanity," he said cheerfully, "glad to have you back sir. It's an honor to meet you."
The one that stood next to him removed her helmet as well and rolled her eyes before punching the ODST on her right in the shoulder.
"Sorry about him sir," she said with a slight chuckle, "he's just buttering you up so he can get an autograph."
He recoiled and looked like he was ready to respond before the third ODST stepped between the two of them, glaring at both of them.
"Cut it out," he snapped as he too removed his helmet, silencing both the ODSTs who immediately snapped to attention.
He spun to face John, a somber look of respect on his face.
"We're all truly grateful for what you did for us sir," he said, giving him a quick, snappy salute, and the other three followed in kind.
For the life of him, John couldn't find the energy to return the action.
His rank did not entitle him to the privilege of being called "sir" and saluting him was equally unacceptable.
John knew these men were simply trying to show their respect, and that they deserved to be able to laugh and smile after the end of such a long, arduous war, but he had been trained not to indulge in such things, or to encourage them, and right now his training was all that was keeping him on his feet and alive.
He nodded to the three of them and sat down in one of the pelican's crash seats, settling in for the short ride to Infinity.
When the pilot announced they had arrived and lowered the boarding ramp, John stood and faced the back of the craft, walking quickly and blindly out of it.
He needed to get out of this armor. He needed to think and to numb himself to the pain of what he knew had just happened, and what his mind refused recognize, but what met him at the end of the pelican's boarding ramp almost made him sick.
The hangar bay was lined with Marines and Spartans in full battle dress, standing at attention and saluting him. It looked as though half the ship's personnel had turned out to greet him and give him a hero's welcome.
John stopped dead for a moment. Is that what they though of him as? A hero?
He was no hero. That title should go to those who had sacrificed the most in this war, and if anyone had sacrificed anything to win this battle, it was Cortana. Without her, he would have never have come as far as he had.
He would have never stopped Halo's activation without her knowledge, he would have never made it off High Charity without her help, he would have never escaped the Ark without her guidance, and he would never have defeated the Didact without her sacrifice.
Without her, he was nothing.
He walked slowly past the lines of soldiers. Some of the Marines had pictures of their families strapped to their chest plates, no doubt so he would see them, and nearly all of them had proud smiles on their faces.
They all believed he was the one to thank for their salvation.
He too had had a family once, a team he could truly depend on that had carried him through thick and thin and never left his side. They had been ripped apart when they needed each other most, and he hadn't been able to stop it.
He had looked through UNSC records the second he had boarded Infinity for their whereabouts. He needed to know something, anything about them, even if it was just a glimmer of hope that they might possibly be alive.
What he had found had nearly crushed him.
All of his breath was knocked out of him when he read that they had been declared MIA on a shield world named Onyx, which had subsequently been destroyed by forces that both the UNSC and the Covenant barely understood.
His heart had skipped a beat when he thought about Linda, his teammate, his friend, and the only woman he had ever loved dying alone on that planet without him being able to tell her just how much purpose she had brought into his life, and his team dying with her, without him to thank them for all of the hell they had brought him through. Fred, Kelly, and Linda were the only family he had ever had. How could these men possibly claim that he had saved their families when he hadn't even been able to save his own?
He made his way quickly to the armor bay on S-deck, past rows of Spartans who didn't hold back the stares they gave him as he lumbered down the isle way of the deck, towering over each and every one of them.
He wanted to yell at them not to look at him, to tell them that he was no hero, and that he didn't deserve this.
He was just one man, and he didn't deserve to be treated like he had won the war by himself, but he restrained the outburst, just as he had been taught to do.
Piece by piece his armor was stripped from him, and when it had all fallen away he looked down at his newly revealed hands.
They were weak, pale, shriveled counterparts to their old, armored selves. His armor had protected him for so long that it defined him. It hid the weakness and the brokenness he felt so well that donning it was like wrapping himself in a new personality. Few had ever seen what lied beneath it, and fewer still had ever accepted it for what it was, and recognized that fact that, as physically strong as he was, he constantly drifted near the edge of finally giving up and shutting down as his body and mind had been screaming at him to do for years.
Now they were all dead.
When he stepped off the armor rack a crowd of Spartans surrounded him, cheering wildly and clapping for him as he pushed roughly through them, nearly knocking one or two of them to the floor as he fought to get past them. Once he did he bolted for door at the other end of Spartan town, not willing to spend another moment around so many people.
The door at the end of Spartan town slid open quickly, and he barreled through it and dashed off for the small quarters he had been assigned, brushing past soldiers, officers and civilians who no longer recognized him as anything more than another one of Infinity's Spartans.
The door to his quarters parted with a hiss, and what he found caused his heart to leap into his throat.
The room was empty, save for a lone Spartan in simple, marpat fatigues with the numbers 058 embroidered onto each shoulder in black thread.
It couldn't be her. His mind had to be playing tricks on him.
The official report made it clear. There was no way she could have survived. This was just an ember of memory of her, burning bright one last time before it fizzled out and left him hollow again.
He backed away and out of his quarters, not willing to let this evil memory take control of him. If he let his mind indulge the fact that she was alive it would only crush him harder when he finally woke up and realized that she was still dead.
But as she slowly began to approach him, her mouth curled up into a small smile and her eyes etched with concern, he knew it was really her. No memory of her could ever do justice to the living, breathing, loving woman he knew.
This was the woman who had made him whole all those years ago.
She placed her hands on his shoulders and pulled him back through the threshold of the door, closing it behind him as he entered.
"Linda?" He asked breathlessly.
His expression cracked into one of hurt and longing. The emotions he felt for her began to bubble over to the surface.
He needed to know it was her. He needed to feel her voice wash over him like soothing water as it had so many times before.
"It's me John," she said as she gently placed her hands over his, her voice even and calming, "I'm here."
As her fingers began to lace between his and squeeze John closed his eyes and smiled at the contact. He let her words smooth him,
Years of being locked in armor had made him numb to any sort of external feeling other than the cold rubber and metal of the under layer of his suit, and feeling Linda's skin against his was an all out assault on his senses after so many years of feeling nothing.
Her skin was warm, and not an artificial warm like his suit's heating system gave off, but a true, gentle warmth that radiated over his skin, soothing him in ways he had never thought imaginable, and it was soft unlike anything he could describe.
It wasn't a feeling a non Spartan could understand. Only years of depravation of touch could make such a simple action mean so much.
"I thought you were dead," he nearly whispered, the pain of the thought evident in his voice.
Linda shook her head and smiled at him, her hand now trailing up his arm and over the sleeve of his his readiness gear until it rested on his cheek.
She leaned forward and pressed a quick, gentle kiss to his lips, lingering their for only a moment before pulling away and resting her forehead against his, her silky red hair swinging forward to rest against his face.
Even that simple action had brought warmth to his entire body. He felt himself slowly thaw from the cold of what had just transpired and melt into Linda's embrace.
"I'm ok," she whispered, "Don't worry."
John didn't have the words to convey his happiness, or even to respond.
He wrapped his arms around her and stood silent and still for another minute. His mind was still trying to process the shock of her being here. Despite his reluctance to act, Linda didn't seem to grow impatient at all.
She had always had more patience with him than he deserved. Maybe it came from her years of stalking targets in enemy territory, waiting days just to get the perfect shot.
He appreciated it more than she could have ever imagined.
When his mind finally caught up to his body he pressed another kiss to her lips. It was gentle and slow, with barely any force behind it. Part of him seemed to think that if he pushed to hard on her Linda might simply fade away like a fond memory, but the way her arms wrapped around his neck let him know she wasn't going anywhere.
"Fred? Kelly? Are they alive?" He asked when they broke.
Linda nodded and smiled gently at him.
"We're alive. All of us. With you and Cortana it'll be just like old times," she said, placing a reassuring hand gently on his cheek.
The mention of Cortana, however, made him lose his breath and his eyes become cold and focused. He knew he wouldn't be able to enjoy this moment any longer. The thought of their final moments together brought him far too much pain.
Linda's eyes focused on his. Her smile dropped and a concerned looked etched itself over her face.
"John, what's wrong?" she asked, rubbing his cheek gently with her thumb.
He placed his hand over hers and stopped her before removing it from his face. As much as he enjoyed Linda's affection he felt guilty for being able to enjoy it. If Cortana had made the right choice, he wouldn't be.
"She's gone Linda," he said quietly, "I owe her my life."
Even Linda didn't know what to say after hearing that.
She took both of John's hands in hers, leaning her forehead against his and taking a deep breath before speaking.
"I can't even imagine what you're going through right now," she said.
John saw the pain in her eyes and his expression and wanted nothing more than for it to go away. The last thing he wanted was for Linda to feel burdened by his own grief.
He attempted to rebound quickly and reassure her he was alright by pressing a kiss to her lips. Linda smiled into it, falling for it just as John had hoped she would.
She began to tug at his shirt push him backward, her smile only growing wider as he failed to stop her.
"Come on. I'll help you sleep on it," she said coyly.
John allowed a genuine smile to cross his face as he felt her warm hands touch his cold, bare skin, a slight shiver running through him at the contact. He wouldn't forget about Cortana in a night, not even with Linda to help him, but maybe she could at least take away some of the sting of her death and convince him that life would go on all the same.
Bravo Zulu: Good Job