AN: This Chapter goes out to my friend Ladyreclaimer. She's an amazing writer and you should all go check her out if you like JohnxCortana stuff.
Enjoy!
Despite Linda's best efforts, John hardly slept at all.
He laid next to her for hours, the warm skin of her back pressed to his and her red hair brushing gently against his neck and his face, which made him feel drowsy. However, when he tried to close his eyes and catch some real sleep, it eluded him. Visions of Cortana still ripped through his mind, and trying to sleep only exacerbated them.
"We were supposed to protect each other," she said to him as his eyes closed.
He couldn't stand it any more. He needed to get out and clear his mind, but he didn't want to wake Linda. He hadn't seen her sleep this well in all the years he had known her. He didn't want her waking up cold and alone on her first night of having him back. He got up and got dressed before pulling the thin sheet of his bed up to Linda's neck, hoping it would keep her warm until he got back, and then pressed a kiss to her forehead.
"I love you," he whispered to her, hoping she would hear it subconsciously.
He headed back to Spartan town, avoiding the gazes of most onlookers. Although he received a couple of admiring glances, it seemed as though word had gotten out that he didn't appreciate the fanfare, and most of the passing personnel left him alone.
He donned his armor once again with the help of several techs. Even though he knew he should probably start to get used to not wearing it, he still felt ten times more secure in his armor, and thinking felt a whole lot easier in its familiar environment. It cut him off from stimulation and allowed him to focus. He made his way to Infinity's observation deck so he could do just that.
He stared off at the picturesque view of earth and conjured up every memory he had of Cortana and tried to forced them down, and forget them. He imagined each one of them as a burning picture, being slowly destroyed so that they would no longer hurt him with their lingering presence.
Since he had never had time to grieve in the past, this was what he had taught himself to do. It was quick, mostly painless, and effective until he would inevitably have to do it again and banish the memories from his mind.
His grieving was interrupted, however, by the sound of footsteps behind him. Whoever it was was trying to approach him quietly, which was not a good idea. Thankfully he had heard them and not been startled, or else he might have reacted harshly.
He didn't look back at them, hoping they would go away if they believed he hadn't noticed them, but the footsteps he wanted to hear never transpired.
"Mind if I join you?" Asked captain Lasky.
John spun around and looked at him, his armor hiding the pain that he couldn't mask in his expression. He wanted to tell him to leave, but he knew he would simply return another time, and besides, he was an officer. John had no right to refuse him.
"Of course not sir," he said simply.
Lasky gave him a sideways look. He looked quite uncomfortable under the gaze of the Spartan.
"At ease, Chief, it feels kind of odd for you to call me sir."
John nodded.
It seemed as though even the captain had wrapped him up into this hero complex the UNSC had bestowed upon him.
"Beautiful, isn't she? I don't get to see her often enough. I grew up on New Harmony, attended Corbulo Military Academy. Never saw earth in person until I was an adult, but I still think of her as home."
John saw no question worth answering in Lasky's statement. Maybe he was trying to get at a time long past when they had met, the night he had extracted him from CAMS. Lasky would probably be surprised he remembered him, but there was little John forgot.
It was a blessing and a curse, and it only served to remind John that forgetting Cortana would be next to impossible.
"You don't talk much, do you?" Continued Lasky.
John wanted to stop him right there.
He knew where this conversation was going. He didn't need comforting for Cortana's death, and he certainly didn't need to be reminded of it again. He fought back the fresh memories of her dissolving before him and vanishing from existence.
What he needed was to forget, and the longer Lasky stayed the harder he knew that would become.
"Chief, I won't even pretend to know how you feel. I've lost people I care about, but never anything your going through."
Lasky was right. He truly did have no idea, and he didn't need to. It wasn't important that others knew how he felt, only that he was able to keep his emotions under control and complete the task at hand.
"Our duty as soldiers is to protect humanity," he deadpanned, "whatever the cost."
He hoped his bluntness would convince the captain to leave, but it seemed to have quiet the opposite effect.
Lasky looked at him with sad eyes and sighed. He seemed as though he was fighting to find words to convince John that he should allow himself to feel, and failing badly.
"You say that like solders and humanity are two different things," he spat, "soldiers aren't machines, we're just people."
John knew Lasky's intentions were noble, but he had no idea what kind of soldier he had been created to be.
He had had his humanity stripped down to its core and destroyed. If he was human he would have know how to grieve. He only knew how to forget.
Lasky sighed and seemed to just give up, before turning and walking away.
"I'll let you have the deck to yourself," he said as he left, and John was grateful.
Cortana had been right about what he was. He truly was a machine. That was something the captain could not understand.
"She said that to me once, about being a machine," he said absentmindedly, hoping the captain would be close enough to hear it.
What he heard instead, was more footsteps, slightly heavier this time.
He turned and found Linda standing behind him dressed in fatigue pants and tank top that showed her many, jagged scars.
His heart leapt when he saw her. He expected, and almost hoped she would be angry with him for leaving her all alone, but her sniper's patience still remained in her eyes as she looked upon his armored form with extreme sadness.
"John?" She asked, "what are you doing out so late?"
He sighed and turned back to the window. Grieving would have been difficult with the captain nearby, but with Linda so close to him it would be impossible. His mind began to drift back to the last time he had left her to go alone, and how she had wound up dead in low orbit above Reach, cold, alone, and betrayed. Old memories like that brought long buried guilt boiling back up to the surface, and made it even harder to forget new ones.
He wanted to turn her away, but he wouldn't. She hadn't deserved to be left alone like he had. He would find another time to grieve.
"Linda, It's nothing. I promise I didn't want you to..." He said, trying to find the words to apologize, but she held up a hand silently to stop him.
Even though he knew he had caused her pain, she still forgave him. She was always more patient and more persistent than he deserved. She walked slowly and quietly to his side and wrapped her arm around his bicep, resting her head on his cold, armored shoulder and sighing.
"How are you feeling?" She asked flatly.
Although she didn't say it, And don't lie to me, was heavily implied.
John stayed silent for a while longer and tried to make heads or tails of how he was feeling. Awful didn't begin to describe it.
Cortana's death had hit him on a level that no one but Linda even knew he had. He wasn't sure how to describe what he had felt for her, but it was deep.
After a while even Linda began to give up on getting an answer out of him.
"Hey, if you really don't want to talk about it, I won't force you," she said, placing a hand on the side of his helmet gently.
He could here the disappointment in her voice, however. She wanted to heal him and to help him. She wanted to know everything that hurt him, but he wasn't sure he was ready to let her.
He shook his head and tried to force the words he wanted to come out. Her own comfort was more important than his own, even when it came to matters like this.
"I can't forget her," he said quietly, "I'm supposed to be able to push on past this sort of thing, but I just can't."
Safe in the knowledge that his helmet hid his expression, he let his head drop slightly. Had Linda been able to see under his helmet, she would no doubt have been very concerned for him. His face was contorted with sadness in a way he had never allowed it to be in the past. The pain was too much. He had given up on hiding it any longer.
Why was this so hard? Why did his training fail him when he needed it most?
Linda, however, didn't seem to see what the problem was. Just when he expected her to feel sad she smiled up at him. It was a bright, beautiful smile that made him feel warm in spite of the cold he had felt since Cortana's death.
"Why would you want to do that?" She said as she placed her other, free hand on his helmet's other side so that she was framed in the center of his vision.
"I can't deal with the pain," he said somberly.
That was something he had struggled to admit to in the past. He was a spartan. He could handle anything. He had been shot, burned, tortured, and ripped apart from the inside out, so why did something like this cut him on a level of himself he barely knew existed.
She frowned and shook her head. In spite of how confusing the situation was for John, Linda seemed to understand, as she always did. Without her guidance and patience, he wondered where he would be now. He might have simply given up the will to fight. In his mind, whether anyone knew it or not, that made Linda the true savior of humanity.
"John, she was a part of you," she said kindly, "and you loved her, just as you loved me."
John looked at her oddly. Was that really what he felt for Cortana? Love? How could he love anyone else other than Linda?
Linda let out a small, clipped, laugh, something she didn't do often. Her smile widened slightly, but part of her looked sad at John's lack of understanding.
"It's ok to love her John," she said quietly, "there's nothing wrong with it. You're a human being. It's what human beings do. I know it hurts to remember her, but you won't feel any better if you try to forget someone who was so important to you. One day you'll look back and remember her fondly. I promise."
John was ready to fight her statement, to insist that the pain was too great, but instead he just gave up. Linda always knew what to say at times like these, and she was right. He had felt nothing less for love than Cortana. Somehow his love for Cortana was different than his love for his love for Linda, but it was no less strong.
She slowly moved her hands to the back of his helmet and unlatched it, letting it fall to the floor in front of her with a dull thud, revealing John's bloodshot eyes and even expression.
To anyone else, his expression wouldn't have betrayed much, but Linda had learned to read him like an open book.
"She'd want you to remember her fondly John. There's nothing wrong with that."
John nodded and Linda leaned up to place a quick kiss on his lips. His armor made the action awkward, but it soothed him none the less to at least know that Linda was still here with him.
When they broke he held her close and continued to gaze off into the distance at earth, the planet, or rather the idea, he had fought to protect his entire life. Earth's delicate ecosystems and thriving population had always and would always represent humanity in all of brokenness and frailty, but also its compassion and its will to go on. There would be others that would try to challenge that, but he would be there to defend it, and if it wasn't him, or Cortana, or Linda who stood in the way of those who threatened earth it would be someone else. Life would go on just as it always had, and the job of remembering what Earth stood for would be left to those still living.
For now, remembering humanity was his job, and he would remembering love Cortana as one of many who had taught him to be human.
He glanced down at Linda and allowed a genuine smile to cross his face.
At least he had someone to remind him that under all his machine and nerve there was still flesh and faith that drove him.