I used to walk with men.

I'm not exactly sure, but I'm surviving. The sangheili didn't kill me. He was just as nervous as I was.

Similar in a lot of ways. Young. Bored, looking for something, anything, and in way too over our heads. When we got our wishes, we couldn't handle them. Not that we could. The moment is there, you can't run away from it or avoid it. Even if we don't put ourselves there.

Life has a different plan for all of us, even if we don't want it. I don't want it. But it's become readily apparent what I want and what I get are two very different things.

The elite disobeyed orders. He ended up being ostracized, nearly executed before it was considered a waste of time and resources, then reversed face and disemboweled the alien right before my eyes.

In a way I got him killed.

While I've grown to hate the covenant, that was a terrible feeling, that something so final and irreversible caused by myself though I had no intention to. No intention to go to work that day and end up with an alien occupation and near slaughter on my hands.

And yet his decision, his insubordination went unturned.

I have come to been grateful for Seska 'Saromee. At best, the sangheilian occupants here tolerate me because I keep things running. I can talk to Seska; he's the only living creature that hasn't taken me for granted. He respects me in a way for standing up and refusing to accept death, almost like a true warrior of his kin. My blind idiot gambit has at least impressed one of them here, and actually carrying conversations that didn't involve commands or just being insulted has kept me sane. Or hopeful.

Of the two I don't think I would pick either.

I'm sort of an enigma here. Something between a pet, a martyr, a servant and a burden. They keep me around. As a technician, somewhat. They've taken the base, but it's no good without someone to make it work.

Did I mention base?

Turns out my secret little job was only a small part of a military complex. Missiles. Guns. Molten steel. Radiation.

After what has transpired this revelation didn't surprise me as much as I thought or expected it to be. I don't understand why. I feel numb at times and grossly oversensitive at others.

I'm the one to keep it going, to keep the assets the way they were, that made them so valuable to siege and obtain in the first place. A troubleshooter, perhaps.

Funny that I'm at a lower point at this "job" that I was in my previous career. Wake. Rations if I'm lucky. Scurry around like a rat, making sure this is working and that is conforming to standards. All of this on still-healing legs and a bum eye. Then retiring to my makeshift cell, near solitary confinement if not for Seska visiting and trying to drown my sorrows by delving into books. Pretending for a much better life.

Drowning in the workforce is universal, it seems.

The door opens, and it's Seska, in time for another visit. He's still towering over me, but his body language in flux. We don't usually talk for long; but he keeps me updated. UNSC has cut off the complex from damn near everything, but haven't moved in on it.

"Seska?"

"Henrik."

The words are still foreign to him, but I don't really care. The general perception here is that a typical covenant conversation is comprises of worts and fucking nonsense, which clearly isn't the case. Furthermore, a conversation is a conversation.

It occurs to me there's been a veritable silence in between these thoughts.

"How are you doing?"

I get a quizzical tilt of the head from him first, but Seska obliges. "I am in good physical and emotional condition," he says. Might have completely missed the point, but it's a start. "Likewise?"

"Uh, yeah, likewise. Eyes closed and smiling and trying to make myself as "innocent college student" as possible, which is hard to do with an orbital bone pressured in one of your eye sockets. "A little banged up. A little scared."

Before he can respond (though he had already began to give a second confused tilt of his head to the other side) I straighten up and try to look nonchalant. "Anything new happened?"

"The northeast sector of the building has been compromised due to unknown circumstances." Seska paused, maybe still going back to what I said earlier. "That wing of the complex has sustained large damage."

More work, I think. It's petty to still have fears of the daily grind after what's happened, yet I still fear becoming an office drone. I want to be free.

Right?

For the workforce, drowning: someone teach me how to swim.

"Oh, okay," I say casually, and it occurs to me I've been sitting in the middle of this little makeshift cell with my knees hugged to my chest, and it makes me feel pitiful. Then I realize I look pitiful, which drives the point home. "When should I report in for repairing that?"

"You can't."

Though I'm no expert at reading alien eyes and four-pronged mouths I see a measure of sympathy in the sangheili's expression. Is it for me? Or-

"Something wrong?"

Then it dawns on me.

"Wait, isn't the northeast section occupied by you guys? I remember cleaning up there and there were plenty of elit- I mean, Sangheili."

He just stares at me, and another silence hangs like a man in the gallows. Seska finally speaks.

"They're all dead."

i think i'm done tablesetting.