Hey, everyone. Sorry for the delay (again). I've reached a weird place with this story. This is the longest thing I've ever written - not just the longest fanfic, the longest piece of fiction I have ever written. I'm very proud of it. But I'm getting to that point where Reach isn't my main fandom any more, and although I love this story and its characters the writing is beginning to feel like work. That doesn't mean that I won't do the work. It means that updates might come less often, because other fanfic is more relaxing. It doesn't help that there isn't much of a Reach fandom any more, or at least not an active, productive one on sites I frequent. So Wolves isn't dead. I really appreciate the support of all you readers and don't want to let you down. I finally know how the story ends now. But updates might not come as often as usual.
I tackled Spartan relationships head-on in this chapter. The fact is, I still don't quite know how they work. The way I see it, Spartans understand that emotional attachments lead to physical relationships and they understand that physicality has an emotional component, but they don't understand that those two things happen at the same time. This is probably the most sensual chapter in the story. For those who appreciate that I've gone relatively light on the romance, though, I will say that it will be the only scene like this until, probably, the end.
Thanks to wordswithout for, well, writing part of this chapter. We made a trade.
XXIX
The sunlight through the camouflaged bower was strong and yellow. Six thought she would never have been able to guess from a holo that the cities all around had been glassed. The sky was a fragile blue, and the clouds in tatters.
Six said, "I never thought I'd be so happy to see another cave." She stretched her arms up and sighed, then unsealed her helmet and lifted it off. Jorge nodded and held out his hands. She gave him the helmet almost automatically.
He said, "This one is more comfortable than the other." He lowered his voice. "But it was nice to know what our company was doing there."
"You don't think we should trust these guys."
"I don't know why they weren't evacuated. They should have gone to a UNSC rally point. Of course, if they tried from here they probably wouldn't have made it."
Six turned to face him. Lifting up on her toes, she touched both hands to the underside of his helmet and found the release latch on the left side. It was difficult to work from the opposite direction than usual, but she got it and carefully took his helmet off, smiling sheepishly as he leaned down to make it easier. She retreated a few steps and smiled at him mischievously, holding the helmet tight in her arms. "We're okay, right?"
"Right."
She thought then that their relationship had changed from something that needed to be worked on and dealt with to a reassuring, solid presence like Jorge himself, combined with Six's sense of fun and diligence.
The young sentry said something, and Six turned to look at him. She was surprised to see the motherless girl standing there too. The girl's steps had been almost silent, and Six noticed that her dark eyebrows drew together. She was angry at being caught. She didn't move when Six walked toward her, although she stepped to the side in a perhaps unconscious attempt to hide behind a box. The girl peeked out and looked at her silently, drumming her fingers against a box. The sentry remained sitting in his sagging camp chair.
Six approached Laura slowly. "Hey. I'm sorry if I upset you."
Laura's loss brimmed in her eyes, but she refused to talk about it. Opening up about other things was easier. She perked up, throwing one strand of black hair behind her ear. "Do you want me to show you around?"
Six was taken aback by her enthusiasm but didn't show that either. Maybe she could reassure the girl indirectly. "Sure."
"Come on."
Laura led Six toward the back of the cave. They met Kristoff coming out of a side passage, and he looked down at Laura from under thick eyebrows. "Where are you going?" Jorge approached from behind, and Kristoff looked between the Spartans evenly.
Laura said, "I wanted to show her around."
Kristoff nodded solemnly, then looked at Six. "There isn't a lot to see. The rear entrance is defensible but without weapons that doesn't mean much to us."
"I understand." Six nodded.
Kristoff passed a hand over his face. "We're tired. Go ahead." He blinked. "How long do you intend to stay here?"
Jorge sounded quizzical. "Not sure. Until we find someplace better. Isn't that your plan?"
"Of course." Kristoff looked down. "There just doesn't seem to be anywhere better right now. Jozka keeps us fed. And you..." He looked at the sword at Six's hip and Jorge's heavy turret gun. "Thank you for helping us."
"That's all right," Jorge said calmly. "We'd like to search the city for a comm tower we can refit."
"The Covenant bombed it thoroughly." Kristoff shook his head. "I doubt there are any left."
"We'll find out."
"Only the two of you?"
Six said, "We've gotten this far."
Kristoff asked how many Spartans they had been traveling with, and Jorge began to talk about their long route here. Laura glanced at Six and moved into the far hallway. Six followed. Her main impressions of Kristoff were that he had gained the gray in his hair recently: he was nervous about his people surviving, and it meant a lot that a civilian could even bear that weight. He lead like a professional, even if his sentry posts were made with plastic suitcases.
Laura lead her to a branch of the cave. it widened out into an area where the survivors had pitched tents and strewn blankets. Laura gestured beyond it and lead Six into a narrower corridor. The Spartan's shoulder armor hit the sides of the wall for a few steps, but then the two women emerged into another lighted section of the cave. There was no easy exit here: the route to the sky was eight feet up and covered in naturally tangled vines and leaves. Another camp chair was folded against the wall.
"This is the second guard post." Laura grasped the chair and rocked it back and forth.
"Why isn't there anyone here?" The tactical weakness looked dangerous to Six.
"I thought there was. I dunno." She shrugged.
"We should get someone to stand guard here." Six headed for the hall, training and not a little bit of fear kicking in.
"Wait!" Laura held out a hand. She stood away from the chair, like a boat unmooring, and drifted to the middle of the alcove. "I wanted to talk to you."
Six wasn't sure whether her concerned look conveyed actual concern, even without her helmet on, but she tried anyway. "Something you wanted to say without the others around?"
"I guess. I just thought...if you came from another part of the planet, maybe other parts were safer."
Six's heart sank, but she had to tell the truth, and quickly. "They're not. I'm sorry. We're going to try to get in touch with someone who can help as soon as we can, but I don't know when that will be."
Laura said, "Kristoff says we'll leave when everything's ready. But I don't know how we'll be any more ready than we are now." She looked down, and then abruptly changed the subject. "She gave me this." Six was beginning to see that Laura either didn't cope well with talking about her mother directly, or liked to spring the news of her death on people. Maybe both. The 'she' must have referred to Laura's mother, but the girl held out a silver necklace strung with a small, pointed tooth like a shark's, and a gray-and-white feather that Six would have sworn came from a Skirmisher. If the tooth was from an Elite, and it looked a lot like Relk's, Six had no idea how Laura's mother would have acquired either item.
Laura held the necklace out but didn't let it go, and Six let the feather and the tooth fall through her fingers. "These look like they're from...Covenant."
"My mom killed them." Laura lifted her chin.
Six looked at her in surprise. "I thought you didn't have weapons."
"Kristoff gave mom a shotgun the first time she went to get food from our house. Her and Kristoff have been friends since my dad moved to the city. I thought they were going to get together, but it never really happened."
"What happened to your dad when the invasion started?"
"I don't know. I thought when we got to Earth or where ever... you know, after this... I could find out." At the mention of her father the girl finally began to look snuffly and lost. Six put a hand on her shoulder but wasn't sure what to do next. Luckily Laura decided for her, rallying and slipping out from under her touch to sail down the hallway again. Six followed her to the room with the tents, the biggest one she'd seen in this cave so far. Jozka was there now, sitting in a chair with a contentedly blank expression. He lifted a short-fingered hand to wave at Laura, and she returned the same language-transcending gesture. Laura sounded proud again. "We live here. Girls on one side, guys on the other."
"That's how it was for Spartans too," Six said without even thinking about it, but the place reminded her of the large dorms modeled after samurai and Greek Spartan life-training schools.
Laura did not seem interested. She looked up at Six and wiped her tears off her cheek. Six knew it was a big deal for the girl to be crying in front of her, and she didn't know why Laura had taken to her so quickly, but it was good to be able to talk. When she spoke again Six could see how adult she was in her thin cheekbones and the way she flicked her hair back. "Do you need anything?"
Six smiled. Laura was taking charge. She would make a good soldier. "Honestly, the only thing I really need is a shower. A hot meal would be good but hot water...that would be best."
Laura smiled back. "We don't have any hot water, but we do have the lake. It's on the other side of the cave. Here, I'll get you a towel." She moved over to a dusty sleeping bag and rummaged through a backpack that sat in the middle of it. Six noticed her shoulders fell when she turned her face to the bag, as if she couldn't keep up a facade. She kept talking, though. "We had enough soap for a while but that ran out fast, sorry...I should have gotten more from...the house. Here you go." The towel was white and made of a porous material that wasn't even as fuzzy as what you got in the army.
Six draped it over her arm. "Thanks."
Laura gave her more directions to the lake, and Six dashed as soon as they were finished. She saw Kristoff and Jorge talking in the main room and passed them by. Jorge would reach her on her radio if he needed to talk.
The second branch of the cave was about as long as the first, with another oddly-shaped room with a sloping entrance to one side. Six saw more survivors there, talking in a tight group, but she moved on and they looked up quickly, their eyes moon-bright in the darkness, before ignoring her.
At the end of the path she found the lake, a small but deep natural pool about ten feet across and lit by the same mismatched, bare bulbs that the survivors used everywhere. A gap in the cave far above let in dappled light through the foliage. Most tenacious plants had grown up in the corner that must have gotten the most access to the sun, creating a small hill at the edge of the lake with a patch of ferns and grass on the top. The water was tinged slightly green, and was deep enough in places that it turned black and obscured the pool's depth. Six guessed that it had underwater egresses on either side. When she dipped her hands in and splashed the water on her face it was shockingly cold but refreshing and clear; a drop that ended up between her lips tasted coppery and sweet.
MJOLNIR armor took a lot of time, balance, and strategy to remove without the help of a robotic arm, but it was possible, and Spartans got training for survival missions like this. The thick orange plates on her arms came off last; the assisted power helped make removing everything else easier. The rest was simple, and she left her bodysuit and undergarments on the shore while she waded into the lake with one hand capping the metal circle of her femoral IV dock and the other gingerly testing the rippled surface of the water.
The lakefloor dropped off fast so she stayed in the lighted shallows, and with great gusto gave her hair the soaking she had wanted for weeks. She got used to the cold and splashed around, feeling the smile on her face and the water streaming around her. Feeling clean was a joy.
Spartan-IIIs did not associate their bodies with shame. They were usually old enough at the onset of training to have learned some social taboos, but in training gender distinction mattered very little. Modesty among their own kind became as irrelevant to a Spartan as it would be to an animal. This meant that Six sat on the shore, combing her fingers through her hair and thinking about how best to defend the human survivors from the Covenant, while Jorge walked in behind her, said a brief hello, and took his bath. When he finished, he shaved his week-old beard with a razor acquired from Kristoff and sat at the edge of the water wearing the bottom half of his black suit. Six shrugged her own under-suit over her shoulders, covering pale skin that finally, after almost four weeks, felt comfortable and healthy.
With a great sense of gratitude to Laura, she sat down next to Jorge near the water and watched the fading sunlight filter through the vine-covered crack in the ceiling.
He followed her gaze. "It's not a bad view," he said. "Would have been preserved already if Reach weren't such a young colony. These people were lucky to find it. It shouldn't have happened in the middle of the war."
She nodded, then stretched sore arms and waited. The conversation faded but the silence that replaced it wasn't awkward: any soldier in the universe was used to silence. Any Spartan, doubly so. They sat and it was quiet. Six wasn't sure how or why, but she knew that the moment would hold as long as it was needed and then it would be changed.
She waited.
"I think," said Jorge, "I think we were lucky, too." And then he kissed her.
Their last kiss had been gentle and hesitant, but this threw those things away and became all strength and teeth. Six leaned into it, craving the touch of skin that wasn't hers. Spartans became their armor after a while, so that Jun seemed to have green flesh and Kat was blue when Six thought about her. Their armor was alive, or almost so, and so it was exhilarating to grab at Jorge with human hands and feel his body as it was, half man and half weapon, metallic heartbeat somewhere far below.
Jorge's hands were on her hips, in her hair, running across her face. She bit his lip because it was a human part and went swollen with blood for the second after she let go. They scuffled more than embraced, or else no one had ever bothered to show Six the difference, and in their haste her back hitched up against the small outcrop of foliage and something heavy dropped into the water. Both of them startled: she felt Jorge go stiff in her arms.
Six was a soldier and she knew her duty, but for that first moment, lost in her fascination with another human's skin, she cursed the war that was ever a distraction. Then Jorge was pulling away from her, saying, "Come look at this," in her ear, and she had no choice but to look where he was pointing.
The stock of a rifle was poking out from under a fern, and Six peered down into the water where the ripples were dying to see another DMR at the bottom of the lake. Jorge moved dirt around until a pile caved in and they saw, formerly hidden under the plants, a cache of weapons.
The Sangheili soldiers returned to the barracks after Lassa fell asleep. She woke to them growling and jostling among themselves. Lassa blinked rapidly and moved off the bed as soon as a female in blue armor stalked toward it. Even if Lassa was on a holy mission of revenge, she was still going to show deference to actual trained soldiers.
She approached two Sangheili who were talking by the door. They ignored her until she spoke up. "Excuse me."
The two looked down at her.
"I'm trying to find humans. Can you help me?"
The soldiers exchanged glances, mandibles fluttering and breaking up the smooth, brown surface of their cheeks. They probably thought she was a spy or a mystic. A mere child wouldn't have been able to get in here.
"They're almost all gone," one soldier said brusquely.
The other was slightly taller and prouder. "There's another nest that we will gloriously destroy tomorrow."
The reverent tone made Lassa think this female would accept the idea of a covert cleric testing the soldiers' faith. To test her, Lassa said, "Have you followed all of the proscribed Forerunner laws to reach this conclusion?" Her voice was higher-pitched than she liked. Lassa curled her fingers and vowed to train herself to sound more adult and less subservient.
"Of course," the deferent soldier said.
The proud one had to get a word in. "There's not a lot of protocol required in tracking a ship. It's been trying to evade us, but she's right: it's got to come down sometime and we'd rather find where it's going and kill them all then just shoot down the ship and chance losing it. As the Forerunners dictate, we should clear the universe of heretics." Lassa couldn't quite be sure if the soldier was being sarcastic as she said this, but their gazes locked.
"Good," Lassa said, trying to keep up a condescending tone. "The World's Oracle will be pleased." She turned to go, but the devout soldier held out a hand.
"He sent you here?"
Lassa turned and took a risk. "Yes."
"Is he happy with us?" She looked worried. The other soldier narrowed her eyes.
Lassa got an idea. "Yes. But he demands more charity from his people. I was told you would provide me with a bed."
"Of course..." said the devout one. "But we don't have an extra..."
"Yes we do," said the taller soldier. "Are you against sleeping in a dead woman's bed, ma'am?"
"No," Lassa replied quickly without really thinking about it. She wouldn't object to much. She needed to get her revenge.
That night she lay there in clean-smelling sheets made to regulation standard. Every slight sound of the Sangheili shifting around in the darkness reminded her that these people could bring her closer to the demons she needed to kill. When that was over, she could go home again. She could take up knitting.
