AN: This piece originally dates back to 2014, and it has been sitting on my hard drive since with some small changes made after Halo 5. It is very different from the previous one-shots in this collection, so if you are after some sappy John x Cortana stuff feel free to skip this one and move to the next one-shot that is Moment in Time IV. I repeat, this is not a happy piece.
"There are some pieces of John shattering after Halo 4, but I wanted to try and take a little different approach to John's problems trying to become more human. In a way Chief is about completing objectives, doing anything for a goal and being perfect, so I tried to portray how this could cause a vicious circle: the harder John tries to be human the more he falls into being Chief."
Warnings: Rating changed to M; triggers include torture, self-mutilation, angst, mental health issues, and unrealiable narrator. Head the warnings, although, the whole fandom is about an M-rated game, so this shouldn't be an issue… Small changes made to fit more easily into the ff guidelines.
Clean.
Load.
Safety.
Spartan-117 was readying the weapon set for battle.
The methodical work repeating day after another. Since, despite all the changes, all the different enemies, all the different environments, the preparations for every bigger battle stay the same.
They say that the more one repeats one action the easier said action gets. Maybe it's something do with brains, they adapt, they fall into patterns that become second nature. Soon you will know how to repeat something even while sleeping. However, it's hard to break habits; once you learn how to read it's impossible not to read whenever your eyes spot text. It's natural. No matter how unnatural the action.
He was sitting there again, and like every well-trained soldier, he didn't make a single move under Cortana's gaze.
"Happy now?" Cortana asked sitting astride on the chair in front of him. "Happy now that I'm dead? Are you?"
He chose not to answer but kept staring right next to her. The image of her too painful to be looked at. He had learned from the first three hits that this Cortana wasn't really for answers.
"Do you have anything to say about the incident?"
John stirred from his contemplations by Lasky's question. "No, sir."
"Chief as much as I value your input High Command is getting more worried about your status," Lasky said apprehensively, looking out to space in thought.
"I can fight."
Two privates had gotten injured during a battle against the Prometheans. The situation had been well in their favor before a miss-thought on Chief's part. The other officer wounded critically by one of his bullets.
Like he yet didn't have ONI's psychologists hunting his head. In fact, he really didn't, who would think a machine would need a psychiatrist.
The bullet had just been a mistake. A Mistake. A glitch.
Cortana was leaning back on the chair not three feet away from him. She was bored. John tried once again to move his hands in the binds, not getting any leverage. His left cheek hurt. There was going to be a big bruise soon. Some of his blood was dripping from his right side.
After Requiem, he had tried to find his old self with the help of his team. Go back to his old methods, the simple life.
But no matter what he tried, he was drawn to change himself, become the man he should have managed to be for her. His mind was torn to two ways, the other side never happy whatever decision he made.
She would have said to him softly that humans make mistakes, that that's how they learn.
So, how come every time he tried to be more human it ended up wrong? If it was all because of Forerunner's plan, maybe he wasn't meant to be human at all. Maybe, they knew he would only be faulty.
He was cutting himself with the blade, demanding her if that was what she wanted.
She was crying hysterically on the floor, her voice echoing from the slime-covered walls and accompanied by the steady hum of the ship's engine.
And he felt even worse. Not because of the physical pain, he didn't even feel it, but because so much of him was wrong, and she was hurting because of it.
The more he tried to be human the more he seemed to become a machine. Every plan, every objective coming out more desperate than the last, more controlled to succeed. And every mistake made himself feel less and less, more and more.
"You are not Cortana," John stressed.
The replica just smirked lazily at him, "No. But, I'm all you've got." She accompanied her words by pressing herself a little bit harder against the Chief's groin and tracing his jawline with her fingers.
Then she took the combat knife and traced it lightly down on his chest, leaving a trail of blood in its wake.
She could rip his heart out, but maybe she knew that having it still in him would manage to bring him more pain than the act of removing it.
"We can make a slipspace jump quite close to the ring. Part of the frigate will offer us tactical diversion…" Lasky explained to everyone at the meeting hall before Halsey interrupted him.
"Diversion will do us no good if we can't find the Cartographer or Control room in one go. If Cortana has the whole ring under control, she will detect us, fast." Halsey stated dryly.
"Fireteam Osiris will head to look for the Library, and the Blue team will head towards the Cartographer under Spartan 104's management…"
"With all due respect Sir, I can fight." John's voice echoed through the room.
"Diversion will do us no good if we can't find the Cartographer or Control room in one go. If Cortana has the whole ring under control, she will detect us, fast." Halsey stated dryly.
"This isn't real."
"I never was." Cortana reminisced. "But tell me, my Spartan, if this is not real, why are we here then?"
He didn't have an answer for that.
"Maybe you know you're supposed to be here. You should suffer — do something right." Cortana pondered with a somewhat sad look on her face, playing with his short hair.
"Then why make everything out of it?" She said picking up the combat knife again, tracing his skin with the blade. However, with one unanswered look at John, she stabbed the blade into her own chest.
"You left me to die!"
Despite small curling of his hands, John showed no visible movement.
Cortana pulled the knife out and slumped against him. Her left hand stayed curled behind his head where she had caressed the back of his head.
Still, John kept his stoic mask in place.
This wasn't Cortana. This wasn't real despite the feeling of her blood falling down his chest. He was not to have baggage or form relationships; he had to be too faulty to able to form them anyway. This was not to affect him.
Not even with the escaped tear on his cheek.
Sometimes, the coping mechanism built-in one do little to solve a problem and more to establish them. Still, that's how humans work. No matter how inhuman the method.
A/N: If you feel like the Chief (or Cortana) here, mental health hotlines are just a call away in most countries.