0350 HOURS, APRIL 25, 2559, (MILITARY CALENDAR) /
VALLEJO CITY, PLANET BALLAST, EPSILON ERIDANI SYSTEM
Captain Lash was waiting for them in the hangar as they disembarked from the Pelican. John and Linda led the procession, the still-bound Doctor Graham being dragged along behind them.
Fred and Kelly lagged behind, standing on either side of the open cargo hold to ensure that everyone left the Pelican. It had been a bumpy exfiltration – between the Created's surprise attack and a few close calls before Alex activated the cloak, the dropship's passengers had sustained some minor injuries. Nothing worse than a few limps and a sprained wrist, but it was protocol to make sure everyone was fit to leave.
At the end of the procession, Alex paused awkwardly between the Spartans. She looked back and forth between them, but kept her eyes down. She was twisting the ring on her left hand.
The small woman finally turned to Fred. Her eyes were still red, though no more tears flowed. "Thank you," she said. Her mouth opened again, but no more words came. She dropped her gaze back to the deck and rushed down the gangplank.
Fred looked away as she left. Part of him wished he had said something. Most of him knew there was nothing he could say. There was nothing he could do to bring her husband back – no matter how badly he wished he could.
"We should go, LT."
Fred suddenly realized that he and Kelly were standing alone in the Pelican. She was looking at him, her head cocked slightly to one side.
"Right," he said, doing his best to muster up a smile and hoping that Kelly wouldn't examine his tone of voice too hard, "I'd hate to miss one of John's thrilling debriefings." He left without waiting for a response.
The ONI team and the civilians were already being led out of the hangar when he emerged. All that remained now, besides the Spartans, were Captain Lash and an Ensign holding Graham by the scruff. The scientist squirmed this way and that, shouting indignantly. It made Fred's blood boil.
"You can't arrest me," Graham spat, "you need me. I insist on – "
"Read the room, Doctor." Lash cut in, silencing the obnoxious tirade for just a moment. "You see those Spartans over there? If they deemed you a threat, I'd be powerless to protect you even if I wanted to." The captain stepped close to Graham and straightened the red-faced man's jacket lapels. "Between you and me," Lash added as he brushed some nonexistent dust from the flustered ONI operative's shoulders, "I think they look a little pissed off."
Graham looked over his shoulder at the Spartans. He had the decency to look embarrassed as the color drained from his face.
Fred wondered how satisfying it might be to break some of his bones.
Kelly's hand bumped against Fred's again. Though he still didn't understand the significance, he appreciated the distraction. He relaxed his fingers from the fists he subconsciously balled his hands into.
"Now, Doctor," Lash said with a tired sigh, "if it were up to me, you'd get flushed down the toilet in bit-sized pieces and float through vacuum for the next few millennia. However, Cortana contacted you intentionally. So I'm going to hang onto you. Let some of your former colleagues in what's left of our Office of Naval Intelligence have a word with you." He clapped Graham on the shoulder. "Between you and me, I think in time you'll come to wish you'd gotten my treatment instead."
The captain turned to the Spartans. "Master Chief, I'll expect your full report. But first, get some rest. I'm sure you all need it."
Frederic-104 didn't sleep well. He hadn't for years.
The man lay in pitch dark with his eyes open, incapable of meeting the faces that inevitably assaulted his mind the moment he allowed them to close. Most nights, he would lay as still as possible and let physical exhaustion eventually overtake him. Others, he studied each face – the face of every Spartan who had died under his command; the face of every soldier he had failed. The face of each and every member of his family gone, while he remained.
Isaac, Grace, Vinh, Joshua . . . each face burned into his retinas like lasers cutting through styrofoam. Each one of them a hero. Each one of them he failed.
Some nights were better; the voices quieted, and the images eventually faded to nothing and allowed him to drift off to sleep. Others were so bad that he abandoned the notion of sleep altogether and forced himself to occupy his mind with something – anything – else.
This night was the latter.
Fred rose from his bed and exited the barracks silently. He didn't want to disturb his team, but he couldn't lie still any longer. Exiting the special-fit bunk room that had been assigned to Blue Team, the lieutenant made his way through narrow corridors to the Dusk's rec room.
The area was small by most standards in the UNSC Navy, though that was typical of Prowlers. Without the detachment of marines and combat pilots that most other ships carried, Prowlers didn't need to expend space for exercise equipment. They were, however, stocked with enough machinery to keep the ship's small crew in the best form possible.
In particular, Fred was searching for one piece of machinery that had become commonplace on most UNSC vessels following the induction of the SPARTAN-IV program. Codenamed WARZONE, the machine was designed to accurately simulate combat for training purposes. Loaded with recordings to mimic all opponents the UNSC had faced – from Grunts to Hunters – and linked with the MJOLNIR undersuit, it created a hyper-realistic combat routine. On the Infinity, WARZONE could be used to put dozens of Spartans through full-scale combat simulations. On smaller vessels it was downscaled to a single occupant.
On the Dusk, WARZONE was attached to a small boxing ring in the rec room. Fred deftly stepped through the ropes and loaded a sequence on the machine. It was a personal scenario, made up of increasingly difficult opponents. As the holographic displays began to warm up, Fred swung his arms and shook his legs to loosen his tight muscles.
No matter how hard he tried though, it was never enough of a distraction.
He ducked under an Elite's energy sword. Joshua's hijacked Banshee, spewing smoke as it hurtled from the sky. He dove and rolled to avoid a smashing blow from a Hunter's shield. Malcolm - dead in a heap on the ground, having been denied even the death of a warrior. He plunged his knife through the armored carapace of a Promethean Knight. Holly, her entire body vanishing under the onslaught of a Hunter's plasma cannon as she stepped forward to protect Kelly.
Those images never left his mind. The sounds. The smells. The awful feeling of rage. The knowledge that he couldn't save them.
The pained smile and unpracticed salute of a young police officer was at home amongst these memories. Fresh, new, yet familiar – as if it had always been in the back of his mind.
He had no idea how long it had been when he dropped to his knees; labored breathing caused as much by the physical exertion as by the mental assault of seeing each member of his family on a horrendous parade through his mind. All at once the bodysuit that was usually nothing more than an extra layer of skin suddenly felt so tight around his throat that it was strangling him.
With trembling hands, he forced his fingertips underneath the nanofiber material that clung to his jawline and violently wrenched it apart, tearing the fabric from the point of his chin down to his sternum and leaving the flaps hanging open. The weight didn't subside.
He fell backward until he leaned against the corner post of the boxing ring, then brought his knees up to his chest and rested his head in his hands. And he breathed.
In
Out
In
Out
He didn't know how long he had stayed in that position when he felt a vibration run through the pole behind him; someone was pushing their way through the ropes and into the ring. Reflexively, the Spartan lifted his head and made to rise from the ground, preparing to quickly leave the ring to make room for whatever crewman had come for their own exercise, and to – hopefully – avoid any uncomfortable questions he would have to lie about.
Instead of the tentative crewman in sweatpants and t-shirt he expected when he lifted his gaze, there was a striking figure, standing more than two meters tall, with dark brown hair tied back in a ponytail and blue eyes that were trying hard to hide the concern behind them.
Kelly stepped toward Fred and held up a hand, forestalling further attempts to rise to his feet. When he relented and settled his shoulders against the post behind him, she silently went to the console and deactivated the program. The rec room fell into silence once more.
Kelly knelt in front of him. Fred did his best to look nonchalant as he avoided her gaze. They sat in silence for some time, Fred diligently studying every square inch of the ceiling in an effort to avoid his partner's eyes.
"Must have been some kind of fight," she finally said, gesturing to Fred's torn bodysuit.
"You should see the other guy," he replied, doing his best to muster a convincing grin. When he turned to his partner, he was confronted by her stare.
Her eyes were familiar, as were the eyes of each of his teammates. Kelly's were a dark blue, interrupted by white lines stretching from the pupil to the edge of the iris. The white intermingled with the blue, lazily spreading outward in a way that drew to mind the clouds that, as a child, he used to watch meander across the deep blue sky of a late Reavian summer.
Yet another memory that reminded him of his failures. It was unlikely anyone would be able to appreciate the beauty of the sunset on Reach again. Yet another image he would never see again, except behind his own closed eyes as he tried in vain to sleep.
"It isn't your fault."
The statement cut through his thoughts like a plasma sword through a block of ice. The words dashed through his mind, passing so quickly that the Spartan almost wondered if he imagined it. The only confirmation that his partner had said anything were the extra worry lines crinkling the corner of her eyes, and the sudden tightness in his chest in response to what he knew she was referring to. Fred opened his mouth to answer but, for once, no smart remark came to mind.
"They aren't your fault," Kelly said. The worry lines deepened. "Spartans. Marines. Civilians. They all knew what they were getting into. They chose to go."
He coughed out a laugh. "I don't know what you're talking about, Rabbit," he lied.
"He isn't your fault."
His chest tightened. His legs were trembling. He wanted to say something. To diffuse the tension with humor. To push the feelings back down until they were so deep that he could be sure he was safe from them again. For things to go back to normal, at least for a while.
Instead, he stayed silent. Kelly stayed silent. The entire universe was silent. The silence pressed in on Fred – isolated him, dragged him into a pitch black abyss and squeezed from all sides. It was like a tidal wave crashing over his body – just as tangible and twice as loud.
Then the silence broke. He felt a hand slowly reach out and press itself against the right side of his face. The palm pressed against his cheek and the finger splayed out, the thumb on his cheekbone and the little finger curling below his jaw. Another hand landed at the base of the left side of his neck.
The feeling was unusual – Spartans weren't exactly known for being "touchy." Though he knew whatever Kelly was doing couldn't possibly mean him harm, Fred's instincts screamed to distance himself from the foreign experience until he could be sure he was safe. Instead, he opened his eyes and found himself drawn back once more to the beautiful clouds tracking across the open air over the Longhorn Valley.
"Those places aren't home," Kelly said. "Reach, Imber, Ballast . . . no place is our home." She seemed to study his eyes as she spoke. Then she gingerly pulled his face forward until his forehead rested against hers. The new gesture surprised him, but once again he didn't recoil. In fact, he found himself leaning back against her, matching the pressure she was putting against him.
"We're Spartans," Kelly whispered. "Our heritage is each other. We are our home."
They fell once more into silence, though this time the silence wasn't so loud.
When he closed his eyes, the faces of his family slowly faded away. Kurt, with one last handshake before he made the ultimate sacrifice. Li, vanishing in an explosion during a zero-gravity battle; the one place the man had truly felt at ease. Ellsworth, with blood staining his teeth as he smiled with the hope that he was fulfilling his most sacred vows.
Each face slowly passed on and was replaced by a single thought as Fred took in the sound of the Dusk's systems, the light of the rec-room lighting his eyelids, and the feeling of Kelly's hands cradling his face and their foreheads still resting one against the other.
We are our own home.
Welcome home.
Author's Note: Thanks to my personal Santa Clause, Separatist Supporter, the last chapter has gotten here just in time for Christmas. Which is so exciting I can't even handle it.
I just wanted to say, once again, thank you to everyone who has spent the time to read and review this story. It's actually the first story longer than three chapters that I've ever finished, and I'm absolutely stoked about it. And you all have been insanely influential in getting me there.
Thanks to all the people who followed and/or favorited either the story or me as a writer. Thanks, you're all the best!
ladywolvesbayne, laughingfox31, Just a Crazy-Man, TheWizardofOzbourne, and especially kpmh2001 - you are all incredible. I don't deserve you. Your reviews have been insanely helpful to me and have inspired me to write more and, hopefully, better.
I also really want to thank Separatist Supporter for being the best editor, idea man, and example of writing that I have been lucky enough to get help from.