Reiterated Reflections
The Master Chief had always known war. Always, there was no relenting. It assaulted all of his senses, chipping away, bit by bit, at his sanity. You couldn't tell this from by looking at the man, he wasn't really even a man anymore. He was a machine. Everyone thought of him as one. The amber visor hid his face, he seemed inhuman. You could never tell his emotions, always calm and collected. In the heat of battle especially. Only a missing doctor and a few suits in ONI knew anything about his origins. The hell he had been put through.
Kidnapped at the age of six, only six. A mere child, abducted and bred to kill. There were happy times, few, but they were still there. Pushed back into only the deepest recesses of his mind. He had few friends, some of them even he doubted were really friends. There were his squad mates, men and women that went through the same hell he did. Going through those hardships together had formed a feeling of brotherhood among them. Most of them were dead though, only three of them remained.
He really hadn't thought about what he'd do if he ever got out of the war, if he wasn't needed anymore. He chuckled whenever his mind strayed down that path of thought. Earth would always need him, whether it was putting down rebels, to fighting wars, he would always be in service. In service, he was even beginning to think of himself as a machine. He never asked for this, it was forced upon him. The Earth was in need, and they plucked him from his life, ending any chance at normality. He never particularly liked killing, it was... a complication. He had nightmares, all the death had caught up to him when he slumbered. It invaded his thoughts, resistance was pointless. They would force their way in. The blood of fellow soldiers, the blood of enemies, after a while, they both swilled together into a unwholesome mix.
The horrors of Halo were a reoccurring nightmares. Stranded, practically alone, and faced with impossible odds. Then the Flood, they were the worst thing his imagination could conjure. He knew all too well the horrors of war, but this, this went beyond any comprehensible fear. It shook your core, trepidation would settle in, your stomach would contort into an acid laced knot, and your breathing would hitch. The inhuman shrieks wracked his mind long after the incident on Halo. He would sometimes imagine their repulsive bodies stumbling through the haze, their tentacles flailing wildly beside them, and the mangled face of their host. He would mentally shudder.
It was getting to be too much for him. He was tired, tired of the fighting, tired of the war, tired of everything. His reflexes were slower now, not a noticeable change to a casual observer, who stood in awe when they beheld him in action, but sluggish to him and the other SPARTAN's. He was still fast, but compared to his "younger" self, he was sluggish. He was gradually making the change from relying on physical abilities to relying on mental abilities. He calculated situations more and more, rather than charge headlong into firefight, relying on speed and his armor to see him through. He had always had back-up though, and seemed to fall back on that more and more. The feeling of liquid mercury in his head reminded him of that.
Cortana was as close as a friend as an AI could get. The most advanced AI to date, had been implanted into his suit. She had developed a personality, quite rare among her kind. Always quipping at his escapades, always commenting on his brutish nature. He never really minded, Cortana was Cortana, there was no helping that. Ever since Halo, she had been... twitchy. She hadn't been working at maximum capacity, she was different, there wasn't really any specific way to describe the way she was acting. John couldn't put his finger on it, it was just different.
She was his partner, helping him out of the most adverse situations. She was the reason they were able to destroy Halo. Sure, part of it was his military skills, but she was the brains behind the operation. She had directed him, she had discovered the answers Halo's mysteries. John didn't know if he would have made it off that damned ring without her help. He tried not to dwell on it, it would only serve to inflate her ego even more.
John, it seemed alien to him. He couldn't remember the last time anyone besides Dr. Halsley had used his proper name. Was it proper? He didn't know anymore, he was referred to by his rank, or his serial number. Those were deemed more appropriate in his line of work, he knew it made him seem machine-like every time he was recognized by that name. He thought to himself if he had any other purpose, besides killing. If he could even achieve something other than killing. Nothing came to mind, politics bored him, and his skills couldn't be implemented in any other profession.
He was bound to the life of a soldier it seemed, and he wasn't sure if he liked it or not. But John had never considered himself a good thinker. He may have been smarter than the average marine, but never really cared for nor secured a grasp on philosophy. That was left to the smarter, more enlightened individuals, he wouldn't need to know the secrets of life, he only would need to know how to take life.
It seemed to him as though he was brought into existence only to kill, deprive others of life. He often thought to himself what would happen if he had been set on another path, one apart from the life of a SPARTAN. It made an interesting topic, it gave him something to mull over in his spare time. Something to satiate him until his mind was stimulated, yet again with battle. He more times than likely ended up with the thought that this was the perfect life for him. He was perfectly suited to it. He found himself in the mindset that if he hadn't been destined to be a soldier, he would have ended up a casualty when the Covenant had invaded Earth. He decided that he didn't like the idea of being just another corpse, that he would make a difference in the course of mankind. And he'd be damned if he was to sit there and watch the genocide of his race. So, he fought on. And concluded that he would continue to fight on. He smirked at the hell he was going to induce upon the Covenant.