A/N: That's right fuckers I spartan-smiled them. I'm glad for the reaction I evoked from all of you regarding it, seeing as every single review about that last chapter mentioned it.

Anyway, you're getting another Mai and JD centric chapter so the next one I can jump straight into Feros and I can put on my military writer persona again for a bit, because I do actually want to get ME1 moving along from the rather slow pace we've been going at. Because after Feros and Liara's first mind meld, shit just starts rolling and it won't stop going until I reach my version of the end of ME1.

Feros, at least for my Shepard, will be performed a little differently? I've been highlighting Hitman a lot, for one, because they are my trademark characters that show up in a lot of my other stories, and also because they exist as an asset for Shepard in a sorta ME3-style War Asset kinda way. As in she will use them to their full hypothetical extent. So we're gonna see a full on deployment next chapter.

Another thing to keep in mind about JD and Mai as you're coming to read them and watch them develop is that they are... well, young. They're both 26-27, and for a lot of people here, you're either not that far off from that age, or you're actually older than them. For Mai I don't think it's that much of a factor, but for JD, it is, because he never really had time to be young, after a certain point, and it will shape his decisions going forward. I mean, the man wants to live his life.

1-16

Soldiers aren't Machines, We're Just People

"He turned on me. My teacher. Put a gun to my head, destroyed me, burned me alive." Nihlus Kryik had spoken to the Council, they together in their private chambers, had heard what it was like to die.

"So it's true now, without doubt." Sparatus seemed almost sore, but respectable all the same. The word of a Turian Spectre spoken to him had been great enough to finally settle it all. Nihlus was alive, and he told his story. About Eden Prime, about how he had fought Saren down to the bone and lost, how he saw him kill an innocent man and then turn his gun on him. His survival hadn't just been one miracle, however, but several. Shepard had sought out to avenge him, but it was perhaps, not needed, not when he had been alive… Then again perhaps it was warranted given his current state.

When he came to, he knew he had been awake; as if his head had been against the pillow and he couldn't turn over, that blackness that took him over as, seconds later, he felt the drowning sensation coming from the very pit of his mind. A tsunami of feeling overtaking him in a measure of plain existence which he could only approximate as birth by sleep; where breath eluded him, and yet he had too much of it. He had seen more clearly than he ever had before, and yet wanted to shut his eye. The warmth of fire and yet it felt of ice. His very being spread far and far as if water itself until, all at once, he drew himself back into himself.

He was familiar with the concept of phantom pain. He had lost a good enough chunk of flesh that he had to get grafted and syntheweave skin after a mission for, and he had felt the ghost of sensation where his born flesh and blood had once been. To now feel it over his entire being, it felt odd, but how he felt it had been more of note as he gathered himself in whatever state he was. It was the opposite of having his eyes closed, to see, he had to focus, focus, focus.

Here, now, now, now, now.

There had been a new ceiling to him now, beyond opening his eyes. Seeing too much perhaps.

"Spirits. He's awake." He heard that voice and he leaped at it as a Cat from the Human ecology leaped at light, and when he held onto it, he had truly returned.

Simulated Adaptive Matrix. That was half of what he was now, standing, constrained, at least at present, on a pad borrowed from Avina.

Nihlus had been turned into synthetic life.

A union between flesh and blood, and nodes and virtuality.

Some would call him an AI, in fact, as he had come to and created his consciousness, he had called himself that. Though no, he hadn't been. Technically.

He had been still Nihlus, he was born. Just who he was now was just a trial to save his life.

Whether or not he had been the same Nihlus, well, he would've been skeptical either way. So his personality, at least, had survived the treatment they prescribed to him: setting an AI implant in the middle of his brain, using its matrixes to fill back in the damage on his mind as sustained. Existential questions he didn't think he needed to answer as he awoke from a coma, outside his body, his point of contact with the world nothing more than a holographic display rigged to his body. The mind was so easy to project the image of onesself, that the figure he became on that display had been himself, if not with a few inconsistencies.

Just as he had seen so much more, he had thought so much more the second he had began anew, before the doctors in that room could speak to him. Flooding him, drowning him before instinctively he cut himself off, as if holding his breath.

He could only let go once he had been cognitive of the fact he had been in the presence of his body: charred and mutilated, his head split open and his brain cleanly seen, wires and cybernetics being grafted on it.

"What's- what's going on!?"

"Nihlus! Nihlus! Stay calm, stay perfectly calm!"

Nihlus would've gone against the words of one of the doctors, slamming into a table, trying to touch his own body, but his hands (he had hands now, forming, moving, feeling, just like he knew he could) phased through. He was less than corporeal, and that's when the gears in his mind started turning, the rumors of yesteryear, the very affair before him. He remembered about Alec Ryder's experiments, the search for a synthesis between AI and Organic life so he could save his dying wife. The Spectres were all briefed on it, just in case his research bore fruit. Ryder was ostracized, banished, both in the Citadel and in the Alliance, but yet his research survived, and now, they were brought to bear on Nihlus.

Days passed, feeling like years before Nihlus sorted out a time dilation internally which felt right for him. He had different rules now, as illogical as it felt. He wasn't a body, something constrained by organic limits. He was a mind, unbound now, for the sake of his life. The doctors, and the Council, explained the procedure: how his body was dying and so was his mind, stuck in a coma. The only way anyone saw was to iterate on Alec Ryder's research and sacrifice him to see if anything could be done.

Long-story short, transferred to the Council Archives, he was no nothing more than a brain in a jar, connected to the same network that Avina had been, albeit actually intelligent. They had gotten rid of his body soon after he had awoken. He had no sense of smell anymore, but the doctors described the decay, and understood.

He understood faster, better, than anticipated, or maybe he just had the headspace to recognize that, maybe, perhaps, this was better than dead.

"You're, and try to think abstractly with this," It was mostly Human doctors and scientists following up with him as he remained secluded inside of the private Council dormitories, and even then secluded had been a choice word, he could go anywhere now (in fact, he was everywhere now). "Still what we consider organic life. However, your life, your consciousness, relies on the neural repairs done by what we consider an AI. Our method of communication right now is no more, no different, than well, using a QED platform." The Human doctor went on as he spoke to the hologram that had been Nihlus in his casual clothes, hanging loosely about him. He caught the image of his mirage, his "physical" self, in the reflections of a mirror. He had the wireframe and ghost-like presence of Avina, shades of blue and gray hiding his more distinct features, but his face was still there. He emoted all the same, moved his mouth as he spoke. Why did he do that? He needed emulate a Turian while talking, he was nothing more than electronics and hardware.

He asked and the doctor explained, even as Nihlus himself was frustrated with not knowing, inherently why. "Your mind is still of a Turian, made for Turian biological and psychological responses. You may not need, to say, eat, because your nutrition isn't necessarily tied to a digestive system anymore, but you need to do the motions, as if you were, I believe. This is all so very new, as you can understand, but it's my best guess." Nihlus felt the self he had in audience of that doctor furrow his brow, his mandibles clicking as he tried to take it in. He was everywhere at once in the Citadel, hooked up to systems meant for Avina, and then the broader Extranet. If he tried, he could reach beyond through the network to the broader galaxy, but even thinking about it had made his head explode. Even containing the whole of the Citadel in his peripheral had already been a great mental strain.

"Are you telling me I have to conjure, holographic food, and shovel that in as if I was?"

"We don't know, Nihlus. But we cannot stress enough, you are still you; you are still organic, alive."

They ran him through a debrief, questions of his biographical history, personal questions even he ad been surprised they had (Yes, he did briefly have a relationship in the Turian Navy with a fellow shipmate. Yes, he knew it was taboo. Yes, he did hide it from the Council and Saren.) He answered, and was evaluated, that fact they had been telling him that entire time he had come back: He was Nihlus Krycik.

"You should've just let me die." Nihlus had almost cried at Sparatus as the man was the first to truly talk to him after he had woken up, found his form.

Sparatus shook his head. "You know we wouldn't let that happen willingly."

He paused time for himself, during those moments of crisis, imperceptible now by the true organics around him: giving him hours, days, weeks, months to work out in his head that he hadn't been allowed to die, or that he had seen the other side and seen nothing. It was a terrible thing, to work out that finality alone. Though he was a Spectre. He had been ready to die since he signed up; nothing changed now, given the opportunity to live.

When all was said and done, and when he became, relatively, stable, he was called to the Council's private meeting chamber, and so he had went and appeared. The best way he could describe how he "appeared" and "went" places now was that he blinked, thought about it, as if as natural as walking, so he had. Avina's projection pad had been misleading. He had actually been present of that entire, glassy and steel room, but the projector was limited to its circle, his physical projection constrained, but still handy, it gave the Councilors something to look at, to concentrate. The same had gone for Nihlus.

There, he had told them the truth, as Shepard had said. He had viewed Shepard's trial, and her eventual integration, into the Spectres; recent events about the Geth and investigations into Saren. A lot had happened in his absence, but it wasn't as if he hadn;t already known. Before he knew how to filter his processing, in those hazy first moments when they attached him access to Avina's network connections, a deluge of information was forcibly processed by him. He no longer needed a translator, for example. He had fully understood native Asari or Salarian tongue without it.

"I'm glad you're alive, Nihlus." Tevos had said as they all settled, hearing what Nihlus had to say, putting their doubts about Shepard (minus the Reapers) finally at rest. Saren was a traitor. That, even gifted with the processing power of an AI, had a hard time processing still. "How is it? Seeing the world through the lens of an AI?"

His holographic form flickered before he answered, his voice tinged, not only with Turian flange, but electronic. This was not his voice, but it was generated, approximated. It would take time for it to smoothen out. "Overwhelming." He answered. "This entire Citadel, I can feel it."

"Can you see it all?" Valern folded one of his long fingers below his chin. Damn Salarian, Nihlus thought, always thinking about the intelligence implications.

"I can try, but if I do, it hurts. I can feel it hurting me to expand myself so far." His holographic avatar had only been able to touch itself, his hand touching own chin before palming his eyes. "But if I take a step back, I can see everything in my peripheral, knowing I can turn to exactly where I need to be."

"Is it suffering? Are you in pain?" Tevos asked empathetically.

Turians, good Turians that is, paid no mind to pain. His gut reaction had been to shake his head once, quietly. "I have to keep reminding myself I'm not a computer."

He was not there, in front of them. He knew that they were there, he was taking in information from sensors about the questions they were asking him and thus responding, and for ease of use he had projected an avatar, but he was not, in the traditional sense, in front of them. Their presence to him was inconsequential to as much as every staffer in the Council chambers had been present or the fact he was able to observe one of the C-Sec officers skim a little Red Sand off the top in Station D-9, or a couple record their sexual activities for austerity in another residential ward. He was everywhere and nowhere at once; the only thing limiting him had been what had made him flesh and blood. His understandings of focus were that of an organic man, and so he had to, or else he would think himself to death.

"Do you have a plan for me?" His holographic projection showed more emotion than he had guessed, the Councilors all reeling back for a moment before they looked to Sparatus to give an answer.

"Despite it all, Nihlus, you are still a Spectre." Nihlus figured as much as a chair was generated beneath him and he sat in it, face in his hands. Who would think? Even after a death, the Council still could assign them duty. "Given your current… status, we would advise you to stay in arm's reach, so to say."

There were a lot of things to get used to, to process, now, for him. Though it was what he signed up for when he became a Spectre, and so they were who his soul belonged to now, for the time being.

"We all good?" Shepard had always been on edge whenever the Geth were in contact without her on the ground, but there was nothing for her to fear as the two Chiefs of the operator gave her a placating nod when the away team returned to the Well Deck. No one looked hurt, but still, she had approached Tali. She too had given Shepard a reassuring motion, unslinging the shotgun as Wrex watched from the background, simply waving his hand off to tell her to give it back to him later. "Well, alright then, debrief in ten."

Requisitions Chief Weston had been quick on collecting guns and gear when prompted, he running over, JD giving over his SMG. He had trusted the man to do the maintenance for him at least, still, that left him open for a comment: "Cute." He tipped his head at the smile on his visor before walking away with an armful of guns. JD had taken off his helmet, seeing that same swipe on his face as he looked up, only to see Mai look away from him. She had not trusted Weston on that measure, finding herself back in her corner as usual, JD following without choice.

She had his back turned to him as she let her rifle down, ejecting its thermal clip for safety, the carbon built up dusting off as Chief Adams grimaced looking at it float to the floor. She had known when he was there, placing her weapon in her locker as she turned around like a ghost, her black visor sucking in the light and reflections of reality, looking down on him.

What she was thinking, feeling, had been beyond JD at that moment, but he had offered his helmet in turn for her to look at. "That mean anything?"

Everything from her meant something. Every action of her holding some sort of purpose or need. Hardly a breath was let go from her without the need. Of all that JD knew of her for how long they'd been together, this meant something. Some something that he couldn't dare guess.

It had surprised him when, after a few moments of her staring silence, she had moved her hands to her own helmet, unsealing herself, the balaclava beneath showing more than the helmet could.

"A sign." She said once, her eyes squarely on his. He had looked away for a moment beneath the focus of her, retaining back as she had gestured with her fingers for his helmet. They traded in short order.

"A Spartan Sign?" The weight of Mai's helmet in his own hands had been still surprising, he taking it into both as he looked at it as if a dismembered head. She nodded, her thumb ghosting that mark she made. Her eyes had softened for a moment, becoming half-lidded.

Never had she done it. Never had she made a mark on someone quite like this.

"It's… a private one."

JD had looked up at her real face, even if her eyes were just offered at that moment. He tilted his head.

"It is used to display…" She looked for a word. "Emotion."

"Emotion?" JD hadn't quite followed, but instead, she had drawn him in with her fingers again, bringing it up to her face, middle and index finger, from left to right, she made a curve along the bottom of her face. Ice jolted through her veins as she completed it, the pure lethargy of doing it without a helmet surprising her as JD did it himself, tracing his lips. A moment after doing it, he had smiled for a moment, realizing what it was emulating.

He remembered what Tali said. There were limits put on people who lived in their armor, to display that sort of emotion was perhaps what the Spartan Signs were supposed to do in some measure. Not every Spartan had been like Mai he figured: so broken down that she had been deprived of that base knowledge.

Though Mai had been his Spartan. The one he had been stuck with, at the very least.

"You did it, without realizing." Mai explained in a short burst, looking away as Shepard and Kaiden had already reconvened in the elevator, heading up. "I was reminded."

"Oh." JD remembered the moment when he did, touching her helmet as she was down.

There was something more to say though as the two had unconsciously moved behind the Mako, alone as they could be on the Normandy as the sound of the rest of the fireteam geared down. JD had gone to unbuckle his gauntlets, their helmets placed besides each other on their gear bench, but Mai had stopped him, a hand on his forearm.

When did they get so touchy? When did she even feel that barrier of physicality go down between them? Was it holding his hands, shaking it, on the Montenegro? As if sealing her life into an agreement with him? Was it picking him up and tossing him into the back of the Pelican on the Ardent Prayer as they tried to make their escape? It had been years, literal years, since she had touched someone without meaning to kill someone. JD had been the first to not suffer that injustice. He had suffered the pain though, the feel of her grip nearing breaking his bone without her thinking, but nowadays, just a sparse two months since they had known each other, Mai had made it a part of their communication. She had so, so much off the Spartan baseline, and she realized it, then and there, holding his wrist before he continued.

"Are we… fitting in? Is this the life we're going to live?"

Introspection from Mai, he didn't expect to hear it. He didn't expect to hear the fear in her voice. "Mai?"

As if a surge had rocked through her, as if rebooting, she had removed her hand and stepped back, turning away. "Nothing."

It wasn't nothing. "Mai." He said her name again. "What's wrong?"

It didn't matter if this wasn't the life she was supposed to live. This wasn't the Spartan she was supposed to be. She was a Spartan, and he was an ODST. Soldiers to their duty. Anything that didn't contribute to that was dangerous. What had been growing on her, moving her off center-

"Nothing." She said again, with steel, JD pedaling back as he caught a word in his throat, finally thinking on the question. His throat had been raw and hurt, not because he had been sick, but because he had been talking at all. His entire life he hadn't talked as much as he had now, on the Normandy. He was turning into the normal he thought he wasn't, keeping his mouth shut on so many deployments outside of affirmatives and negatives. He saw where Mai had been asking: This life had been changing them.

No, he realized. This life was making them.

"We engaged another Geth picket on the way back to the Mako." Ashley and Emerson had led their own fireteam, the Normandy having deployed them on a nearby planetoid as well during Mai and JD's own deployment. It meant a relatively full comms room that day as the debriefings went down. Shepard had made a note in her mind as Ashley continued. "There wasn't any complication, just another shoot and scoot, but I bet my next shore leave that something is up with their tactics nowadays."

Emerson had affirmed. "Given that the Geth are self-learning in a way," he motioned to Tali, who had been kind enough to share this information when prompted about the Geth recently, "Shouldn't there be a concern that we are the tip of the spear when it comes to us engaging them?"

Shepard had nodded at the two, leaning on the comm console, more specifically squaring her vision on Emerson.

She had known of the man from Ryder, even before the Normandy. She had heard of Hitman in vague recollections from her mentor as well, but it had been Emerson she had heard the name of. He didn't fall too far from Ryder's tree, younger, yes, but still with all the stringiness that Ryder had been known for as an N7 Commander. Still, it wasn't without cause. The two N7s had agreed that Emerson would've passed the N-program with little issue, however the man had his own misgivings.

"He'd rather stay a mud rucker. Bigger badge means bigger responsibility for him, and he's not too keen on it." Ryder told Shepard, what felt like so long ago immediately after Torfan. "Not everyone can be an aspiring superstar like you."

The Old Man rung in her head as she curled her lips up, understanding the implication that Emerson, and indeed most of the room had echoed: that the Geth's fighting standard would become the SOF-grade that the Normandy ground teams were. Still, there were particular deceptions Shepard could fool machines with. "Why do you think I've been diversifying ground teams like I have?"

A wave of realization wiped over the two fireteams present. Not one had been the same across the Normandy's side-missions that Shepard had put them all on.

"Ah, shit." Ashley had just straight out said.

Shepard could only respond, a charmed chirp coming out of her throat as she held one cheek cutely. "I figure Geth calculations don't like it when they never face the same people twice. Hell, it's why I've been holding back Chief Gul for a hot minute, especially since the report from her team shows the Geth got something special for her."

Mai had still been in her armor, then and there, the seat beneath her barely holding, though her helmet had been off, her balaclava left behind in the Well Deck. To see that particular combination, her head small in comparison to the proportions of her armor, it had made Emerson, for all his sourness toward her, pause. Mai had been paused as Shepard recounted what had happened to her and the fact five rockets had been aimed at her as an opening shot. They had only spoken so far, in the debrief, about the nature of their Geth engagements. "I can take it, Commander." Mai had spoken, blank faced as she looked directly at Shepard.

Tali had squinted her eyes at Mai, a fact that she wasn't entirely oblivious to.

Shepard had seemed barely phased by her gaze, but there, as always, had been a challenge to it. "I know you can, Chief Gul, but I don't want to be the one who gives you the mission where you find out you can't."

Then what was she there for then? Mai had thought to herself.

Then again, it wasn't entirely unprecedented. The area of which Mai operated it had still been far, far beyond what anyone there save JD could understand.

Entire militias…

That simply just wasn't what the mission of the Normandy was: to wage the warfare Mai had been meant for.

"Still, from what I've read in the preliminary, you handled the satellite rather well. Hitman 1, go on."

JD had been the man on point for explaining as Loke and Doc simply slunk back, almost nodding off. This hadn't been their rodeo, either with Shepard or Ryder.

"Wasn't much to say prior," JD rubbed his chin, he down to just his uniform. "Mai arrived on site first and drove off the leech. After that, she remained in position until we could establish perimeter security and defragging of the hacking efforts."

Shepard had seemed just a hint interested as her gaze landed on Mai again. "A hacker, right?"

Mai nodded. "Single woman, armed, but I doubt dangerous. I got the jump on her ma'am."

"Was removing her any difficult?"

"Damn you, woman. Damn you."

"What would you do for your daughter? Please."

"I didn't like doing it."

She liked the execution of the kill. She liked it done flawlessly, effectively, without mercy. Perfection in her art was standard. All of it hostile, of murder and warfare and conflict that seemed so depraved and nihilistic. Mai reeked of that energy, even if she didn't say. To admit that she didn't like running off a hacker, the entire room rose an eyebrow physically, or internally as Mai blinked once, deciding to elaborate no further. She ran off a mother.

How many times did she know what it was like to be on the otherside?

Memories. Memories she thought long destroyed in her mind had been brought forth: of a version of her that seemed impossibly smaller, holding the hand of her mother as a store owner screamed at her to get away from his trashcans, sheltering her from the hatred of that world.

The pain of failing her daughter. Mai knew that look on Kelsie's face. It was the same bitter, angry, sorrowful look her mother had worn for so long. The face of her mother… What did it look like again?
"Chief Gul?"

"Ma'am?" Like a VI, those words had sprung Mai back into full coherence, but not before something was given up. Something Tali and JD had noticed so intimately.

"Were there any other complications?"

"No ma'am."

Cracks in the machine, shining light through. Was it breaking? Or was something shedding its skin? Shepard had her reservations still, but if there was anyone to be mad about the nature of the two special Master Chiefs on her crew, it wouldn't be them. Not when JD seemed, by all accounts, a normal man and Mai, within herself, had morality to contend with, like she saw now. Orders were orders after all, and the two seemed like the order following type.

So was she, to be fair to herself, but she had stretched that definition further than had been healthy.

"The combat telemetry we're getting from the Geth though, it's revealing." Tali had spoken up, still shy in this instance, but she had been coming into her own. "My father, back on the Flotilla, he specializes in anti-Geth measures…"

Shepard pursed her lips once before nodding at Tali's comment. "You really were born to fight Geth, weren't ya, Tali?"

The Quarian nodded, slowly, but knowingly, leaning back into her chair, wondering to herself how she had become like this so easily. Just a few weeks, and a people who enjoyed what she was doing, was all that it took. Perhaps some of them were right: she was an NBK. If there was time for Tali to respond back, it hadn't been now, she tracing her hood that laid now on her shoulders instead of over her head.

JD had made a pinching motion over his mouth as the debriefing had been over and the two walked out together. Just some more housekeeping stuff past that, and for them to stay condition green for more away missions. It had been a pinching motion with all his fingers, a quiz, to be sure, in some way.

"Food?"

"Eat." JD corrected Mai as she tried to guess, stepping asides to let the rest of the crew of that away mission through as Shepard stayed behind and sent off mission reports. "Want to come with?"

She was out of her armor again, before the debriefing, down to her tech suit with her uniform over that. She considered the question, the answer, for a few moments, but those few moments had a new clarity to JD after the away mission. Tali's observances rang true, with the way her eyes seemed to burrow into him. To him, he had known how to deal with her harshness.

She nodded once, "Okay."

It wasn't often that they did share meals at all. More often than not it was a correct assumption JD would share meals with Garrus or Tali, and, if warranted, with Kaiden or Shepard. It was easy to eat with Shepard, if anything. She would fill in the space he left with his own rather introversion to speech. He was a good listener, if anything. Garrus and Tali had been much the same way, enough to share themselves over a meal, downtime, on the Normandy. Perhaps it had been consequence that they were, of all the aliens there, the most "normal", but that had been their clique.

JD saw it on every ship he served on: the social circles formed regardless of the shared uniform. Officers to officer, ODSTs to ODSTs, fly boys versus tankers, every had their group. On the Normandy, it was looser, but still they existed. Hitman would stay amongst Hitman, and the crew would be among the crew. It was Mai that had been truly alone in her solitude, and admittedly, as JD sometimes drank coffee as Garrus went on during breakfast about one of his early detective cases, he forgot that.

It wasn't as if Mai had minded… but she knew it was a stark difference from when they were in Buffalo together. It was something missing from her; the new her, that she hadn't had before.

It was easy, falling back within his wake again, but she was intently aware of it now as they walked down the stairs down to the cupboards where the Normandy had its provisions on the crew deck. Not enough room for a kitchen, so everything the Normandy had had been packaged. Not the worst thing, all things considered. Supply lines for the Alliance, and for the Normandy in particular, hadn't been the worst JD had seen. The days behind enemy lines where he and his unit had to take supplies from locals had been the worst; had made him see it the way of the Insurrection, but war was war, and right now, there had been no war.

"You have a preference for breakfast food?"

Mai had been aware of it after she noticed the trend. In Buffalo, it was out of pure practicality: the way JD had made dozens and dozens of PB&Js and cereal bowls during their self-imposed isolation as they dove into galactic history and Alliance history. Easy food, and it wasn't as if they could cook anything. Those days that they did go out however to the diner, he always ordered foods she'd considered breakfast.

"Mm." He made a confirmative sound in his throat, getting out of the way and offering her her choice from the stacks and stacks of suction-sealed packages after he picked his own. She hadn't looked as her hand found one of them, pulling away. It really didn't matter to her. The crew deck hadn't been too full that day. Liara had been in the medical bay with Chakwas, a space made for her there. Otherwise Hitman had mostly taken the Well Deck for their own today, a sparse few members hanging out as they otherwise awaited their shift in the sleeper pods or on their omnis, reading or watching something or another. They had, as usual, regarded Mai with a hint of suspicion, but that far into the Normandy's mission all pretexts had fallen away that Mai had been a threat that Ryder espoused. Not when Shepard had picked up that intrigue now with her Reaper visions and place as Spectre.

"Chiefs." Harris had been one of the Hitmen, if not the only Human on the Normandy, perhaps able to size up Mai and Wrex. He had been sitting on the opposite side of the deck's table, with Bannon, eating their own meals. Bannon had given a nod to both of them.

"Corporal." JD had addressed him back as Bannon gave him a wink. She was a coy Hitman, if anything. Whereas Ashley and Loke had been fiercer for the love of the fight, Bannon had been that sort of eccentric that was perhaps a little… twisted? JD had known enough people off their rocker who had loved the war. It meant they could be themselves: chaos and all. A Cheshire smile chasing their own demons to make them dance. For Mai, in the moments she saw Bannon before taking off on her own away missions, saw the fire in her eyes. Saw it reflected in many of her Spartan-III comrades. Orphans of the Covenant War, seeking their revenge against them and life itself.

They sat down, unbothered for once, as the softer light provided to the table, Mai just now seeing what she had gotten: Spaghetti. She was allotted a second packet for her meals, typically, much like the Biotics onboard, however she would take her time today.

The process for heating up the entire meal had been simple enough, cracking open the package and dumping the tray and provided accessories out. A folding cup and a plastic spork/knife had been offered with the tray, the main meal packet with the food kept in as the rest was taken, a chemical packet dropped in heating it up as the package was sealed again. When they would be opened after a few minutes, they'd be meals, ready to eat. The vitamin drink had been in their cups ready to sip from, however.

JD did take a sip as Mai sat politely, looking at the orange color of it idly before she heard him speak. "About what you asked earlier..."

Right. Mai had taken a sip herself as the two packages expanded on their trays, heating up their meals. "I didn't mean anything."

An attempt to dissuade, but JD knew better as his cup was put down. "Mai?"

Just the sound of her name, after so long, to hear it so often, it did something to her. Since when did this become her normal? How did she deserve this?

"I overheard you and Mister Vakarian talking about C-Sec, over lunch."

JD had told her his intentions, at least, after all the grief he had given her for applying for a transfer without notifying him. She had thought nothing of it. Just a logical conclusion to his life: his father was a cop, so too would he. It's what he deserved if it made him comfortable, but it got her worried, thinking, as Garrus and him seemed so naturally themselves in each other's presence.

"Sooo." Tali would start about two days after the conversation he was having with Mai right now. "Who are you spoken for JD?"

Garrus and JD had choked on their respective dinners as they all shared Garrus's bench for a table. Garrus had given a tilt of his head to JD, his mandibles flicking a bit in question. He was still getting used to it, but at least he was able to read Garrus's face a bit now. He was questioning him.

The shock trooper glanced over at his locker, and Mai had been at their workbench, field stripping weapons, out of her armor. Now more aware of her superhuman hearing, but it didn't matter. It wasn't as if he was hiding this from her.

"Someone."

"Male or female?"

He remembered shore leave one deployment, how the unit was being divided up and sent out to shore up other units that were in need of replacements. One last hurrah at the bar, and even JD had toasted that day. Celebrating that they didn't die while they were with him. He used to think that with the drink, he didn't mind that one of the younger men of that squad had taken him asides in that bar's dark corner and kissed him. He used to think that, while inebriated, he didn't think too much of how he kissed back.

Nowadays he didn't think of it awkwardly at all, brought back forth for a split second as Tali brought the issue up.

"Female." He said, clarifying, Garrus catching on to what they were discussing and what he had missed from that last away mission, a coy look over his face. "Her name's Dawn."

"Wife?" Tali assumed. If she were a Human, perhaps she would've glanced at JD's finger to affirm, but she didn't have that knowledge of wedding bands. JD shook his head immediately. "Fiancé? Girlfriend?"

"Not… really?" It was JD's failure that he had hesitated in just the right way saying it.

Garrus had rolled his eyes as he elbowed JD's side. "Really?" He pegged her for what she was to him.

"What? What?" Tali seemed intrigued as it dawned on her. "OOOOooh… Nice." She said with that almost innocent, yet playful sheen that she had off mission. That was the Tali JD enjoyed being around.

"Turian ships tend to have… similar arrangements throughout the crew." Garrus had said with as much subtle snark as he had shown thus far. "I admit, Shepard might run a rather loose crew, but it doesn't quite match the Turian Navy at times…"

"Oh? Why is that, Garrus?" Was that a tease in her voice? It was a tease, JD decided.

It was a miracle the translator had been able to get the innuendo behind the story the Turian told, Tali leaning in to Garrus as he told it as if they were no more than teenagers at an ill-supervised band camp, but having an audience like Tali and the usually unflappable JD had him really eager to tell a story about "reach" and "flexibility."

"It usually happened after the fact. Not before." JD said after it all. "Shore leave. She wasn't military."

"Ah. Makes sense. Shame though. Taking that sort of steam of prior to a high-risk mission is… liberating? I guess."

"I guess?" JD chuckled at the Turian. "You don't sound too sure of yourself."

"Oh shut up, don't give me that."

Tali had been giggling at the thought of Garrus's impotency, but it was a joke that could only be made if they had been friends, and with the way JD shook his head and returned a smile to an over-it Garrus, they had been. JD had finally been friends with aliens.

"Worried I'm leaving too soon?" JD had chided as their lunch's packets let off some steam, deflating. Harris and Bannon had made their leave soon after, leaving the two alone. He had tried to play it off, but it bounced off her.

"You'd be leaving the military."

There was no escape from it then. JD straightened his back as he really thought about it. He joined the war to fight against a threat, so great, the last time an equivalent happened in this galaxy they ended it by genetic genocide. To think of a solution to a problem being genocide, the problem itself must've been a measure beyond him, only to remember that he had been in the middle of such a genocide back home. Perhaps it was that inconsequential standing that did spur him to fight. That was missing in this Galaxy, at least now. Even with the Reapers hanging over them, it was still an unknown that he left to Shepard to fully work out.

"Because I have the chance to do so now, Mai."

"Does this not provide you what you need in life?"

Their meals stopped deflating, ready to be taken out to eat.

"Perhaps," he answered, "But there's no wars for us. Not the one I want to fight, anyway. We can be at peace, and I think we deserve that."

To deserve…

One of her handlers used that word once, to describe what an encampment of Insurrectionists she was tasked to take out had coming for them. They deserved to be killed. What did she deserve? She thought of it as the two of them removed their meals.

A breakfast sandwich for JD, biscuits, an egg patty, and a sausage patty beneath that. A rather soggy pair of hashbrowns also followed onto his plate. Not really a plate meant for a spork, as he simply grabbed it and placed the sandwich down on his tray, letting it steam off a bit.

Mai's meal had been a little more involved, letting the red and brown assortment of pasta and sauce slop onto the tray's main divot, chunks of beef intermingled as it steamed up. Her nose told her it was a savory meal, but she had stopped tasting food a long time ago. Her body was always like that it felt, even before her training, her transformation. Food had no taste for her, only sustenance. She also probably wouldn't imagine anything coming out of garbage cans to be good tasting anyway. Still, in all her years, for all that training that cost the UNSC untold millions, they had not been clear on how to eat spaghetti.

Hyper-competency left her lacking as the noodles slid off her spork as she tried to scoop it up. She was distinctly unfamiliar with the food as she saw her conundrum. JD hadn't noticed until after he took his own first bite, the way Mai had been craning her head, frowning, half way considering summoning a tool from her omni to try and eat it. It took JD a while to realize what he was seeing, but when he did, he didn't quite believe it.

"Uh, Mai?"

She didn't want to hear him as again she dove her spork in, catching only a single strand of pasta as she guided it to her mouth, using her teeth to draw it in and chomp it down rather uncivilized-like.

She had done it again as he uncomfortably kept eating his sandwich, seeing Mai struggle to get no more than two or three strands in at a time. Only when she had given up and grabbed the sides of her tray, presumably to just funnel it in, did JD finally act in.

"Hey hey hey." He said fast, trying not to draw the attention of anyone else on the deck. No one had seemed to notice. Off in the corner by the IT kiosks for mail checking had been Kaiden and a few of Hitman's Biotics, talking of techniques to train Liara in. Otherwise people were always shifting in and out of sleeping shifts, or leaving Chakwas office after some concern or another. Mai had stopped as JD had his own spork in his hand, still not quite believe he had to show a Spartan supersoldier how to-

He had dived the spork right into the mass of it, only to twirl it as pasta twisted around the head and neck, enough for him to take out and show to her. The rest (hopefully) she could find out, and she did as her eyes brightened, she emulating and getting an almost too big clump of spaghetti on her spork, only to shove in her mouth.

JD had seen Wrex eat, and still, it was somehow more dignified then how Mai did somedays.

With her newfound technique she had finished the meal before JD had even returned to his own, the marks of sauce on the edges of her mouth as her tongue darted out to lick it off. She seemed annoyed the fact that happened, a little grit and grudge in her voice as she said nothing more than a: "Thank you."

Going to her drink she had slammed it down before JD could respond.

"Uh, well, I'm Italian, so I'll be damned if I don't teach you proper how to eat pasta." Also to avoid the messages that would come over the ship's IM service about seeing Chief Gul eat spaghetti that way.

Teach. That word hung over Mai as JD ate again.

"You don't have to teach me. To be a teacher." She said, quietly, seeing him nod at her softly as he swallowed a bite, however she amended that almost immediately. "I do appreciate though, what you do."

"I'm not about you to let you eat spaghetti like that." JD plainly, seriously explained, as if she didn't get that.

"No, no. I mean, the other things you teach me." There was panic in JD's eyes, his two index fingers twirling around each other. "No. Not that. That's fine. Acceptable. I want that."

"Then what?"

She wasn't quite sure why she was raising the topic, this new and unknown thing to her known as small talk, or rather, talking with a confidant. Though she took it as she always took the unknown: with all that she had.

"I don't know if you mean it or not, but you make me think about… myself."

"Huh?"

"What I have. What I don't have. Who I am. Are you making me think that way?"

JD had been a little flabbergasted, a little taken aback. He hadn't been trying to manipulate her, if that was what she was saying. "I'm not really trying anything with you Mai. Not anymore than I would with anyone else."

Her eyes had honed on him, a slight furrow to them again as she took him in her mental sights.

"You make me feel like there is more out there for me. With your actions, on how you're thinking."

"I'm… sorry?" The logic was confusing, but it was something that bothered her. It really did, and the only way she could articulate was in words like this.

"I don't want to know more. I don't want to be more." The way JD had spoken of the future, of his own plans he had that he never had before, it put things into perspective for her. Thinking the way he did, she was given an answer: there was nothing.

"But you deserve to." He had been holding his sandwich all the while, only putting it down now.

"You do. Not me."

"I don't think so."

"It's my decision, though."

JD sucked in his teeth as Mai looked at him with those piercing blue eyes. They seemed sad, though she was right. It wasn't up to him, and he couldn't impose. It was true, that he did want her to change, to become more than what she was now. Though that was true with anyone else he had been friends with, thought highly of, he understood there existed a certain connotation with that wish with Mai.

"I want you to be well, Mai. I treat you as such."

Her hands fidgeted, putting her spork asides. "Can I ask then, why you are this way with me? Because you have to?"

JD twitched his nose for a second, looking dead serious at Mai, insulted a bit, but his eyes became low, soft, almost sad. "You have your moments, Mai." Two fingers, over his face, dragging a smile over it.

A breath from Mai, the hint of amusement, of a laugh. That was new from her, JD immediately pegged as he emulated the language of Spartans. She didn't fight it, that feeling, that inexplicable feeling of seeing an ODST, a regular man, take one of the Spartans' most sacred signs and use it so casually with her. "Hah."

JD had barely heard it, but he heard enough as a smile spread across his face naturally. "I want to be your friend, Mai. Unless you don't want me to-"

"No-" Mai caught herself, a reaction that erupted from her throat as she even considered that thought.

JD settled himself back, letting the words fall out of him. The truth of what he thought. "I don't want to presume anything, but, well, there are some things you just need to know… to learn. That's what I have to help you with if I am your friend. Things you wouldn't have known with how you lived."

"Learn what?"

Where could he start? "The, whole of it, of you."

You.

Spartan B-312.

Mai Gul.

Mai. Like My. Not May. Gul. Like ghoul.

What was there of her beyond the rank? Beyond being a Spartan? Pain. The dirty underbelly of New Jerusalem. Something she was told to leave behind, and even if not, did she really want to go back there?

"What does it mean to be you, JD?"

She had been saying his name softer nowadays. Not so hard on the D, any softer and she'd be saying Jade. Though he didn't mind it, to be honest.

"Hm?"

"To be… Italian?" That wasn't what she wanted to ask, but it was a word she could cling to, barely scraping at the surface of a whole question.

"What?"

"To be raised into… something? Normal. Italian is normal, right?"

When he did tan, JD tanned very well, almost into an olive. His Nona still kept up her home cooking, bringing pizza and fresh baked focaccia to their apartment on weekends, speaking of Sicily and Rome when she visited her own grandparents when she was just a wee child. Stories of Gladiators and of Gods filling his minds as she tucked JD in. It was different, to him, than being signed his bed time stories. When he asked Mom later, on how to translate to her what Nona was telling him, she came up short. There was no sign for Spartan.

JD shrugged. "Yeah… Why?"

"Where I came from, New Jerusalem, race, religion, ethnicity, they were all so strong a factor. How people define themselves against each other. It's not really like that, is it?"

New Jerusalem. That world, torn itself apart without the Covenant, only to be halfway glassed when they did come. A planetary crusade and jihad fighting against each other as peoples tried to claim a planet entirely for themselves. He knew the stories very well, and he remembered Shepard's vision: How violent and dirty and dark it had been. That was Mai's birth rite.

"Those type of things, my race, my culture, I mean, yeah, they help me be me, but…" JD chose his words carefully. "They don't have to mean anything."

"I'm Arab." Mai looked down at her empty tray as she said it, the dull reflection looking back up at her, her fingers unconsciously ghosting the imprint of her necklace beneath her suit. "But my mother believed in, I think, Buddhism. That is not… traditional."

A thought. "Your father?"

Mai paused before answering. "I was never exposed to him."

"Oh."

How close she was to being an orphan. Luna's cities had their fair share, especially the further the war went on. Memories of the elder Durante dealing with those misguided youths had rose.

"How do we find ourselves, if not who we are?"

A question far beyond a Marine's capability to answer, and yet he wasn't just a Marine was he? He wasn't just an ODST. He had a name, a life, a lover, a father and mother; dreams and nightmares, feelings. Some deployments, all he had were a nickname. Greenie, New Guy, Ishmael, Rookie. Some of them lasted for so long, he thought to himself, was that really all that he was? Just a guy named Rookie? No. He had dealt with this question before in his quietness, alone in his own thoughts.

"By other people." He answered. JD remembered them all.

Captain David Janowski. Leader of an ODST Platoon charged with defending Persei. His first ODST CO. He died, somehow, leading a charge into the jungle against a Brute encampment. He remembered, before the drop in, he had taken him asides and told him: "If you're scared. Good. That means you value your life."

Lance Corporal Misato Bando. Combat Engineer. Blew herself up when Hunters overran her position, hoping to take them with her. Her mother had breast cancer, and thus, by way of that, knew a few tricks about taking a nap in the field that she passed down to JD.

JD had thought Mai was considering that answer, silence coming over her as she stared at him, only to slightly tilt her head, her hair drooping slight. It dawned on him that it hadn't been pondering. She was looking at said answer, manifest.

"Can you talk about yourself, JD?"

"Huh?"

"If I listen to you do it, maybe I can emulate."

JD blinked a few times. He had let on details of his childhood, of his life before he became a Marine, bits and pieces, but nothing so plain. Nothing so laid out that she could read.

"I mean, well, what do you know of me Mai?"

How natural it was for them to be together, and yet to not really know each other. Yet there was that feeling of knowing each other anyway. Perhaps it was a survival instinct? Perhaps not. JD wished, if that was the case, that it hadn't been so dire.

Her eyes glazed over for a moment, eyes darting downward at his hands before, a split second later, remained on his own eyes. "Your name is Jonathon-Jameson Durante. You're 26 years old. You're Italian-American. Your mother was deaf and your father was hearing, so thus you learned how to communicate with both speaking and in sign. Your father served as a detective in the Cirsium City Police Department and he died of food poisoning when you were 17. Shortly thereafter you joined the UNSC Marine Corps with an age waiver, and served during the defense of Persei, where you survived a Glassing. Your mother died shortly after. After that you volunteered to join the ODSTs, and you spent the next nine years-"

"Mai?" He had been taken on a roller coaster of a biography, all harsh and edged with unkind corners, she stopped. "Is that really all you've gotten from me?"

Mai paused for a moment again before speaking, "You had a physical friend named Dawn Harris on Cascade."

Heat rose to his cheeks, Dawn's voice in his ears. "At least call me Lover, Jon."

JD's eyebrows had furrowed down, and with that, Mai had despaired internally.

She felt as if she had given him the wrong answer, but she didn't know why, rubbing the knuckles of her hands with her fingers.

He had caught the facial movement however, softening. "I'm not everything that's happened to me, Mai."

Inside her head Mai knew the meaning now of grasping for straws as she tried to find the words, the right things, to describe JD beyond who he was. It bewildered her to a point, thinking beyond the man that was sitting right before her. How did she look that beyond? She damned herself for thinking of Shepard. Shepard was so natural with this and she wasn't and it hurt.

"I like music." It brought Mai out of her turmoil as JD looked away, almost embarrassed to admit. "I would listen more, but, well, music players are contraband, technically. It's nice to fall asleep to music but well, the one time I did do that I missed a roll call and the CO gave me trouble for it." He seemed distant, opening up like that. "Mom, she liked it when I was learning how to play guitar."

On New Jerusalem, Mai would remember street performers trying to eek out an existence as they played on their corners. She remembered the wooden instrument JD spoke of. "You play?"

JD's eyes glazed over for a bit, remembering those last days on Luna. With his family passed, he had inherited his childhood home: the apartment. He had no use for it with how rotations and shore leave worked for the ODSTs. Just constantly at ready, with breaks at whatever planets the ship they were stationed on were docked at. He never came home after he left, so, maybe, if the landlord didn't evict him by proxy, that guitar was still neatly on his twin-sized bed, collecting dust for nearly a decade. "Haven't for a while. I wish I did."

Silence again, filling in as the ambient sound of the Normandy filled it in, Mai's digging her suited fingers into themselves as a tension there broke by her, boiling inside of her mind. "I don't know what that means, JD."

"What?"

"I- I know it means you like music. You like the topic of music. You are interested in it… but, but-" She cut herself off, a hint of hysteria in the back of her voice she caught and killed so coldly, so ruthlessly as she squared her shoulders. "What if I correlate your interest in music as something wrong, if I think… more upon it?"

"Try me." JD softly said.

Mai had responded without precaution, surprising herself. "You're regretful."

Not the answer that JD had thought she'd spew, but she did. She was right. "How did you get that?"

Mai's voice wavered, but she went forward, hidden behind her husky strong tone that she wore by default. It didn't fit, but this was untrodden ground for her. "Music is a civilian interest. To not be able to do so… it means that there are other interests of yours that you have not been able to partake."

Career day. 12 years old. The Elder Durante had showed up to school along with a bunch of other fathers and mothers to talk to the kids about what they did for a living. Of course, JD had beamed at the fact his Dad was visiting to hear him talk about work, but there had been another interest piqued that day. One of the fathers had proudly showed off a giant paper dragonhead. He was a dragon dancer with the local Chinse community, and for a brief, wonderful time, the young JD had wanted to be a dragon.

"Perhaps," he answered, a pang of wist in it. "I don't quite know anymore. I've been serving for so long I'm not quite sure what I'm interested in anymore."

"Then you understand then," Mai had seen a thread and reached for it, grabbed it as tight as she could. JD looked at her again, differently. "What it's like if this life becomes all you know."

He was careful with his words, tapping the table once before idly grabbing the spork. "Not as much as you would understand."

"But it's not just me."

JD paused for a moment, feeling his teeth come together, staying his breath. "You said you like farms." A lifetime ago it seemed Mai had said to Shepard on any interests she had. The Spartan drew the quickest idea she could, however there was some truth to it. On an agricultural world inhabited by Insurrectionists, she hid in fields of grain and wheat, and for a moment, she was distracted as the stalks towered above her as she passed through. How alive they were, how much they promised in life, swaying in the wind. It was so unlike the harshness of New Jerusalem as she looked up and saw not dark skyscrapers and industrial decay, but blue skies and golden fields. It captivated her. One of the only things that ever did. "That means you like to grow. To cultivate. Create maybe?" JD went on, trying to extrapolate as he, and most normal people he imagined, tried to tie interests to character. "I see it, you know, in how you are so intent to learn from me. That is a sort of growth. To create maybe? I dunno…"

"I like to… create?" She was a Spartan. She was made to do everything but, and it seemed lunacy. Though she thought about it for a second, imagining herself planting seeds (Grain was seeds, she hoped she was right) into loamy soil and then watering it, seeing it rise from the Earth so cleanly, so naturally. "It seems to be a positive trait."

"Yeah." JD echoed. "I think, you think, if you like farming, you like to create things, instead of, well, you know…" He scratched his dog tags. "Do you enjoy destroying, Mai?"

Mai blinked. "I like a successful mission."

JD wasn't enthused, but he understood the feeling.

"I was told, everything I've done, it was for the betterment of Humanity. Everything that I would do, then, was a net good." A crack, a dip down, at the end of her sentence. Said out-loud, she didn't really believe that. She couldn't believe that she did have that doubt now.

"You're loyal." JD gave her. "I know you're loyal. To me you are, from how you've treated me so far."

"To you. I am loyal to you."

"And me to you."

He didn't know why he had to affirm, but she was, in some small part inside of her, glad that she did, however she thought of it. "Is it… because we're military? We are allies?"

"Yes? No? Does it matter?"

"I want to know." She said in such the same way she asked for translations of some signs, for clarification. He responded just the same.

"Now, if I was not an ODST, or if I refused to serve the Alliance, would you be the same way to me?"

"Yes. Yes." She said twice, once to him, and then to herself.

"Then it must be because of who I am, beyond that."

And so what was that, was the question that Mai contended with. Something very naturally settled in her mind as she noticed the movement of her fingers, the nervous tic she knew she had: rubbing her fingers together and on her knuckles. Hands, fingers-

"You're very patient with me. You are understanding then." Mai had remembered all the time, all the slowness of their initial lessons in sign language, on how JD never seemed to mind remaining on a single movement for dozens of minutes at a time as she fretted over exactness. He made her comfortable; a luxury very few ever paid her mind to. Something bubbled in her throat. "Thank you."

A smile formed on JD's mouth at its corners, rubbing behind his ears. "You're very polite. Formal. Did your mother teach you that, or did Ambrose?"

"Training was… strict."

"You don't have to be, with me, you know."

"It feels right, though."
He leaned back in his chair. "There's no such thing as rank, between us, Mai. Not really. Not now."

"But I respect you."

It was his turn to laugh a little, and, surprisingly, she had joined in with low chuckles. Humans were social creatures, and that was proven true still.

"Respect me enough to tell you who you are?" JD asked after they settled.

"Well, I don't know who I am. You seem to see… more in me then I think there is."

"I think?" He parroted.

She saw his disapproval, reeling back. "I mean, you might expect too much of me."

"People can change, can grow." He said softly.

"How've you changed?" She asked with an amount of depth that seemed so unlike her, but for the better.

JD took another sip of his drink, soothing his throat. "I talk more." His mind yelled at him for censoring the spoken words. In his head it read like this: I talk a lot to you. More than I have to anyone. "What do you think, for you?"

She looked at his face again; really to look at him. The bottom part of his face had been getting fuzzy in patches, but left untouched, as his chestnut hair above had been getting its fluff. Without the war, without the Covenant, she remembered the look on his eyes when she first met him and saw his face. They had been so, so heavy. So tired. Now they were alive.

"I'm not sure. But I have- I am. Changing. I am changing."

If she could talk to the Mai of three months ago, what would she think of herself? Disgusted? Disappointed? Or, maybe, just maybe, would she be glad of her?

Maybe it didn't matter.

Maybe the opinion she cared more for now was the man across from her.

"Do you still think me being a Spartan is wrong?"

JD's mouth sucked in on itself, forming a thin line as he saw the shame. A shame from both her, and a shame that she had taken on, assumed for him. "How you became one, yes." He said with as much seriousness he could gather. "But being one? You still are saving Humanity. Better than I could've."

"Anyone would've done the same." She told herself, looking down at the table, as if placing her words on it.

JD saw something else though. "Are… you okay with being a Spartan?"

She was a Spartan. Or was she Mai? Or were they two so irrevocably combined that it didn't matter. "I don't know anymore. I don't know."

To know, to feel, to be. Parts of the Human condition that screamed at him to approach. Sometimes people just needed to exist within those confines, even if it was painful, even if they didn't understand it. JD didn't need to understand why he had the inclination in his mind to take one of his hands and reach across the table and grab one of hers softly, to run his thumb across her knuckles instead as she had been doing to herself the entire time. That's what his mind told him what to do, and how nice it would've been to do it, but he didn't.

And Mai thought about how nice it would've been to remember her Mother, the ghosts of her fingers in her hair, running through dirty strands as she sang in a language she never knew, comforting her to sleep through hunger pains and cold. That touch, that warmth, she needed it, but it was not there for her today.

So Mai ran her fingers across the back of her knuckles, again and again, and JD returning to speaking sweet nothings of grandma's cooking as the two finished their meals in a comfortable silence.

On Altis. In midnight fog.

That late, the Alliance had been largely off the Savannah, not exactly wanting to stumble through a wreckage of a ship past midnight. It was fine by his count though. Less Covenant walking through his corridors, and largely, he had preferred that. Not that he had a choice nowadays.

Still, even he needed time to stretch his legs. Or, at least, he had made himself think to stretch his legs from his lonely podium on the bridge. He flickered to life, in white and in light, a glow coming over the bridge as he had manifest again on the holopedestal. For what he couldn't peg, but he hadn't enjoyed being this small if he had to project. He'd rather just keep tight, if that was the case, but this was the best he got nowadays.

He ghosted his fingers along the brim of his Stetson, taking a gander at the bridge. Not as if he hadn't already known the situation. This "Alliance" had been doing good to keep it proper, at least, but the amount of times they had tried to interface with it outright with their own data descriptors had been annoying. The Covenant hadn't offered when prompted, to hack it themselves, however they knew better.

How many of his brothers and sisters had blown the entire ship as Covenant raided its insides?

Far too many, and here? Things were much more complicated than that.

Out of habit, he had chewed again on a cigarillo, adjusting his poncho as he did one last overview. How very, very odd, he looked down between his boots, his spurs kicking against the "floor" of the holopedestal. The Covenant they hired to help them through this never outright told them what this was. What it meant. They must've known he had been in here.

Cabin fever had kept those mysteries in his head running. At least that one Jackal the Sara Ryder had been associated with had been missing as of late. He was the most curious one about it all. One day, when someone got lousy, he would jump into one of their wrist mounted computers, poke around their net, see what was really up with these humans. They certainly weren't UNSC, but that didn't mean that none had been there.

They spoke of them in hushed tones. Of the Spartan and the ODST. They were cooperating, with Shepard, due to come back to that planet soon, however he didn't know if he could personally stand to wait that long for answers.

Hastiness. Always hasty. He had cursed the man he had been before for being such. It meant that he still was.

Tomorrow though. There was always tomorrow, he thought, ramping up the brightness to his pedestal all the way to high before simmering back down, making sure the emitters weren't clogged or dusted up. His ship might've been 90% destroyed and being gutted, from the inside out, however he still had his standards as he shut off for the night, and waited for the right person.