Chapter Eight

TW: Graphic Nightmare

It was desolate. There was thick fog in the air. Despite that, the ground was cracked and dry.

There was a savage hiss behind me. When I turned I was met with an Unggoy, sans mask and tank, baring his teeth at me.

He had a plasma pistol in hand and was charging it up.

My hand shot out and threw him back with a savage pulse. Then I invaded his mind and killed him. His body went limp, falling backwards onto the parched dirt.

Then the body looked familiar.

I took a breath, though the air stank of death, and walked closer.

It was my dad. His face was sunken and pale. His chest was crushed from the pulse that had sent him flying back.

My stomach stirred unpleasantly. I couldn't look away from my dad's corpse...how had he died? I hadn't been there for him.

Then the body shifted. It was...it was Uncle Ry.

"No." My hand came up to cover my mouth.

The body shifted again. I stared down at John's sunken face in horror.

His eyes opened wide.

I jerked back with a small scream.

He cried out, a halting cry of pure agony. He looked, trembling, down at the concave depression that was his chest. It had been entirely crushed by my blow.

"No!" I cried. I fell to my knees in front of him.

"Tawny..." His voice was parched.

So was the scream that shredded his throat for a second unbearable time.

I curled in on myself, but at the same time I reached for him. Tears flooded my face. "I'm so sorry, John."

He latched onto my wrist. Despite his malnourished body his grip was strong. Too strong to break.

"Tawny," he wheezed.

I covered my ear with my right hand, my free hand. "Oh, god."

"Tawny...Tawny."

End of TW

Someone was shaking me.

John was sitting up in bed next to me. Based on the fading horror on his side of the bond, he'd had a nightmare too.

Thanks to the bond, we could feel when we had nightmares. Sometimes it would wake the other person up and let them help. But sometimes it just dragged both of us down deeper into the fear, until one of us finally woke up and realized what was happening.

John had woken up first this time.

I blinked away tears and wrapped my arms around him. He returned the embrace, curling around me for his comfort and my own.

"What did you see?" I asked in a quiet voice.

John took a breath and held it in his chest for a time. I could feel him swallow. His emotions were all over the place, same as mine.

He let his breath out. "You were there. It wasn't...I had to fight you."

"I'm sorry." I tightened my arms around him.

"You killed them. Kelly and Linda and Fred." His voice was soft. "And Sam."

I winced. That sounded horrifying.

He swallowed again. "What about you?"

"I-I killed an Unggoy. Then it wasn't...it wasn't an Unggoy." I cleared my throat. "It was my dad first. With a-a... I broke his chest. Then it was Uncle Ry."

I screwed my eyes shut.

"Then-then it was you." More tears tracked down my face.

He didn't say anything. What did you say to something like that?

We just held each other. It was all we could do. But it was enough.

John laid back down, pulling me with him, and tightened his arms around me. I felt more tears welling up in my eyes.

Why did so many bad things have to happen to so many good people? John and I were far from the only people with nightmares on this ship.

I pressed my face into John's chest and tried to still the sob building in my chest. It didn't work, and soon tears were soaking the front of John's shirt.

His hand dug into the back of my head, rooting into my hair.

"Tawny." His voice trembled.

I pushed off of his chest and looked up. There were tears in his eyes, too.

That made me cry harder. "I'm so sorry."

He pulled me close and curled around me. "So am I."

I wasn't used to hearing his voice like this, rough and uncertain and full of agony. It wrenched at something in my heart. I wanted to help him so badly.

I wrapped myself around him as best as I could, and we basked in each other even though we were both broken. I'm not sure which of us fell asleep first, tears rolling down our faces.

oOOOo

I'd heard from Davidson that Uncle Ry was being held in Infinity's brig until they could secure safe transportation for him and his URF friends to a jail on Mars. That was where they would stand trial and doubtlessly be sentenced to prison.

I missed Uncle Ry. For several months I hadn't even known if he was alive.

But, the first time I saw him in years, he greeted me with a knife to my throat.

I was struggling to reconcile the memories that I had of him to how he'd acted down on the surface of Reach. I'd never seen such a violent side to him. Even though I knew he was a soldier, it had never really clicked in my mind.

His hand had been forced, I reasoned, by the UNSC. By their malicious neglect of the outer colonies. By their unwillingness to support us, but their insistence that we provide them with their raw goods.

The UEG was definitely still the enemy here...wasn't it?

But Uncle Ry had held a knife to my throat. He'd been prepared to kill me. To kill John, and Linda and Kelly and Fred.

The only way to make any of this make sense was to see him.

John disagreed. "You can't talk to an Insurrectionist."

"Why not?" I demanded.

At my tone, and my affronted emotions that he could feel, he rephrased his initial statement.

"I think it's a bad idea," he said.

"Why?" I stared him down from my spot on the bed. He was at his desk - the chair was bigger since he was a SPARTAN - so he was taller than me still.

He turned to face me. "He's dangerous."

"Not to me."

"He tried to kill you."

"Before he knew it was me!" I threw my arms out. "He's my uncle!"

"Not by blood," John argued.

And he was right.

I glared at him, my pride somewhat hurt.

"He's not the person you thought he was," John said, somewhat apologetically. "You admit it."

I crossed my arms. "I knew he was an Insurrectionist...I just didn't know he was a terrorist."

John offered some sympathy through the bond. Even though he'd believed very strongly that Insurrectionists were all, without fail, anarchists and terrorists.

I curled my legs up to my chest. "I just- he would never hurt me. I know that."

John vividly remembered the horror on Ry's face when he discovered that I was the one he'd held a knife to. He admitted, silently, that perhaps I had a point.

But he didn't like taking chances with other peoples' lives, mine included.

"Wait a few days, and think about it," he suggested. "Please?"

I huffed a bit. When John didn't budge I insisted, "I don't have to."

John didn't say anything. He was worried about me, and wondering why I was so angry. So was I.

"But…" I sighed again. "But I will. I guess."

He smiled with his eyes. But he could feel how upset I was, and he offered me sympathy as well. I just chewed on my lip and stared at the bed in front of me.

He settled on the bed next to me. "Tell me about him."

I was surprised; I thought he didn't care about Ry beyond his connection to me, which he'd just invalidated.

The gesture was a nice surprise.

I laid down with my head on John's thigh. "He and my dad grew up together. They're both mechanics. Both Uncle Ry and my Aunt Billie are- were mechanics."

Aunt Billie was dead.

John's fingers ran through my hair, soothing and tingly, and he offered me understanding when he felt the sharp grief in my heart.

I pushed myself out of that pit. "Aunt Billie had lived on an even smaller colony when she was growing up; she'd seen the UEG do things that were unspeakable even for Eridanus II. When she and Uncle Ry met he'd been looking at the United Rebel Front but he hadn't made up his mind...she helped him. Then they started dating."

John was keeping as open a mind as he could. He had to remind himself that Uncle Ry and Aunt Billie were people, not soulless anarchists.

And I had to remind myself that John had literally been raised to slaughter Insurrectionists, so the bias wasn't his fault.

"A little less than a year after I was born they had Zeke," I continued. I remembered something and laughed a bit. "When I was little I couldn't remember which of us lived where because we were always visiting each other. We lived down the street from each other."

A bittersweet feeling pulled at my heart. Things had been so much simpler when I was younger.

"I thought we were cousins by blood when I was a kid. E-even though Uncle Ry is mixed and Aunt Billie was black. It didn't really process until I was- I was older that we probably weren't related."

My eyes closed, memories behind my eyelids bringing up nostalgic tears.

"I-I really miss him. I don't know where he is but if Uncle Ry is on Reach then he probably is too." My lip quivered. "Hi-his mom's dead. Uncle Ry is all he has left and we just arrested him."

John's voice was careful but firm. "He's a terrorist, Tawny."

"Yeah, but he's… You're right." I buried my face in John's leg to hide my tears. "But it still hurts. And I know it's hurting Zeke too."

oOOOo

I was agitated. I couldn't figure out why, but every little thing seemed to piss me off.

I was curled up on the bed, leaning against the wall, drawing. And listening to music through my comm.

Trying desperately to calm down.

John was on duty. Still, when he wasn't so busy, he tried to help me keep calm and tranquil.

Because being angry scared me. With the powers I had, and the things I could do…

Bad things happened when I got mad.

Drawing normally helped. I'd been a bitchy teen, both spoiled and suffering incredible stomach pain, and drawing had been my outlet.

But I couldn't get the jawline right on the person I was drawing. I erased it and tried again, erased it and tried again, erased it and tried again. But nothing looked right.

"Fuck!" I hurled the datapad across the room.

The screen cracked. I could see it from my nest in the bed.

My eyes widened. I curled in on myself. "What is wrong with me?"

John sent me a wave of calm. "I'm almost there."

I checked the time; my comm was lit up on the desk. Sure enough, it was 1403. Time for John to get off duty.

I just closed my eyes and listened to the music flowing through the air. It was a wordless song, with intense sounds that no physical instrument could hope to emulate.

I'd tried listening to my favorite opera, but the antagonist had made me even madder. His fate was unjustly fair. I hated it, even on a good day.

He got to live on and stalk the protagonist for the rest of her life, even going so far as to desecrate her grave with one of his black roses once she'd died.

As if she didn't have a husband and a life of her own.

But I wasn't listening to that. I was listening to the soothing tones of a synthetic symphony. Cresting high notes and thrumming lows.

The door slid open, and John walked in. He'd just taken his armor off.

He bent down and picked up the cracked datapad. He turned the music from my comm off and set the datapad down next to it on the desk.

Then he turned to look down at me, cautiously inquisitive.

I crossed my legs and rooted my hands in my hair. "I think I'm just feeling cooped up."

We hadn't been back down to the surface since John got injured, about a week ago. He'd been concussed and they wanted to give him ample time to recover.

He'd been fine in a day or two, but there was no rush. We were no longer at war; we had all the time in the world to do whatever we wanted.

So John was performing light duties around the ship. I liked it, but that meant none of us had gone down to the surface.

John was the leader of Blue Team, after all; we couldn't exactly go out without him.

He sat down next to me and draped his left arm over my shoulders. "Do you want to visit the atrium?"

I released my breath and my pent-up tension. "Yeah, that sounds good."

He rubbed my arm. "When you're ready."

I rested my head against him. Relishing him. His body and his mind. Enjoying the fact that we were together.

I forced myself to notice the positives and hoped it would calm my inexplicable temper.

Thanks to our bond John and I could affect each other's emotions. If I was angry, and I didn't want to be angry, he could normally get rid of the anger, and vice versa. For any emotion.

But he couldn't make this anger disappear. I couldn't understand what was happening to me.

John was worried about that, about not knowing what was going wrong. So was I.

Might as well go to the atrium.

I pushed myself to my feet and slid my comm into the pocket of my jeans. "Right. Are you ready?"

John stood and wrapped his left hand around mine. He nodded.

So we walked out into the hallway.

It was a secret-that-wasn't-really-a-secret that I spent so much time in John's room. Depending on what kind of mood Palmer was in, I sometimes took the tram back to my room before lights out to pretend I was sleeping in my own room.

I always teleported right back to John's room. I hadn't even slept a night in my own room up in the Civilian Personnel floors.

So none of the SPARTANs blinked at my presence in the S-Deck. I was a regular at this point.

We made our way to the shuttle stop. It was a bit crowded, what with the shift change and all, and I forced myself to ignore the tension building in my shoulders.

A positively massive SPARTAN IV walked out of the shuttle. He must have been eight feet tall.

I struggled not to feel inferior walking past him.

John didn't care; he'd grown up with Sam and Jorge and Kurt. He didn't mind being shorter.

I was so sick of being shorter.

Of course with John, it was fine. I actually loved it. But in general I hated being so small and so weak.

John reminded me that I wasn't weak, at least not on some levels.

We climbed onto the crowded tram. There was nowhere to sit down by the time we'd boarded, so he held a handle and I held his hand.

These trams went throughout the entire ship, so they had lower handles for the unaugmented personnel. But they also had handles at seven and eight feet in the air, for the SPARTANs.

I smiled at a SPARTAN seated next to me. She was a IV, with smooth black hair in a shiny bun. She nodded back.

I tugged on the hem of my pink shirt. Technically, since I was still wearing my undersuit beneath it, I was allowed to wear it. Palmer didn't like it but I couldn't find it in myself to care.

The shuttle made several stops along the way to the atrium, which was near the front and top of the ship.

It was a miles-long room full of wildlife and plants, completed with a fake sun and sky. I'd heard it was nice but I hadn't actually visited it since we'd boarded Infinity.

When we arrived at a hallway just outside the atrium, the shuttle doors slid open. We were met with a crush of people milling around outside the doors.

John and I made our way through, with our hands clasped together, and emerged in a gorgeous park. If I hadn't known we were aboard a starship, I would have thought the ecosystem around me was natural.

There was a thin forest surrounding the rim of the park, with uniform trees and walkways and a field in the middle. There were trees peppered everywhere, save on the walkway itself.

A few birds flew overhead, twittering to each other.

I followed them with my eyes until they disappeared into the trees.

"This is nice," I finally admitted.

oOOOOo

Author's Note: Hi guys! I've got a few questions for upcoming chapters, so plz let me know what you want in time for me to choose how it'll go.

1) Do you guys want to know John's surname? (Obviously one I've chosen, this isn't canon, but still)

and 2) Do y'all want a semi-graphic lemon? I could prolly write one at this point and I've got an opportunity coming up in the plot but if you guys don't want it I don't have to do it, it's up to y'all

That's really it lol. I love all of you so much!