Chapter Twelve

It was cold in Ellen's lab. So, despite the trio of hovercams following my every move, I was in my unicorn onesie and had a blanket wrapped around my shoulders.

We were working on the terminal again, but she also wanted to study the (theoretical) 'illness induced power tics'. That was what she called the uncontrollable teleportation that happened when I sneezed.

I was sitting in a cushioned rolly chair, in front of a row of artifacts, with one of them in my lap.

We had yet to find any artifacts of use on Reach, considering that one construction had been empty and the other one had literally exploded, so we were still working with Infinity's pre-existing log of artifacts.

Well, I was.

Ellen walked up again, glancing at the hovercams. "How are you feeling?"

"Pretty good." I sniffed. "About the same as I have be-bee-"

A sneeze cut me off.

I teleported onto the top of one of Ellen's weird and massive, blocky machines.

Her eyes shot over to me. "Oh, I hope one of the cameras got that."

I sniffed again and teleported onto the floor. "Me, too."

I was curious myself. I'd never teleported before when I sneezed. Ellen's running hypothesis was that it was a symptom of my cold, and that the sneezing and teleporting were triggered by similar issues that would go away when I wasn't sick.

I was really hoping that was the case, because it meant I wouldn't have to deal with this all the time. We just didn't have much of a way to prove it or disprove it.

Ellen said she wanted to analyze something, though, so she had a running test in that she had hovercams following me everywhere. She was thinking she could prove that the random teleportation was a symptom and not a new and ongoing thing.

If this was a new and ongoing thing I was going to scream.

Ellen brushed over to one of her work desks. "Roland, transfer the recording of that incident from all three cameras to this monitor."

"Right away, doc." Roland wasn't visible, but we could hear him through the lab's speakers.

I picked the Forerunner artifact off of the chair with delicate hands. It wasn't fragile, but I didn't want to risk anything happening to it.

This was a chunk of a frequency converter. It was incredibly important to the portal, from what I'd managed to gather.

I set it down on the counter and flopped into the chair. That sent it and me rolling across the lab.

"Why is this so boring?" I rasped, throwing my head back in exasperation.

"Yep…" Ellen was bent over, staring at her monitor.

I huffed and spun the chair. The ceiling turned into a bunch of swirls above me.

Ellen's voice was serious and engaged. "Tawny, come look at this."

I sniffed again and rolled the chair over to her. There were two videos, side-by-side, on the monitor. She played the video on the right first.

"This is you choosing to teleport off of the splicer," she said.

It was slow-mo. I was sitting atop the machine - the splicer - and then I slowly dissolved into blue specks. Another collection of specks appeared on the floor. They regrouped into me.

Ellen cued up the video on the left. "This is the alleged tic."

On the screen was me in the chair. Then my body convulsed in a sneeze.

Instead of blue sparks slowly appearing as my body faded, they seemed to burst forth as if I'd exploded. Then I was gone, leaving behind the blue specksplosion.

So it looked like the sneezing teleportation was a different process entirely.

Ellen stopped the video. "The good news is, this means the tics could be a temporary thing."

"I really hope so." I coughed again.

This was the worst.

"Speaking of things that we're hoping are temporary," I said, "any clue on the mood swings?"

Ellen looked up at me with palpable pity. "Tawny...mood swings are common in people with PTSD. Have you seen a shipboard psychologist?"

"'PTSD'? No way. I-I-I'm fine. John has PTSD, and he doesn't have mood swings."

"John is a SPARTAN II, he was raised to be like that." Ellen levelled me with a heavy look. "Have you read some of the files on their training?"

The idea of there being files on John's childhood years and how they were exploited made me feel sick and very, very mad.

But not at Ellen, so I tried to curb my temper. "What makes you think ONI would let me read that?"

"Don't get me started on ONI," Ellen sympathized. "But the fact is that SPARTAN IIs are better equipped to handle trauma than you. I think you should see a psychologist."

"I think I'm fine," I grumbled. Then I coughed.

She shrugged. "It's just a suggestion."

"Did ONI say anything about the relocation?" I asked, simply to change the subject.

Ellen ran her hands through her long black hair. "They're still debating. Fireteam Lancer and Dr. Alexander are going down in a week; if they don't find any terminals they may pull us out of Reach."

"Where would we go?"

"That's what they're debating. There are several colonies with an abundance of Forerunner ruins, but tensions are high and nobody is in the mood to deal with another war."

I ran my fingers over the back of the chair. "Are there any unoccupied planets with ruins? No one to piss off."

"There are a few places ONI's looking at. Chief among them is Requiem."

That set a pit in my stomach. "Oh."

"Yeah."

"Well…" I forced a cheery demeanor. "Here's to hoping Dr. Alexander finds a terminal down there."

oOOOo

The sneezing, and the teleporting, was becoming less frequent as the cold went away. I greatly appreciated that and the ability to breathe without sounding like a clogged intake.

Fireteam Lancer had gone down to the surface with Dr. Alexander two hours ago.

I was praying that they would find a terminal, or even a chunk from one, so that we wouldn't have to leave Reach. So we wouldn't have to risk going to Requiem - I did not want to go to Requiem.

Neither did John, who was waiting in the S-Deck hangar bay with me. We wanted to talk to Dr. Alexander as soon as he landed.

"Never thought I'd find you, chiquilla."

I hadn't realized someone was behind me; I'd been to focused on things that could go wrong and have us back on Requiem.

I half-turned to face Bradley. "Hi."

"¿Cómo te sientes?" (How are you feeling?)

"Mejor." I turned back to face the deployment bay. "¿Qué tal?" (Better. What's up?)

Bradley crossed his arms with a shrug. "No mucho. ¿No puede un tipo bajar a la cubierta-S de vez en cuando?" (Not much. Can't a guy come down to the S-Deck once in a while?)

"Sí, supongo." (Yeah, I guess.)

John was keeping track of the conversation through the bond since he didn't speak Spanish. He made no physical indication that he was invested in it; his eyes remained on the deployment bay.

"Tengo un amigo que trabaja en el calabozo," Bradley finally said. (I have a friend who works in the brig.)

I knew he'd had a reason to be down here.

But I kept my cool. "Oh?"

John could feel my tension but Bradley couldn't. "Ha estado observando a esos Innies que trajiste hace un par de semanas." (He's been keeping an eye on those Innies you brought in a couple of weeks ago.)

My heart jumped. My Uncle Ry was on this ship. In the brig.

He'd held a knife to my throat.

I masked my sorrow with anger, and my anger with nonchalance. "Qué bien." (That's nice.)

But now Bradley was picking up on my tension, the war in my heart between nostalgia and pride and morality, and I could sense that he was on the fence about spilling what he had to say.

So I forced my mask on, with a little help from John's stable emotions, and smiled up at Bradley. "How has he been doing?"

"I wouldn't know," Bradley admitted. "Quiere hablar contigo." (He wants to talk to you.)

Of-fucking-course he did.

I couldn't keep the anger down. "You know, maybe I'd be more eager to do that if he didn't try to kill me."

Bradley shrugged. "I just wanted to let you know. Es tu decisión si decides hablar con él, o no." (It's your decision if you decide to talk to him, or not.)

He turned away and started walking out of the hangar.

But he threw over his shoulder, "I get it, chiquilla. But the anger's got to go sometime."

I was left staring at the surface of Reach, visible through the containment fields lining the edge of the deployment bay.

John was silent beside me, but he could feel my desperate emotional confusion.

I leaned into him, and my my heart calmed when he wrapped his arm around me. He was safe. I knew that. No matter what happened I would be safe with John.

"What should I do?" I asked quietly.

John was silent for a moment. "That's your decision."

"He was always there," I finally rasped.

"I know."

"He was my dad's best friend. They-they grew up together. When I was little, I thought- I-I thought that we were related."

John compared the two of us, and I could feel his incredulity.

"I know." I laughed a bit. "I-I was kinda a dumb kid."

John didn't know if he agreed with that statement.

"I never even knew what it meant to be an Insurrectionist," I continued. "I thought they were people like my parents, you know, who weren't violent about...about their issues with the government."

John was silent. He didn't like the idea of disagreeing with the government at all, but he at least believed that nonviolence was the best path to take there.

"B-but they're terrorists. Uncle Ry's a terrorist. He-he's…" I wrapped my arms around myself and admitted in a low voice, "I just never had to think about what he did when he was gone."

All that time, he'd been out killing innocent people while I was at home, knowing he was gone, but not knowing what he was doing.

I'd been so goddamn complacent.

John turned to face me and wrapped his arms around me. I buried my face in his chest.

"I don't know if I can talk to him," I admitted weakly.

"You don't have to."

"No, but h-he wants to talk to me. And...and he thought I was dead, too. He saw my-my clone die. I feel like I owe it to him... Does that make any sense at all? I feel like I'm going crazy."

"You're not crazy." John ran his hand down my back. "But you don't owe him anything."

I pressed my face back into his chest. My voice was muffled by his shirt. "Is it bad that I kind of want to talk to him?"

"No." John was rubbing a circle in my upper back.

"I-I just...I still love him? I know he's a terrorist. A-and he's probably killed a lot of people." Tears sprung up and soaked into John's shirt. "But...but I don't hate him."

"Do you want to talk to him?"

I pressed the side of my head into John's chest and thought about it.

John hadn't asked if I could handle it. Or how Uncle Ry would feel if I did or didn't go.

Did I want to talk to him?

Did I?

I wiped absently at my teary eyes. "Yeah. I...I think I want to talk to him."

John took hold of my hands in his. "Let's talk to Keyes."

oOOOo

I was nervous. My hands kept fiddling with the hem of my tiny grey dress. There was an armed guard on either side of me.

But they weren't for me.

They joined the two guards already in the small metal room. It had the four guards, two benches, and a large man in an orange jumpsuit.

Uncle Ry looked unkempt. His big brown beard wasn't combed, and he slouched on the bench.

When he saw me, he straightened up with a sad smile that pinched at his eyes. "Hey, Tawny."

"Hi." My voice was small and raspy.

I glanced up at the guards, but they were watching Ry.

So I settled on the bench across from him. He was a very tall man, about 6'4", and heavyset, but there was just as much muscle as there was fat.

He looked like he belonged in a gang - or a terrorist cell, my stupid brain cackled - but I'd always thought he was a teddy bear.

And, despite knowing that he was a terrorist, I couldn't forget playing in his house with his son - Zeke - who was a few months younger than me. I'd grown up seriously believing we were related, by blood, for so many years.

"Bradley said you wanted to talk to me," I eventually said.

"Yeah, I did." Ry sat back. "I don't...understand what's happening."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, how are you here? Tawny, I watched you die." His eyes were haunted. But he pushed that down. "And what happened down there? You...did something."

My shoulders were tense. I was spinning my ring around my finger.

He glanced down at it. His voice was soft. "You still have that."

I glanced down at my ring. The slender gold band wrapped around my middle finger. In the center of the ring, a tear-shaped garnet.

Ry had been close with my grandmother, my dad's mom, and had grieved just as fiercely as my dad when she passed, back in 2525.

"Y-yeah." I tucked my hair behind my ear. "I couldn't get rid of it."

He sighed and leaned forward. "About what happened down there…"

"I-I don't know how much I can tell you." I winced. "But I have...powers. I can do things. It's really- it's hard to explain."

Ry leaned forward. "Then, during the glassing…"

The hope in his voice hurt me.

"N-no, that Tawny really did die." I swallowed. "She wasn't me. She was a...she was a flash-clone."

"A flash-clone?" A pit of anger formed in his heart.

I shrunk in on myself. "Yeah. The UNSC found me a-a few days before the glassing and took me so they could find out how I do what I do. They-they replaced me with a flash-clone who had my memories."

"So you did die."

I nodded hesitantly.

"But you didn't die."

"It...it's weird, I know."

"Your two minutes are almost up," one of the guards informed us.

Something, a desperation of sorts, stirred in Ry's heart. He pushed himself to his feet, ignoring the guards as they tensed.

"Come here." He held his arms out.

I pushed myself up and wrapped my arms as far around him as they would go. "Why did you do it?"

He didn't answer. He just sighed, from deep in his gut, and rested his head on mine.

"It's time to leave." Two of the guards walked up and pulled Ry off of me.

I reached out for him for a moment. "Uncle Ry..."

He just sent me a melancholy smile and followed the guards out of the room.

John, who was in the S-Deck recreation room with Blue Team, brushed against me. "Are you alright?"

I assured him I was okay and turned to the two guards behind me. "Thanks."

One of them nodded to me.

I walked out of the room, and out of the brig.

"Dr. Alexander returned an hour ago," John said. "ONI made their decision."

That gave me pause. "They did?"

"We're leaving Reach."

oOOOOo

Author's Note: I feel like this is a short chapter for some reason. Anyway, yeah, I didn't forget about Ry! He's a giant teddy bear (who happens to kill people on the side a little) and Tawny's uncle-not-by-blood. But yeah she def thought they were related when she was little. She's cute like that

I have so many half-finished WIPs I want to post here but I can't ever focus on one uGH. so i really want to post this one specific story but im missing at least 40% of the plot akhskhsks. It's for RvB if you're wondering