Content warning: This is set immediately after the battle of Circinius-IV from the Forward Unto Dawn web series. It features a grieving teenager, indirectly references self harm, and briefly discusses suicidal thoughts/wanting to die. Please exercise your own judgment. If you feel reading this story will have a bad effect on your health, please don't read it, and seek professional help.

Everyone was nice to you, but that didn't stop it hurting.

They called you by your first name, and introduced themselves by their own. They spoke to you in gentle tones. They told you 'well done' for everything, from stepping off the Pelican, to handing over your weapons, to removing your boots.

"You're doing great, Tom," said the medical examiner. Her name patch read Lt. Dr WALSH, but she'd introduced herself with 'hi, Tom, my name's Jenni, I'm a medic here on Quel Dommage.' She checked your heart rate and your blood pressure, X-rayed for fractures, and sealed your grazes and scratches. She asked you about the rash scars on your chest, and then winced as she read about the cytoprephaline allergy on your file.

You didn't mention the discharge you'd been offered. You didn't even know if it was still valid.

(Lieutenant Dr) Jenni (Walsh) used a camera drone to take a scan of your body, before handing you a grey bathrobe with a UNSC Quel Dommage insignia on the right breast.

"I'm going to let you go now, Tom," she said, with a confident cadence that made you think this wasn't the first time she'd done this. "I'll recommend to Captain Slastnikova that you avoid cryonics until we get you to base. She'll want to de-brief you, but only when you're up to it."

You nodded. You felt like you should say something, but had nothing to say.

"You must be exhausted," she continued.

You kept saying nothing.

And after a pause, she added: "I heard about your friend Keelah."

"Chyler," you said, correcting her pronunciation at what felt like the nadir of your vocal range.

A mortified flash on the medic's face. "Chyler," she repeated, "I'm— sorry." And then she said: "I know I can't say anything to make it feel better, but I just want you to know that you're not alone in what you're experiencing right now," said Jenni. "There are people who'll support you and help you. I know it's tough, but it will pass. You'll survive this." She gave a forlorn smile.

You nodded. Not able to acknowledge beyond slight head movements and looking upwards, a vague… approximation of eye contact, because that was all you felt capable of.

"You've met Mithras—" Quel Dommage's AI— "he'll show you to wherever you need to go. You can take a shower, you can sleep, you can get some food. You can see the other cadets. Whatever you need. Like I said, the Captain won't see you until you're ready. Everyone here will be led by you."

You knew, in the back of your mind, that they were treating you like this because you were a child. Because they felt pity for you.

You followed Mithras's directions to your bunk, where you left your skivvies in an untidy pile next to the bed. You stepped into the robe, and followed his directions again to the ablutions. Moving silently. Plodding. Numb all over.

You winced when you stepped into the ablution block, the light flushing into your pupils and making your irises shrink. The room was large enough for about twenty, at best: benches around the outside, stalls in the middle partitioned with transparent plastic on either side. Unsegregated by gender, rank, or anything at all. A groan rose from your throat. No hope of privacy.

You hooked your robe on the peg, and felt the chilly air raise goosebumps on your skin. You saw your own reflection in the mirrors, and hated it, from the oily pallor of your complexion to the frumpy eyebrows to the wide ears to the angry hives on your breast. The first shower stall you tried had a missing handle. The second had one, but it offered no resistance when you turned it: a marker-pen graffito on the tiling read KAPUT.

As you turned the third lever, the piping thumped, and you took that as cue to pump the lever again, and again, and again. Warm water trickled, and then rained, onto your scalp.

For a fraction of a second, as the reaction became self-sustaining, you smiled.

And then you felt guilty for that. Reflected in the partitions, your face soured in an instant. How dare you smile when it's because of you that she's dead—

You saw the marking again. KAPUT.

That was how you felt. Damaged. Defective. Broken.

You, Thomas J. Lasky, are worthless.

You heard footsteps, skin against tiling, and breathed in, and tried to disguise your sobs as coughs and sneezes. Holding them in, muffling them, until you saw the reflected figure walk past, take their own towel from the pegs, and stride away, slinging it over their shoulders.

This is your fault, you decided. You didn't work hard enough. You put your friends in danger. You didn't protect Chyler from—

You closed your fist. You slammed it against the wall of the stall. It made a muted wet tapping noise, not the thump you wanted.

You drew in hot, angry breath, crying as you inhaled, and sobbed the air out immediately. You did it again. And again. And again.

You are not worthy. You are a child.

More footsteps. A trio of people, voices of different pitches, genders, accents, chattering, but the vowels and consonants just soaked into each other and turned it into an unintelligible mess.

You braced yourself against the corner of the wall and one of the glass dividers, and breathed, and cried.

You should've convinced Cadmon that joining up was a mistake, he would've got himself killed some way or the other—

You should've died for Chyler, not the other way round—

You can't even go to sleep without fucking it up in some way—

The thoughts span in your head. The memories were still fresh. The glow of the alien projectile. Chyler's screams.

You're sorry, but sorry's never good enough—

You looked down at your belly. Covered it with both hands, imagining, willing the existence of a purple glass shard to end the pain.

Willing yourself to disappear in her place.

Axios?

You cried some more, and breathed, and wailed, and breathed, and cried. Again. And again.

You are not worthy.

The thoughts raced around, a self-destructive slideshow of your own failings. Beginnings into ends. Consequences into failures into consequences. Time became short, and long.

You weren't sure how long you'd been there, sat in the corner of the shower cubicle, knees tucked into your arms, head buried within, cocooning yourself from the rain…

You are not worthy.

"Cadet?"

The shower head rattled. The water turned ice-cold for a second, then became scalding hot, painful—

You didn't care.

"Lasky?"

You opened your eyes at the sound of your name. Tears were rising in your eyes again, because that was how Chyler had called you several times—

—a heavy heart—

"Thomas?" This time, the voice was directed. At you.

The lighting in the ablutions had dimmed, but you could count the squares of the floor tiles in front of you. One, two, three, four, five rows… and at the sixth stood a pair of feet, dripping wet. A respectful distance.

You followed the line of the person's legs (bulky, long) upwards, to their waist, to their wide shoulders, and the face of a man. He looked down at you, facial expression superficially neutral, but with his eyebrows betraying concern.

You felt yourself inhaling sharply. There was the surprise of seeing him. Then there was something that felt like a punch in the chest as it clicked for you that he was beautiful.

It shouldn't have been her.

And then you remembered her face contorted in pain, and realised that your flash of naked attraction was betraying her memory, and—

"Hey," said the man, as you used the breath you'd drawn in to start another wave of sobs, and buried your head in your hands. "Hey."

His shadow shrank as he crouched in front of you. Still tall (very tall) but bringing his eyeline down to your level.

You drew in another breath when you'd exhausted the contents of your lungs—scarred by the cytoprephaline allergy—and they hurt, and your eyes hurt, and you felt you were out of tears to cry, but that didn't stop you from trying.

"Sorry," you tried to say, your voice in tremors of desperate, breathless falsetto.

"What are you sorry for?" the man asked. Rhetorically, but delicately.

You rubbed your eyesockets with your fingers. You thought about trying to answer his question.

"I—" you managed one vowel, before it petered out into a ragged stammer. "I— I—" You took another breath, and retched, and felt as if you were going to throw up.

"OK," said the man, his voice following yours into a gentle whisper. "It's OK. Breathe. Deep breaths."

You took one. Squeezed your eyes tight shut so you wouldn't start sobbing when you exhaled. Two. A little whimper came out, but you were still able to draw in a third. You felt something warm and heavy, and realised it was his hand on your shoulder.

"OK?" the man asked. A question this time, rather than a reassurance.

"OK," you managed, an acclamation.

It wasn't easy to make out details in the half-light, but with the man's silhouette regarding you, you suddenly felt very naked, and intimidated: he was large, and he looked like he could crush you if he wanted. The hand on your left shoulder was enormous.

Is this happening? you wondered.

And then he breathed in, just like you, and asked:

"Do you want to go somewhere else we can talk?"

Quel Dommage's galley was not quite deserted. But it was quiet enough that you didn't feel like you were attracting stares when you blew your nose, and hugged the mug of coffee with your palms while trying to hold back another wave of tears.

"Pineapple?"

You started, sending a small trickle of coffee over the rim of the mug. Before you, the man from the ablutions stood with two plated pizzas.

Oh, yeah. The flavour.

"Which do you want?" you asked.

"I'm not fussy," he replied. "Have whichever one you want."

"Me neither," you lied.

You peeled away a slice of the Hawaiian style pizza. It felt rubbery as you bit into it. The taste was alien. The tomato paste smelled of red, of iron, of blood—

Her blood—

You retched, held it in and disguised it as a cough, and almost choked.

"Hey," the man across the table said. He offered you another wad of paper handkerchiefs; you grasped at them, and almost coughed into his hand.

"Sorry," you said, as you gasped for air, and that made your throat hurt even more.

"It's OK," the man said. He took another tissue from the pile on the table, and wiped down the palm of his hand.

(He was pale, you noticed. And you saw lines on his wrist. Were those scars?)

You tried eating another mouthful of the slice of pizza. The tomato at least tasted more like tomato this time, but the pineapples were cloying, damp little tumours that burst as your teeth made contact. You didn't feel like you were going to choke this time.

"Thank you for this," you said.

The man smiled, in that forlorn half-smile that everyone had been making at you since you came aboard Quel Dommage.

You tried to return it—but it melted into a frown as you held the bridge of your nose and buried your head in your hands and—

"I'm sorry," you sputtered, again, although you knew there was nothing to be sorry for.

"It's OK," said the man, again.

And then he paused. You wiped your eyes with another fresh handkerchief, and noticed he was looking aside, as if checking he wasn't being overheard. Deciding if he wanted to say what he wanted to.

And then he said:

"I know what it's like."

You let that turn over in your head for a few minutes. And you wondered if he actually knew anything like what you were going through—

"Ever wonder what the point is?" you asked. "If people are just going to die?"

And the man, again furtive, and now holding his jaw in a blank, tightly-locked expression, took a few seconds to decide if he wanted to tell you the truth.

And then he said: "Yes."

You blinked, and nodded. And then you asked him:

"Ever feel like it never stops?"

And he replied:

"Every single day."

And then you said:

"I don't think I can do this," and here you felt your voice rising away from you again, and another wave of tears— "I tried. I tried when I lost my brother. I tried, but…"

He offered you another wad of tissues. He tried resting his palm on your forearm, and you flinched—he withdrew, respectfully.

"Sorry," you said, as you wiped your eyes again. "I just know what you're going to say."

The man's eyebrows (large, pensive) made the tiniest of arches.

"What do you think I'm going to say?" he asked.

"That I should get over it. That she sacrificed herself, and it's sad, but it was beautiful and an inspiration." You coughed, and sneezed, and squeezed more tears from your eyes. You wiped them again, and said, "it's all what they said last time."

You thought you saw the man's breath halt a little. A tiny, unguarded moment of surprise, and then:

"What do you mean by 'last time?'"

You blew your nose again, and then said, "sorry. I lost my brother too."

"I'm sorry," he replied. A slight, barely perceptible wilting of his eyebrows.

You realised, then, that there was something you shared with this man. More than the colour of your hair and skin, or the broad definition of your accent, or your gender, or the grey fabric of the Quel Dommage comfort fatigues you both wore.

"How long ago was it for you?"

The man blinked, and then didn't open his eyes for another few seconds. Composing himself. (He was a big guy, still at least a head taller than you even when sat down opposite you… and as he breathed, and averted his eyes from you, it seemed as if he was shrinking into himself.)

"Almost—" he began— and then saw the date on the wall clock above the galley buffet counter, and performed a brief calculation in his head. "Exactly five months," he corrected himself.

You timed your breaths. Composing yourself, like him.

And you asked:

"What happened?"

He replied:

"He died." Flatly.

You, not knowing what you could say, let the air stand for a full ten seconds.

"I'm sorry," you managed.

He nodded, almost imperceptibly.

Feeling like you might be stepping over a boundary, you asked, hoping you heard the pronoun correctly:

"Who was he?"

The man didn't answer.

"Do you not want to talk about it?" you asked. Tempering your voice.

After another long pause, another internal evaluation—

"His name was Sam," the man said.

You blinked.

"Who was he, to you?" you asked, barely realising that your voice had come back. "Your… boyfriend?"

Silence.

"…Brother?" you ventured.

After another pause, he said:

"Close enough."

You reached across the table, and pushed the wad of handkerchiefs across to him. He did not acknowledge them. He kept his facial expression tightly controlled.

You asked:

"Does it get any easier?"

After he turned the thought over in his head, he replied:

"Would it make it easier for you if I said yes?"

You snorted.

"Just tell me the truth," you said.

The man replied:

"I've gotten better at hiding it."

He looked up, at you. You, only now, remembered the pizza, and the coffee.

"You still think about him?" you asked.

"Every waking second," he replied.

You wondered whether Waypoint had an off-world backup copy of your video messages from Cadmon.

"Same," you replied. "It's hell, isn't it?"

Why do you torment yourself? you imagined Chyler saying.

The man nodded.

And you said:

"If Chyler was here, she'd be so pissed with me. Tormenting myself over her death."

"You're not tormenting yourself," he replied, quickly.

(Maybe, you thought, to make himself feel better.)

"It still hurts," you said. "Every second. Every drumbeat."

He nodded. The man across the table didn't seem to know what to do with his eyes. His glances skittered about. The cooling pizzas on the table. The pile of tissues. You. Through you.

Better at hiding it, but still not perfect.

"Yeah," he said.

You saw his hand quiver a little. His right fist, almost half-clenched. (There were those scars on his wrists again—had he been—)

"Are you OK?" you asked.

He opened his right hand out again, placed it flat on the table.

"Are you OK?" he asked. Releasing the tension in his facial expression a little. The eyebrows loosened a bit.

(God, you thought. He's beautiful. And then Chyler crossed your mind again, because she'd asked the same thing. 'Are you OK?' He moved his eyebrows in a similar way to how Chyler did. Even his eyes, pale blue. They reminded you of hers—)

"Hey," he whispered, as he noticed, before you did, that tears were welling in your eyes again. His fingers were suddenly resting on your forearm. You took a while to notice. Again found it difficult to square the comforting body language and facial expressions with someone so enormous.

But, you guessed, he was feeling fragile too.

"I was offered a discharge yesterday," you said, after you had blown your nose again. "I'm allergic to cytoprephaline."

He said nothing. He gave a gentle nod.

"If I take it," you said, "I'll have to explain it to my mom. She'll never forgive me."

(You were imagining the language she'd use in her video message now. Great disappointment. Your brother's legacy. Our family's heritage.)

"What should I do?" you asked.

And the man replied, after a long blink and five seconds of thinking about it:

"I don't know."

You shook your head. You looked down at your pizza, which you were now sure had gotten cold and unappetising. "Me neither."

After you let the silence stand for a little while, the man asked:

"Would your mother not want her child to feel happy? Safe?"

You sucked in breath through your teeth.

"I don't know," you said. "Is that what normal moms want? Is that what your mom wants?"

He averted his face. Shook his head, and breathed in through the briefest of unguarded frowns. You could swear you saw goosebumps rising on his forearms.

(Those scars—they're like surgical scars. Incision vectors, you realised.)

Then he took another breath, withdrew into his chair, and looked at the clock on the wall and said:

"I need to go. I have a briefing to attend."

He moved swiftly, pushing his chair back and standing, and straightening his comfort fatigues, while you barely managed to say, "OK."

(You scanned the clock. 02:47 shiptime. Who would start a briefing at 02:50?)

"I'm sorry," the man said.

And you replied: "I'm sorry, too. For everything."

And then he said:

"Think it over. You've got time."

He patted your shoulder again, gave his hand a little reassuring shake, and then—

"Are you not going to tell me your name?" you asked, turning, watching him march out of the galley, and round the corner—

And then you turned back to your pizza, and thought you'd heard that timbre before. Filtered, harsher, but—

"We don't have much time."

"You've got time."

You blinked. Realising you did recognise his voice, and thinking about how you would tell Chyler, and what you were going to say in your video message to Cadmon.

And then you cried into your pizza again, because you would never be able to tell Chyler or Cadmon.

You had time. They did not.

Author's Note: I wrote this as a quick and cheerful prequel/taster for a longer post-Halo 5 fanfic I've been working on for much too long. It's called "The Sword Asunder," it features the Master Chief getting drunk and playing the recorder, and it's coming whenever it's finished. Hopefully soon!

Acknowledgments: Inspired heavily by "obverse and reverse", written by Thalius, and "The Continuous State of Being Fine", written by devotchka. Lasky and the Chief are great on the page together, aren't they?

I hope this has been an enjoyable distraction. Stay safe, stay strong, stay home. Thanks for reading.