Author's Notes: Holy snap, I never thought I'd get so many reviews for a pet project. xD I am certainly flattered, though. Thanks to everyone for such wonderful reviews! And I'm sorry this took me a while to get out, but I'm trying to balance this and my other Halo fics.After this is posted, the next chapter of Sequestration should go up within a week or so.

Disclaimer: Halo is not mine. It never has been. It never will be. All I have to my name is my beloved Master Chief action figure. How come they never made a Cortana figure!?

OH! And a facts disclaimer: I know little to nothing about medical science. Any knowledge I might impart on you, dear reader, has been acquired through vicious watchings of House, M.D. So if anything sounds factually unsound... that's because it is. ::cough::

EDIT: Thanks to the help of a friend and Darkdanny, a reviewer, I changed up some medical terms in this chapter. So maybe this will sound a little bit more factual. Thanks guys!

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01: Uneternal Sleep

Blood, thick and red, seemed to be everywhere. The dirtied sheets his body rest on top of were already becoming hastily stained with blood. It pulsed down the side of his head like a sickening fountain. His dark, short hair was matted to his head by thick mud and steadily caking blood. His dark eyes were hooded by purple-stained, sleepless eyelids; they spasmed beneath the lids sporadically. Part of her felt her mind wondering how there could be so much blood in someone's body.

A moment later, she snapped back to reality, watching as his face twisted some in his unconsciousness. None of this seemed to be sinking in for her yet. She felt like she was watching a movie: only able to watch as events flew past her eyes in blurs of colors. The sound seemed dim, though. People where shouting and moving in the small room, but it all seemed very muffled. There was a weird disconnect between what she saw and what she comprehended. This sort of thing didn't happen, not to her Chief.

She wasn't supposed to letthis happen! That was why Dr. Halsey gave her to him in the first place!

"The biofoam isn't going to hold," a medic shouted in a moment of clarity for the construct. "We need to get this shut up completely."

The other Marines and the one A.I. occupying a room that had been hastily converted into an infirmary all took note of how near impossible that action seemed to be. They were in the middle of Africa, surrounded by Covenant protecting some holy site on all sides, and the nearest major population center had been decimated a month ago. The latest medical technology was not at their disposal. They barely had something to remotely help him.

And there was blood everywhere.

"We don't haveanything that will hold a wound like his closed."

"Then we'll just have to MacGyver something together, won't we? If he keeps losing blood at this rate, he's either going to die or be completely brain dead!" the medic holding the Spartan's head up snapped, eyes narrowing. "Sunderland, I've got fishing wire and a needle in my pack. We're going to stitch his head shut and pray for the best."

"That's it!?" She hadn't meant to sound so angry, or afraid, but sewing his head shut seemed like the least effective thing possible. The Marines trying to save the Spartan looked over at the hovering hologram. Some of them looked at her as if they were noticing the construct for the first time. Those who had been paying attention to her seemed surprised by the outburst. Rarely, if ever, did she fly off the handle like that. "That's all you can do?!"

"With all due respect, Cortana, unless you have a better idea, yeah."

Her mouth snapped shut. She wanted to say she did, that she could easily out-think this little man, but the words died. For the first time, she had no idea how to help him. There was nothing she could do but watch. Watch as his eyes twitched under their lids and blood began to cover the entire front of the medic holding his head up. Watch as his already short hair was cut away from the skin surrounding the gaping wound. And when they dug that needle deep into his scalp, her digital hands flew to cover her mouth, and her eyes shut tight.

No more, no more, no more...

She didn't want to watch anymore, but she couldn't just leave. Not now.

...not now...

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December 1st... 2009.

That's what Cortana... No. Cathy? had said when he asked her what the date was.

2009.

The day was right, but the year was off by a few centuries. How was this happening? Was this all some kind of a dream?

That's got to be it, a voice in the back of his head rationalized. You're dreami--

A sharp stab of pain shot its way up his bicep and shoulder when the doctor checking over him shifted his left arm.Stern, almost defiant, dark eyes snapped to the doctor. The look was promptly ignored, to his ire. However, curious to see what was causing him the pain, he looked down at his arm. After the initial shock of seeing that ring around his finger, he had noticed the bandages wrapped all over him. His arm, chest, shoulder, even his head... All covered in thick, white linen to conceal what the doctor explained were bullet wounds. Subconsciously, as the last clear memories of that Brute's rifle going off filtered their way into his thoughts, his good hand lifted to brush over the fabric wrapped around his head.

With that simple movement came the feeling of a cold brush of gold over his ear.

That ring.

A ring whose twin rest on the finger of a woman sitting a good six feet from him.

A wedding ring.

The idea was the single most foreign concept in his mind. Weddings, marriage... a wife. These were things reserved for civilians. They got married, had kids, and had generally normal lives. The same did not apply for Spartans. It didn't matter to him that it seemed he was not a Spartan here. The idea, regardless of who he was in this place, of him letting anyone close enough to himself to marry them, was almost incomprehensible. Never mind just who he found this "other" him married too.

His eyes fell on the woman in a chair in the corner of the room. Her head was in her hands, her fingers clutched at dark strands of hair, her light eyes were screwed shut. She kept her face hidden in her chest, lest anyone see the utter agony scrawled across her face. Her shoulders trembled like little earthquakes as she tried to repress a sob.

And he felt something flare in his stomach. A breath of pity.

"It's not uncommon for memory loss to occur in patients who were brain damaged, ma'am," the doctor by him tried to explain. There was barely a note of sympathy in his steady voice. "The memories might recover themselves over time." The dark eyes that had been fixed on Cort--Cathy now turned and looked upon the older doctor. Had he just said...

"Brain damaged?" he echoed, voice tinged by disbelief.

"Well... yeah. When they brought you in, you didn't look unlike swiss cheese with six gunshot wounds," the doctor explained as he read from the chart that had hung on the end of his hospital bed. "One of those was to the head and another to your throat." His eyes cut away from the expressionless face of the doctor and his monotone voice. They instead fixated themselves upon his wrist, pierced by the long, thin needle of an IV, and the hand attached to it. He had always felt strange out of his MJOLNIR armor, even if he simply had his helmet off, so to say he felt a little vulnerable was an understatement.

"You died."

That got his attention. The gentle, albeit shaky, quiet that had filled the room before now became as vividly cold as a morgue. He knew there was alarm crawling across his face, just from such a simple statement. Part of him wondered why he was reacting like this. It was just a dream, after all.

There was a mutter from the doctor that sounded like the man was briefly excusing himself from the room. Both acknowledged it with the smallest bob of their heads and little else.

"On the operating table... when they were trying to get all of the bullets out of you," Cathy continued, the tremor fading. It grew almost distant, like she was reliving the memory. Her pale fingers slid out of her short locks of dark hair, falling to rest by her side. "It took them seven minutes to bring you back." Seven minutes. Seven long minutes of his brain being deprived of vital blood and oxygen, killing off precious cells in the process. No wonder they thought he had lost his memory.

...had he?

No. No, this is a dream.

A dream where he felt pain. One where he was agonizingly aware of not only his surroundings, but himself. He could feel his every nerve fire off tiny bolts of pain when he shifted his weight, he could feel sun on his skin, and he could feel the sheets resting under him. If this was all just a dream, it was the most vivid he had ever had.

"You lapsed into a coma and... you've been out for almost a month..." Her voice trailed off and, for the first time since he had woke up, her eyes lifted. Her pale blue gaze met his own, once more searching his eyes for some kind of recollection. Anything. A flicker of even the most obscure memory.

And she found nothing.

His even, almost cold, stare seemed to throw her off. His eyes were so much more different than before. They were ringed in shadows and darkened memories. Unspoken sadness hovered at the edge of his gaze. It was enough to send Cathy into motion, pushing herself on to her feet.

"I'm sorry. I need to go... I mean..." A pause. A consideration of her words. "I really need to go." The young woman was quick to gather her things together, snatching her jacket up and tugging it on. "I still haven't written my lecture for tomorrow, my evaluations are coming up." She was making up excuses. She needed to justify to him, to herselfwhy she was just going to leave him after he had only just woken up. She was no good to him right now, not in the state she was in. She needed to get out of the hospital right now and badly.

"I just... I-I just need to go." A hand rest on her forehead, like she was struggling to think of everything to say. Her words came out in rushed stumbles of syllables and vowels. Her steadiness was coming apart in the face of being forgotten by the only person who had ever really mattered to her.

"I'll drop by tomorrow," she muttered. "Bring you some clothes and stuff. Okay?"

"Y-yeah." The calm and composed nature he had always prided himself on was imploding in on itself, caving in the way plaster walls did when a sledgehammer hit them. He had no idea what to say to this woman. He wanted to apologize, but for what? More frustratingly, he had no inkling of what to do.All he knew was that he felt compelled by some inner to do something, anything. "Thanks."

Her lips quirked into what he might have called a smile, had it not been for gleam of moisture over her eyes. Her shoes made a hollow clicking sound on the hospital floors as she made her way to the door. It was as she slipped into the quiet halls of Bellevue Medical that he heard two short words pass through her lips. Two words that had been the undoing of better and worse men than himself. They were words everyone wanted to hear. They were words, seven tiny letters, that no Spartan was supposed to desire. Ever.

"Love you."

Dark eyes widened some, and the door shut behind her before he could hope to come up with some kind of intelligient response. For the first time since he had come to, he found himself alone. To his dismay, he was still confused as ever and it looked like he wasn't going to wake from this dream any time soon. The Spartan gave a low sigh and leaned back in his bed. He didn't want to try getting up yet and risk collapsing. As he rest there, his mind reeled back to those two words and the golden ring wrapped around his finger. The more and more time passed in this world, the more and more he wished this was all just a dream. An exceedingly strange concoction of his mind. One that he was going to wake from any second now.

He ran a hand over his face, feeling the light scars on his face beneath his fingers. When his eyes opened once more, they fell on the small table by his bed... and a leather wallet. His? He quirked a brow as he picked it up. It was heavier than he had expected. He saw why when he flipped it open. Gleaming in the dull light of the hospital room was a badge, golden, with the words "Federal Bureau of Investigation" engraved deep into its surface. He was with the FBI? The tips of his fingers ran over the letters, brow furrowing. In his own time, the American FBI had become defunct years ago, after the inception of ONI.

The badge only spurred his curiosity on. He opened the wallet, hoping for some sort of ID, and found just that. Car insurance cards that expired two weeks prior. A social security card that looked like he had taken down phone numbers on the back of it. A New York driver's liscense issused to a Johnathan J. Spartan. His eyes fixated on the face in the photo, the name printed beside it, the date of birth.

Everything felt so real, so lucid, and yet nothing seemed to be sinking in.

No. That wasn't right. All of this was registering with him, but he wasn't quite ready to accept it. If he did, then that meant that he could have potentially dreamed up everything he had held to be true. That meant that the Covenant, the other Spartans, the war that had come to define who he was might not even be real. That, more than anything in the world, terrified him. He was quick to tuck the cards back into the wallet, stopping when his fingers brushed over another piece of paper. Pulling it out of the leather wallet, he found his eyes locked on a photograph. One that looked like it had been taken out of his wallet a hundred thousand times.

Cathy and his own face looked back at him. Actually, it was just Cathy. His eyes were turned away from the lense and he had lifted one hand, as if to block the view of his face. Despite all of this, she was smiling in a way that John had never seen Cortana or Dr. Halsey smile in his entire life. The sight of it made something in the back of his brain twitch. A memory that was his and wasn't his at the same time. Unknown familiarity.

A thin pair of arms wrapped around his neck. There was the sound of a woman laughing as she tried to tug him into the view of the camera.

It was a life that he didn't understand.

In spite of himself, he had smiled some at her bid to get him in the picture. He tried to move out of the shot, but the anchor he called his wife was keeping that from happening.

One that he had absolutely no place in.

He moved to lift a hand to hide his face. The effort was a futile one, though, and there was a flash of light before he could cover his entire face. The woman at his side smirked up at him, arms still hooked around him.

He ran a hand through his hair, trying to force out the foreign memory.

There was a breath against his ear as she murmured a quiet "I love you... you jerk." He felt the corners of his mouth lift and a the quietest of chuckles escaped him. The tips of his fingers rest just barely on the delicate curve of her hip; his other hand touched at her jaw.

It didn't matter that they shared a face and a name. That was where the similarities ended. Whoever this man was, the Master Chief would never be him. He never could be. He was born and bred to be a warrior. Normalcy was fated to always escape him.

He leaned down just enough to close the space between them. His lips brushed over her own, a brief and soft kiss that no one else in the room saw. A public secret.

And yet, a normal life seemed to be staring right at him in the form of a battered photograph.

"I know."

And John found himself wishing desperately to wake up from this dream.

...tbc...

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Author's Notes: Sorry this one took a while. I was busy agonizing relentlessly over the characterization of the two John's. I want to try and differentiate between the two and yet show that they're actually very similiar as well. Their differences are obvious (one's emotionally stunted and the other one isn't), but their like-qualities are there too (both are quiet and reserved for the most part). So stick with me as I sort through all the character stuff.

Hope you all liked this chapter! (For all the woes that belaguered me, I actually liked writing this one a good deal.) Tell me what you think in a review! I'll take any comments and critisism that I can sink my greedy little teeth into. Thanks again for all the reviews for the first chapter as well, and I'll see you guys in the next chapter!