Author's Notes: There's a substantial retcon here from the original Men From Onyx Plotline posted in as Chapter 89 of the main story. It'll become apparent very quickly what that retcon is, and I will explain in my final notes what exactly my thought process was.

Chapter One: The Wailing Storm

Confederation of Garworth, Rural Safehouse

Twelve Years AIW (After the beginning of the Imperial Wars)

If there was one thing about the world of Kayez that stood out to Sergeant Xavier Meadows, it was the weather. In a constant state of flux and chaos, it could be sunny one moment and, in the blink of an eye, become a cold, windy thunderstorm. His new home, the island of Garworth, was particularly moody, and was currently in the middle of a tropical storm. The winds ripped and tore around him as he stood some distance from the front porch of the quaint, deceptively nice safehouse in which he lived, letting the rain fall onto his body. Protected only by elegant and fancy clothes manufactured by the locals, he was cold, but couldn't quite summon the effort to move.

Three months of peace, actual, genuine peace, and he was really starting to feel it in the worst ways possible. No longer did he wake up in the morning by immediately throwing on a pair of combat boots and affixing a sidearm to his duty belt, and why would he? There were no missions for him to go on, no firefights to survive, no aliens or terrorists to kill. No expectations of adding another cluster to his purple hearts that day.

Nothing.

In spite of the hard rain, roaring winds, and crashing thunder, he heard only silence. In the middle of a storm, he stood calmly, reflecting on why the hell he felt so strange. His life had been fairly calm for the majority of the time that he'd lived on Kayez, and it was starting to get to him a little. It was eerie, unnerving, and paralyzing. There was an invisible set of braces holding him still, preventing him from moving even when he willed his body to. Just about the only thing he could do was shiver from the cold, and blink whenever the lightning struck.

There were darker thoughts in his mind as well, sometimes his eyes would close, and he'd be back in a muddy foxhole on Concord, or the burning jungles in Menagerie, the snow-covered tundras of Atlas, or a hundred other battlefields. But those too, in spite of the explosions around him and the guns that fired, were silent. Each illusion, each memory, ended the same way. A burst of plasma, a bullet, a piece of shrapnel, came flying towards him and ended the life of the Invincible Orbital Drop Shock Trooper.

There would never be another cocky comment from Fairfire about how good her ass looked in her armor, or another badly-timed joke from Nathan told in some desperate attempt to break the tension that they all felt. No more of Ben being a stick in the mud, and of Jorge being only the slightest bit less formal. No more deep conversations in the dark with Yu when he couldn't sleep, listening to her talk about whatever it was that interested her, all while he did his best not to admire the way that the moonlight would cast shadows upon her face. Her soft brown eyes and beautiful black hair, he'd never get to see her again.

More than anything in the world, he craved for something to happen. Not that he was hoping somebody would shoot at him for real, far from it, but something. Anything to free him from his own mind, from the thoughtful trance that he'd been locked into.

Thankfully, he got his wish, as an ever-dependable friend came to his rescue.

"Why the hell are you just standing out in the rain?!" Yu yelled at him from the porch, a tangible sense of frustration accompanying her words. "You know there's no antibiotics that I can give you if you get sick!"

Meadows smiled, immensely grateful for the rescue. Yu hadn't even realized what was wrong with him, or at least, he hoped she didn't, but she-

"Hey, you okay?!" Yu's voice snapped him out of a second stupor. He moved to turn towards her, which he hadn't done before, and noticed for the first time just how bad his shivering truly was. "Hey, get inside, you don't look too good…"

He wrapped his arms around himself and shakily walked up the path, feeling no relief from the cold as he came under the protective awning of the porch, nor the heat when he walked into the front door, followed very swiftly by Yu. His teeth chattered in spite of his best efforts, and she looked at him with an expression of great annoyance.

"God almighty…" Yu muttered beneath her breath, her thin veneer of annoyance breaking apart to reveal genuine concern very quickly. "What the hell were you thinking? You'll freeze to death like this, take off your clothes!"

For a brief moment, he hesitated, and it wasn't because of the idea of stripping naked in front of her. Indeed, given how much of their lives had been spent climbing into and out of cryo chambers, which they needed to be naked in by necessity, they were pretty used to seeing one-another's bodies. The communal showers only aided that sense of ensuring that being nude wasn't taboo, it was typical.

No, he hesitated because… that was it, he didn't know. His mind was a maelstrom, so many thoughts, so many doubts and ideas. The storm outside the door paled in comparison to the one within him. Why couldn't he move? Why couldn't he think clearly?

Why was everything silent?

He blinked, his vision cleared, and he saw Yu was saying something to him. A panicked expression made its way onto her face as he didn't respond, or move.

Without warning, blackness joined the somber silence, and he fell to the floor.

Meadows had no real answer for how he had woken up on Kayez. He could guess, of course, seeing as he'd been in a battle with an evil, magical being that had just cast a spell at him. A green eldritch energy had enveloped himself and Yu, followed by… nothing. Like a blank spot in his memory, one that Yu shared with him.

The next thing they knew, they had woken up in Garworth, in a dark and shady alleyway beside his squadmate and a sleeping beggar, within one of the poorer districts of the capital city of Waltonshire. Given that they had been dressed in their Orbital Drop Shock Trooper BDUs and were armed to the teeth, they'd stood out like a sore thumb amongst what was clearly a primitive world, and done their very best to keep to themselves hidden. Yu had been the one to correctly guess that they were no longer on Remnant, leaving them with no clue as to what to do next.

The people of Kayez, the world upon which they were now stranded, were still stuck in the early twentieth century. The computer was a distant fantasy, and giant helium-filled airships existed in the place of the airplane, which did not yet exist. Steel-clad battleships, not unlike the one that Mags had owned, were what dictated which nations in the world had power. Then again, that made quite a lot of sense, given that eighty-five percent of the entire planet was covered in ocean. Indeed, the very idea of a continent was foreign to them, all of the land on Kayez was islands.

After a few days of resting from the battle, and doing their best to lie low, an answer had made itself known to her in the form of somebody who had, rather unexpectedly, sought them out. Her name was Allison Tenpenny, and she was perhaps the most mysterious person that Meadows had ever met.

Allison had all of the hallmarks of an ONI Agent. She spoke softly but with a powerful presence, paying great mind to every word that she said, ensuring that what she revealed was what was necessary, and nothing more. The fact that she carried herself in such an imposing manner contrasted harshly with her diminutive stature of only around one-hundred and sixty centimeters tall, a full head shorter than Yu stood. Even so, she was built like an athlete, and always clad in a very pragmatic gray uniform.

Just about the only sign of weakness she ever showed was the faint smell of alcohol on her breath, but if she was drunk, she certainly didn't act like it. She was ruthlessly intelligent, and had smelled an opportunity once she had 'heard a rumor' about two strange people who had shown up in Waltonshire one day, carrying strange weapons and clad in some heavy-duty armor.

Privately, Meadows speculated that she had her own private network of spies who had given her the news. It was very clear just from the resources that she commanded that she was an incredibly powerful person, although he wasn't quite sure if there was a country that she really answered to. Indeed, she didn't claim to represent anybody other than herself.

She'd presented what she wanted not as an demand, but as a question; "Who are you, where did you come from, and what do you want?"

Trusting Allison had been difficult for them at first, especially with the sheer weight of what they knew. That was not to mention the technologies that they had, which were literally centuries in advance of anything that Kayez had to offer. In the end, Yu had given him the authority to decide on what to do next for the both of them, and given that he saw no better alternative, he decided that they would tell Allison the truth and see what she had to say.

They kept things vague at first, but made a few things very clear. They were aliens, soldiers, and had fought battles with other humans, non-human aliens, and with magical beings. Allison had taken it all in stride, she was surprised for certain, but at no point did she ever really display anything resembling panic. That alone had caught Meadows fairly flatfooted, but what she'd asked next completely threw him for a loop.

"This is all well and good, but what is it that you want?"

Her question had hit him like a boulder to the head, what was it that he wanted? More than that, when was the last time that somebody had actually asked what it was that he wanted? Yu, for her part, didn't really have much of an answer beyond a very relatable "I want to go home." But that, unfortunately, was very much out of the question on a planet that barely had powered flight, let alone spaceflight, and which probably didn't even exist in the same universe as either Earth or Remnant.

Without an answer, Allison had given them an offer. In exchange for the information that they had, their stories, and a few key belongings of theirs, she would give them a new life. Her 'friends' in the government would get them new citizenships from Garworth, a nice home, and a convenient backstory to tell anybody who asked where they came from. In Allison's own words;

"Until you decide what it is that you want, I'd prefer to keep you two somewhere nice and peaceful. Given what you've told me, I'd say you've earned it."

Meadows, being an experienced Marine, spoke fluent bullshit, and understood the real meaning of Allison's words perfectly. I want you in my pocket just in case I need you or your knowledge later, and I'm willing to make sure that you live a peaceful life if I can get what I want.

Yu had taken a little bit more convincing than he had, as even days after they'd been unceremoniously dumped out of the battle, she was still very much into a fighting mindset. However, with no real enemy to fight, she'd eventually be forced to concede, and reluctantly offer her agreement to at least take part in the negotiations of Allison's deal.

Naturally, she'd wanted most of the advanced technology that they had, which Meadows hadn't really offered that much resistance in handing over. It wasn't like he had a lot of use for a datapad he didn't have a means to recharge, nor a single can of biofoam, especially once Allison announced her intentions to reverse-engineer the technology for everybody to use. Given just how primitive Kayez's idea of medicine was, he'd been happy to share that in particular. His emergency survival ration bars had also been something he was more than happy to part with, given that they could probably do some good in her hands, and tasted like cardboard in his.

The most important things that she'd taken were their radios, which naturally held perhaps the greatest potential for change out of everything that they had. For a world where wireless communication was in its infancy, a pair of handheld infantry radios, complete with modern batteries, had obvious potential to revolutionize the way that people on Kayez communicated. Allison had promised that she could make such a revolution happen, although how, Meadows couldn't guess.

Just about the only thing he'd really insisted on keeping was his BR55HB Battle Rifle and his ODST armor. It felt wrong to part with it. He'd been a Helljumper for so long that the title, not to mention the equipment, was just another part of his body. Yu had kept her own M7 Submachine Gun and her armor as well. While Allison had been content to let them keep the weapons and armor, she did insist that a few of her other 'friends' had come along and taken very detailed notes of each piece of equipment, asking all sorts of questions about the functions and mechanics that Meadows and Yu had done their best to answer.

The final thing that she'd wanted was, admittedly, a bit of a hard sell. Yu's M41 Rocket Launcher and its two remaining rockets were apparently a one-of-a-kind thing on Kayez, as the rocket launcher simply had not been invented yet. Allison had naturally been very interested in it, and so she'd offered up a substantial sum of money specifically in exchange for the weapon, and detailed instructions on its function.

Yu had been very reluctant to part with what might as well have been her soulbound weapon, and only conceded once Allison had promised to return it whenever she was 'done' with it. It was an empty promise, and all three of them knew it, and it was a deal that Meadows got the feeling nobody in particular was especially comfortable with. Still, he and Yu needed Allison's help if they were ever going to have any kind of stable life on Kayez, and that meant making a less than optimal deal.

The final thing that they'd been forced to part with was their own personal knowledge of what lay beyond Kayez's atmosphere. The worlds they'd visited, what parts of their careers they were permitted to share, the history of humanity on Earth, all of it. Naturally, that was something that would take a very long time to put into writing, and so Allison had agreed to periodically return to Garworth and pick up whatever they had written.

With that, the deal was finalized, and another man had come along with a novel-length cover story for who they 'really were.' It was so lengthy and detailed that Meadows honestly found it hard to believe that it wasn't pre-written, but some of the finer points made it clear that this was something that had been created specifically for him and Yu.

The basic idea was fairly simple, as it went, they were a pair of survivors from a terrifyingly thorough genocide that had taken place not long ago on the largest landmass on Kayez, the island of Dallia. Both of them had seen military service as part of a guerilla group fighting against the nation who had carried out the genocide, the Imperial Federation, which all helped to explain why they were immediately recognizable as traumatized veterans by even, as Allison had so eloquently put it; "The blindest of all clams."

It also worked well because of a much darker reason. Yu, being a woman of Japanese descent, strongly resembled the natives of Dallia, who had been the primary target of the ethnic cleansing. It was something that he knew for a fact bothered her, but she strictly denied that it did every time that he mentioned it, to the point that she refused to hear a word of it from him.

And just like that, the deal was signed. Allison showed off her capabilities in spectacular fashion, setting them up with a quaint, albeit luxurious cottage high in the hills towards the center of Garworth. It was one of the few places on the island that actually had a somewhat nice view, not obstructed by factory smog or the ugly sight of surface mines. Indeed, at a glance, it was difficult to tell that they were living in a well-fortified safehouse. With its internal structure made from a Nickel-Steel Alloy and thick sheets of iron armor plating in between the walls, it offered security in addition to seclusion.

It was quiet, and peaceful, just like Allison had promised. Originally, Meadows had longed for a chance to relax.

But now? He wasn't sure what he wanted.

It was the middle of the night when Meadows woke up in his bed, but there was an oil lantern on his bedside that cast some light in the room, occasionally joined by a flash of lightning from the ongoing storm outside of the window. His mouth was as dry as a desert, and his body was freezing, in spite of the practical pile of heavy wool blankets stacked on top of him.

His head vaguely ached, and his memory of what had happened was fairly vivid, even if it was confusing. Why hadn't he been able to move? Why had he, a veteran Helljumper, frozen up? Why had he passed out the way that he had? He had a theory, of course, but he offered it no further mind, it wouldn't do him any favors to think like that.

Whatever the answer was, he could freely move now, and with that could hopefully at least drink something. He turned over to his bedside to reach for his canteen, but noticed something, or rather, someone, lying beside him as he did so.

It was Yu, and with just how loudly she was snoring, it was nothing short of astonishing that he hadn't noticed her presence sooner. The other thing that he'd somehow not noticed was her arms wrapped tightly around him, either placed there consciously, or otherwise. They were warm, and her grip was tight, but he still managed to reach his canteen and get a drink of water, shocked as he was by her presence.

Having her be in his bed was nothing new, since even though they weren't in a romantic relationship, they shared the bed on the grounds that they trusted each other deeply. Also, the cabin had only come with one bed, and neither of them particularly wanted to sleep on the couch. Neither of them really minded, but Yu had always made sure to keep to her side of the bed, making this a very, very different situation.

As he stared at her in disbelief, his face steadily heated up even as she snored once more without dignity or grace as her arms tightened their hug around him. As shocked as he was, he wasn't exactly eager to move, but he was also worrying if he was enjoying what was happening a bit too much.

He'd had a crush on her for… well, it had been a while. He didn't quite remember when it was that she'd gotten transferred to the same company as him, but he did know that his feelings for her had been very quick to come. Like with the other women in their company, she was strong and brave, but she had something that they didn't, something that she herself wasn't very fond of admitting that she had, a gentler side.

It came out very rarely, to the point where he was surprised the first few times when it had happened. In the moments of calm and quiet, she would express concern for those in their unit who were visibly struggling, and fear for the future. For as much as she had been fond of shooting jokes and insults back and forth with their friend Nathan, she saw just as Meadows did that Nathan's attempts to be funny were nothing more than a front for the fear that he felt.

It was something that had made Yu stand out to him, enough that he undeniably felt something stronger than friendship for her, but he had been very deliberate about not making his feelings known. While there was a reasonable fear in his mind that she might not feel the same way as he did, that alone wouldn't have been enough to stop him.

No, he had been far more concerned about their unit's mortality rate. Being a Helljumper was a great honor, but it was also one of the most dangerous roles that anybody in the UNSC could fill. He didn't want to allow them to get attached to one another, only for one of them to die and leave the other crushed and broken. Yu might've eventually gotten over his death, but he was hesitant to say that he would be able to do the same if she died.

It was far from perfect thinking, he was aware of that much, and he did want to tell her how he felt at some point. Indeed, he had hoped that he would get the chance too… and then they'd ended up on Remnant. The next few months of warfare had left everyone so busy that he never got a chance to tell her. Now that they were on Kayez, effectively on their own, he'd been thinking about her quite a lot, and yet, the hesitation remained.

So for a time, he was content to lie still and let her rest, her arms still wrapped tightly around him as if she were subconsciously asking him to stay. He did feel a little self conscious about being totally naked, which was probably thanks to her getting him out of his sopping wet clothes and warming him up, but it still felt a bit… exciting, to be naked with her, even if it was definitely not in the way that he admittedly wanted it to be. She was still dressed in seemingly all of her locally-made clothes, but lascivious thoughts filled his mind regardless, which he quickly suppressed.

Eventually, her snoring was interrupted by her waking with a start, yelling incomprehensibly at something in a dream, before steadily coming back down to reality. She was breathing deeply, and her eyes were wide with panic.

He knew the signs of a nightmare all too well, and the more lurid thoughts in his mind were swiftly smothered by concern. "Are you okay?"

She shakily nodded, before seemingly noticing his presence… and their proximity. To his surprise, she didn't pull her arms back, but she did slacken her grip a bit. "I should be asking you that! Do you have any idea how badly you scared me?! You came this fucking close to freezing to death! What the hell happened?"

He opened his mouth to answer her, but hesitated, unsure of what to tell her. Did he tell her what he'd been thinking about, about the fear that he had felt? Whatever the case, he figured that she was looking for a more literal answer.

The words came to him with great difficulty, but he still managed to get them out, although a bit more quietly than he'd anticipated. "I couldn't move, like I was pinned in place, thinking."

Confusion momentarily took its place on her face, replaced by a softer, more contemplative look. "What do you mean by that?"

There it was, that kinder side of her that he admired so much. She'd managed to pick up on, at the very least, the tone of what was going through his mind. The accusatory tone in her voice from before was gone, replaced only by genuine concern for him.

She must've sensed that he didn't know what to say as well, so she spoke up again as she started to shift her arms out from around him. "Tell me when you're ready, I'm going to go-"

"Stay." The word left his mouth before his mind could snatch it back, as did the almost begging tone in which he spoke. It took every single ounce of his willpower not to curse himself aloud for saying that, he really should've known better.

A look of surprise and a faint blush appeared on her face, although perhaps that last one was just the lantern's light on her face. "It's okay, I'll be right back. I just need to take a leak, won't even be a minute."

She pulled her arms from around him, and immediately he felt noticeably colder, even more so when she climbed out of the bed. He couldn't help but watch her as she left the room. A momentary pang of embarrassment hit him at the way he felt, and had acted. When the hell did he get so goddamn needy?

But while she was gone, he cast his memory back to before, when he had frozen up in the storm. Why did it happen? It was far from the first time that he'd had nightmarish flashbacks, but it was the first time that he'd been stuck in place like that. It was also the first time he'd experienced such utter silence, even in the middle of roaring wind, downpouring rain, and the loud crashes of the lighting.

Something had clearly changed, and that was when the answer struck him. It wasn't the memories that had frozen him still, it was what came before, that realization that he had no more battles to fight. For all intents and purposes, he was no longer serving, and without that constant need to be ready and aware, he was left with an uncomfortable truth.

His instinct to freeze in fear at his memories was not new, but his freedom from his duties was. He and Yu both had difficulty adjusting to what was effectively civilian life, but he hadn't realized just how badly he'd been doing up until today, when it had nearly cost him his life.

It was shortly after he'd made the realization that Yu returned, wearing not her full set of clothes, but instead a gray undershirt and black panties. The surprise of the sight, not to mention her own beauty, was almost enough to distract him from what he'd been thinking about. Almost.

She must've noticed him staring, because she bashfully chuckled and scratched the back of her head. "Yeah, I uh… might've fallen asleep while I was trying to warm you up. I figured I'd finally get changed."

Words didn't come easily to him, and despite the appreciation for her beauty that undeniably occupied a corner of his mind, it was very much his realization that still clouded his mind. "That… makes sense."

His tone and expression must've betrayed his thoughts

She frowned and her expression of concern returned as she crawled back into bed beside him, keeping close, but notably to herself, not gracing him with another embrace. The disappointment he felt must've shown, because there was a flash of amusement on Yu's face, before the more serious concern took over.

"Talk to me, what's going on?"

Meadows' mind worked overtime, trying to find the strength to put what he was thinking to words. The silence, however, was deafening. The cold returned to his body, defying the fires that had begun to flash before him. Familiar sights returned, the Covenant, terrorists, slavers, monsters-

His attention returned to him when she snapped her fingers in front of his eyes, giving him something to focus on past the memories. She slowly carried his gaze up towards her own eyes, and looked at him with a solemn look in her eyes. "It's the war… isn't it?"

There had been more than one conflict that they'd fought in, of course, but that wasn't the point of her question. He nodded, that was much easier than talking, but managed to find the strength to squeeze out a word. "...Yes."

He half-expected the memories to return, and he was terrified that they would. For the moment, however, he was safe. Yu looked him in the eyes for a while, no doubt trying to think of what to say, before she finally found her words again. "You saw I had a nightmare, didn't you?"

There was a momentary flash of shame in her own eyes, giving him back some of his strength. It was not for his own sake, but because he knew that she needed his support. "What happened?"

Her answer was spoken through a hollow, quiet tone. "We died. You, and me, in Vale. It was just a dream but… it felt so real. Only this time, we didn't wake up."

Meadows nodded to show that he was still listening, unsure of whether or not he should tell her that he had experienced similar nightmares.

"Xavier… how do we even know that we're actually still alive?" She asked. "I mean, we got hit with magic, actual magic. How can we be sure that this isn't just some kind of afterlife?"

In truth, Meadows didn't really know how to reply. It was a question he'd asked himself quite a few times already, and one that he didn't really have a good answer to. "I know I don't really have the kind of scientific explanation that Curie might have had but… I don't really feel any less alive, do you?"

Her solemn expression did not waver, if anything, it got just a little bit stonier. Her eyes, usually filled with determination or compassion, watered as her strength waivered. Tears formed in her eyes as she turned away from him and choked out her reply. "I thought you were going to die."

His throat tightened up at the fear in her voice, at the way that she couldn't even bear to face him.

"You were so cold, like a corpse, you even stopped shivering." Yu continued to barely push the words out of her throat as a few tears finally fell. "I thought… I thought I was just going to be alone here! That you weren't going to make it this time…"

Meadows couldn't bear the thought of listening to her misery for even another moment, and with a strange, sudden conviction, gently reached a hand out to one of her own. For a moment, he was terrified that she would pull hers back, but instead she gripped onto him tightly, as if she was afraid that he wasn't really there.

"You saved me." He said, hoping that the weight of his gratitude carried through her words. "You were there for me, you always have been… Thank you."

A choked sob made its way out of Yu's throat, prompting Meadows to prop himself up against the headboard of their bed and let her lean on his shoulder. She tried to stifle her cries a moment longer, before he wrapped his arm around her and held her tightly. This wasn't a matter of his crush, or wanting to be close to her, but a matter of him being a dearly-needed friend in her time of need, and he was content to put aside his own issues for a while longer for her sake.

"It's okay." He reassured her. "Just let it out, you don't have to be afraid."

She cried for what felt like hours, choking for air at times and using one of their blankets as an impromptu tissue. All the matter, Meadows held her and reassured her as best as he could, hoping that at least some of what he was saying was making things easier. He figured that, at least from her perspective, he was doing a decent job at looking sturdy and dependable, but that couldn't be further from the truth.

Seeing Yu in such a terrible state, not dissimilar to his own, was beyond disheartening. The feeling was like a knife to his throat, once more dry as a desert, impairing his ability to breath at times. For all the time that he had known Yu, she had never once fallen apart the way that she was doing now. Then again, perhaps she had, and he simply hadn't been perceptive enough to notice and help her.

It wasn't doing his own mental state any favors either, although he managed to keep himself stable, at least for now. Deep in the back recesses of his mind, the storm of the past threatened to break free once more. Each flash of lightning that lit their bedroom was a reminder of the memories that had been delayed, that he had fled from, but not confronted.

"Why are we even here?" She mournfully asked, although he got the feeling that she wasn't talking to him. "I just want to go home…"

Those were two things that he couldn't help with. He wanted to go home as well, wanted to see Earth again, maybe even reconnect with his family. But that would never happen, nor would it ever happen for Yu. They were castaways now, living on a planet that barely had electric lighting, let alone trans-dimensional spaceflight. As for why they were there?

He had no good answer to that one either.

Yu's crying only ended when she fell asleep, devolving back into the same loud snoring that she'd been caught up in before. Meadows took a moment to get her at least a little bit cleaned up and postured in such a way that she was going to sleep a bit more comfortably. Her breathing mercifully eased up a bit, and he prayed to whatever God was watching that she could get some much-needed rest.

Once that was done, he very gently climbed out of the bed, and put on one of his pairs of boxers. He felt dirty now, thinking about all of the lustful things that he had, not even realizing that even as she tried to comfort him, she was dealing with a litany of problems of her own. Lying naked beside her like that had made him feel like a creep, a predator, even as the logical side of his mind told him that she was an entire star-system's distance away from giving a shit.

Inner-guilt and demeaning thoughts be damned, he made a brief trip to the bathroom. Once his bladder was no longer bothering him and he was washing his hands, he spared a glance towards the mirror over the sink. His gaze was distant, his facial hair was unkempt, and there were giant bags beneath his eyes. The face that he saw was not even his own, it was of a dead man.

His focus was disrupted when Yu loudly snored once more, and he spared a glance back to her. She had barely even moved, and hopefully, wasn't due for another nightmare. He spared one final look in the mirror, splashed some water on his face and rubbed it down, before returning to bed and settling in next to Yu. Perhaps it was just his imagination, but when he was beside her again and they were both under the covers, she seemed to relax just a little bit more.

Before long, sleep came to him as well, and with it, the memories that he'd been hiding from.

Author's Notes:

Alright, I clearly owe everyone a few answers here to some big questions. Gonna be a lengthy AN, but I want to clear the air.

When is Steam and Serpents coming out? Why am I making this story? Why is Yu alive, and was present at the Battle of Beacon, only to be sent to Kayez along with Meadows? Why am I shipping them in spite of not really building up to it in The Men From Onyx?

The first two questions are sort of tied together. As it turns out, writing a novel in addition to a litany of other fanfiction projects has been difficult, same with creating a universe. Indeed, I haven't really started on my first draft yet, and only recently reached a solid conclusion on what ought to be done to resolve some longstanding issues with the plotline. Long story short, going to be quite a while, to the point where I don't even know where to pin a guess.

Which is part of the reason why this story exists. You see, just because I don't have the main plot down doesn't mean I don't want to get a little experience with writing some of the finer details of the universe, and that's something I'm hoping to do here. Moreover, I got a surprisingly large amount of interest for my original story when I posted the plotline for The Men From Onyx, and figured that some people might be interested in seeing something sooner rather than later, along with some familiar faces.

Right, elephant in the room time. Why is Yu alive? Better question, why was she slated to die in the original plotline? Cards on the table, Yu's fate was something that I never gave a great deal of consideration to, and something I considered a low priority. At the time I viewed her as perhaps more shallow than a lot of the rest of Onyx Team, but while I was re-reading TMFO recently, I surprised myself with just how attached to her I got, inspiring a bit of guilt about the ending that I gave her.

So, why did she die in the first place? Because The Men From Onyx, ultimately, was a story about soldiers and the war that they fought in. To have everybody make it out alive just came across as cheap, like I wasn't having enough nerve to kill off my characters. Recent changes to my worldview, and indeed, my writing philosophies themselves, have spat in that notion.

So why is Yu still alive now, because why not? Why shouldn't she and Meadows get to be happy? Why should Yu have to die not for the sake of resolving a plot, or for the sake of her character and that of her squadmates, but because I simply couldn't think of anything better for her? In truth, what I did to Yu rings too eerily close to fridging for my liking, so consider this my attempt at atonement. And poor Meadows, does he deserve to live the rest of his undying life isolated and alone just because of my laziness?

No, I have the power to deliver a deserved happy-ish ending, and so I'm going to. There's enough misery, death, disease, and carnage in the real world. Writing for me is a form of escapism, why must they be the focus? The answer is as simple as it is true, they do not need to be the focus.

As a final remark, shipping. Meadows and Yu were one of the first pairings that I ever made, long before I even published the first draft of the Men From Onyx. I never ended up including it since even in such a massive story, I still had to cut things for the sake of expediency. On top of that, I was a lot less comfortable writing romance than I am now. Things have changed now, for the better, and I have high hopes for how this is going to turn out.

Right, nine paragraphs of notes, Jesus Christ. Look, if you have any questions, I am more than happy to answer them in DMs/PMs. I will happily talk your ear off about my characters and the things that I'm thinking.

Oh, and that NSFW warning? That ain't just for show. Don't worry, we'll get there.