Chapter CXXXIV: A Semester Abroad

December 25, 2544 (UNSC Calendar)/two months later

Udinia, Paris IV, Paris System

"You can't patch up a wounded soldier with a band aid."- Michael Conolly

It was sort of ironic, the snow was already melting away. Or it would be if there was any snow on the city. There was snow outside of it. There were still some piles of snow packed up on the curb and on the corners of buildings, but you could leave with just a sweater on and be comfortable. Spring was beginning on Paris IV and it was Christmas. Traditionally Christmas was during winter, both Earth and Reach had it during that season, but we couldn't control the tilt of other colonized planets, so most planets got it during another season. The originally Christian holiday had become almost a poly-religious one after a couple centuries of pop culture exposure. The church wasn't very happy about that. The toy stores were.

It wasn't a time of joy for me, I was angry, as angry as I had ever been. Well, maybe that's a stretch, but I can tell you I was pretty damn pissed, angry enough to have people keep a reasonable distance from me. I had a few reasons to be happy, namely that Cam and Lamberti had made it out of the Inconvenience before it blew up. Some nurse had put them on the same gurney and jumped them into a Pelican just before it left the ship.

The nurse had died.

After having been on intensive care for a couple of weeks they finally let me out here. I was shellshocked. Most of us were. My squad, Marina, and Claire had made it out safe, even if their psyches were as damaged as mine was. Horace, Captain Brooks, Albaf, Wilkins, Doc Zhivago, and Sergeant Durant hadn't made it out in time. Emily Hardwick hadn't made it out. Out of all the officers from the infantry forces only Lieutenant Darbinian had survived. The asshole had climbed on a HEV pod in my drop bay and launched himself. When I heard about it I was too surprised to be angry. Now I was just happy that he was alive.

But I had gotten over the shock of having almost every single person I knew being killed when I saw Corpsman Hanna Lockley coming to my hospital room to visit me. It was not a silver lining, it was probably the best damn thing that ever happened to me. Having someone come back from the dead is every bit as emotional as they make it out to be in the movies. She was pretty happy too, but her entire unit had been wiped out save for Darbinian and a couple of wounded guys. All her close friends in Echo Company were dead. So was everyone else.

The Iowa had to leave back to Reach, give a report and a debrief and report back for duty. Everybody else had to leave with it.

Not me, the ship psychiatrist had given me a diagnosis that wasn't exactly a good one, in light of my past history and the fact that I hadn't been taking my pills for a very long time now I was given several months of paid leave.

You'd think I would enjoy it, but being in a strange planet with no friends and being constantly psychoanalyzed and taken to see shrinks isn't exactly a vacation. I still had a couple months of therapy to go if I wanted to return to active duty. At first I had seen the shrink that had first analyzed my fucked up head when I last came here. He was pleasant enough and remembered me by name. He asked how I was doing and then proceeded to talk to me about my hallucinations.

It was nice, being able to tell someone that I was now seeing my dead squad mate as well as my dead father. I was lucky I didn't have any dead ex-girlfriends because otherwise I would've been hallucinating them, and I think that seeing Layla alive and taunting me was more than I could've taken. But it was still early, Emily could pop up for all I knew.

So I had talked to Doctor Crowe. He had listened and tapped down some notes. It had been a while before he finally reached a consensus and decided that he still didn't know exactly what I had. A mix between paranoid schizophrenia and multiple personality disorder was the top contender. He was still a little surprised that I could properly function with all those things going on in my brain. He gave me pills and tried to coach me into being able to make my hallucinations disappear at will. It was harder than you'd think when Schitzo hadn't showed up for months now. It sucked.

While I was diagnosed (technically speaking), I still had a long time to go with Crowe, he'd be my own personal therapist for a while. ONI had gotten involved in this nasty little piece of business and had paid for all the sessions as well as for a little apartment that I could stay in. I was thankful for that, but it meant that I had to report to another ONI type about my mental problems. While the guy was trained in nine different types of psychology, he wasn't a shrink, he was just an agent that reported to his superiors.

For something that had been sitting right in front of me for years now, it sure did take me a long time to see it.

I had never had any sort of problems before someone decided that it would be a smart idea to pump me full of some batshit crazy stuff to allegedly make me better than even the best soldier. That by itself didn't mean anything, but ONI was awfully eager to keep me healthy. It wasn't unusual for Section-III to simply discard a project that they had thrown billions of credits into the moment they decided that it wasn't exactly what they expected. Anybody else with a head as fucked up as mine would have been dismissed and maybe given some money to keep quiet. Hell, perhaps they would've even killed me.

They desperately wanted me to work, at least that's what I told myself. There was no other explanation for it.

That's what I was thinking as I walked through the street, a thin scarf covering my mouth to keep all the dirty air out and maybe filter the oxygen going into my lungs a little bit. I was wearing the same kind of clothes that I had been wearing for the past months, jeans and a long-sleeves shirt, gray. The UNSC had given me some money to buy clothing when I told them that the only thing that I could wear was my battle armor.

That and the guys at the Iowa had given me cargo pants and a Marines shirt in addition to combat boots.

I had used that money to buy myself three changes of clothes and a cheap coat. Well, that was the plan, I only bought myself two changes of clothes and a coat, the rest I spent on a bottle of fine liquor. Don't worry, I didn't get it for myself, I immediately packed it and sent it to the CO of the UNSC Iowa. I was thankful for his ship. He had lost half his battlegroup only to get us out alive.

Well, that's pretty much the story. Woke up in a strange ship after having been partially fixed while unconscious, finding out that God (or luck) had decided to spare those closest to me, being sent to Paris IV for leave, finding out that my leave would be extended because I needed a shrink, and buying some fancy booze for the captain of the ship that saved me. The only problem was that my account in Reach needed to be linked to the banks here, so I was moneyless for the first few days.

Oh man, this sucked balls.

I walked into a diner that I had been going to after every session with Doctor Crowe. It advertised itself as a place that sold good old-fashioned American food. It certainly had to be old-fashioned if they referred to it as American instead of Urnan. Well, maybe I'm being a hypocrite here, I still call myself a Mexican despite having been born in the URNA. But technically speaking I am both, and the food was also American and Urnan.

Sorry, I'm rambling now. I walked inside the diner and sat down at my usual table. I felt kind of naked without weapons on me. When I say without weapons I mean without firearms. I never left home without my knife, least of all now that I was without friends or even acquaintances. I waved down a waitress and she came over to take my order. I ordered the same thing that I had been for the last few days, a hamburger and a milkshake.

"So the usual then?" the waitress asked me with a smile. She was very pretty, the retro waitress outfit that she wore only accentuated her features. It didn't hurt that the top three buttons of her blouse were undone. She probably got great tips all the time.

I nodded and gave her a smile, it was probably the first time I had smiled on the whole day. "The usual," I confirmed, handing her back the menu and allowing myself to slouch on the soft plush seats that the booth had.

I pulled out my phone while I waited, regretting buying it more and more every time. Sure, it looked old-fashioned and cool, but it was simply a useless piece of plastic. I could've gotten a smaller one for the same prize. Plus, this one didn't come with the in-ear things that you could wear at all times. I sighed to myself and tapped away at the holographic projection, avoiding being hit by rocks and jumping over logs.

"There you go," the waitress said after a few minutes, bringing me both my greasy burger and my malty milkshake. As unhealthy as it looked, I knew that I wouldn't regret eating them one bit. Besides, being in the military meant free health care, so who cares?

I smiled again and examined her nametag. "Thank you, Katie."

"Ayers, Katie Ayers," she replied with a beaming smile. "You've been here every day for the past week. How long are you staying?"

Man was she pretty. "How do you know I'm not a local?"

She smiled again, showing perfect teeth. "It's evident that you're not from here. For starters you cough too much."

"Maybe I'm sick."

"Maybe," she agreed. "But my sharp detective eyes tell me that you're wearing the same clothes you wore yesterday."

"I've got two of these," I said. It was the truth. For some reason, I was enjoying the conversation, or maybe just the company.

"That's unlikely. So, are you a refugee?"

"Something like that," I told her. "Many of those guys here?"

"Not in Udinia, but there's little villages popping around all over the countryside."

"Huh, I didn't know that."

"There you go, not a local."

I smiled again. "Didn't we clear that already?"

"So, are you going to tell me your name, Mister Refugee?"

"Frank Castillo, Gunnery Sergeant."

She raised her eyebrows in surprise and then shook her head in disbelief. "I thought that you military guys were supposed to be all clean-cut and stuff. Are you on active duty?"

"Yeah," I said. The truth was, I hadn't shaven in all the time that I was here and during the whole time in Asilon never once took a blade to my face. I now had one truly scraggly beard of two and something months on me. I thought it looked good. "I'm actually doing some rehabilitation right now."

"Oh really?" she asked. That seemed to snag her attention. Even more. "Wounded in action?"

I put my best, smoothest, sexiest face on and leaned slightly towards her. "Can't talk about it darling, it's classified."

It worked, Katie The Waitress giggled at that and smiled once again. She looked like she was about to say something before an angry voice reminded her that she was still working. Katie just turned back to face me and shrugged before taking off to attend another patron.

The burger was every bit as good as last time and the milkshake was both thick and tasty. It was a pretty good meal, and it would also guilt me into going to the gym after this.

Funny, I care so much about the way I look that I still manage to find a gym no matter where I am. To be honest, I don't know what I would do with myself if I got a disfiguring injuries. The scars in my back, arms, and ribs are stories, half a face molten off wouldn't make for an amusing tale. I did my best to interrupt that train of thought and resumed eating my burger. The meat was tasty even though I could tell that it was vat-grown, the bacon, on the other hand, was every bit as delicious as it was natural.

I finished my whole hamburger and then drank what was left of my milkshake before sitting back and patting myself on the belly. Man, it had been a great meal. I finished up and paid the bill, leaving the same amount of money in tips that I had been leaving for the past days. You know, I thought about that one for a long while. Harmlessly flirting with a waitress was one thing, but going any further was cheating. In the end I decided not to send any mixed signals.

Any more mixed signals.

Damn, nice going there, Frank.

So it became a routine. I'd wake up in the morning and do my morning run like a good military man, after that I'd return to my small apartment for some breakfast and stay there for an hour and a half or so, watching television or reading. Maybe both. After that break I'd catch a bus or public transport to get to the insane asylum. I still felt like I was at the beginning of a bad movie every time I walked in, it looked every bit the part of an insane asylum, it was rather frustrating to see those iron-wrought gates with the big fancy letters on top. But after a while I got used to it. I was only going there once a day and for most of the time I was inside a very nice office.

It wasn't long before I started getting used to the routine and it took an even shorter amount of time to start liking it. I mean, I was having conversations with a professional that I didn't have to pay for, I frequented a diner that served incredible food and drinks that also happened to have a beautiful waitress that I could also talk to. Other than that I had a lot of free time which I could use to just relax, read, or watch television. I went to the gym regularly, keeping myself in shape and making a couple of friends at the gym and I went to a local bar on occasion where I made friends with some of the other regulars. It had only been five months since I had arrived here and I already felt like I had a life. When it hit me that I would have to leave in just three weeks.

"Three weeks?" Katie asked, obviously sad. I'm ashamed to admit that I felt good when I realized that she would miss me.

"And I'll be gone," I confirmed. It felt weird, I usually had an early dinner in the diner, now I was still in there and they were about to close down. Katie was sitting in the booth opposite from me, we had had a very long conversation about non-trivial stuff and she kept stealing my fries. Whenever she leaned forward to grab one her shirt would fall forward just enough to show me some cleavage. She was wearing a black bra.

Is she doing it on purpose.

"Only three weeks?" she asked again. "Are you ever going to come back?"

I looked away from her puppy-dog eyes and took a large bite of my second cheeseburger of the day. It seemed to lose its taste when I looked back into her eyes. I really did have a weak spot for pretty eyes. All the while I had to keep remembering that I had a girlfriend back home.

Do you? I mean, it's been six months.

I sighed. "I don't know, I'll probably be back at some point or other, but I don't know when. It'll probably be a while."

"But, I mean-"

"Hey," I stopped her. She was only becoming cuter by the second. "Three weeks are a long time, besides, you get to throw me a going away party."

"Really? But I wouldn't even know where to start!"

I rubbed my chin, my beard was now neatly trimmed but still way past regulation length. "Yeah, it'd have to be pretty small."

Katie leaned forward and looked me in the eyes. "How small?" she asked in a quiet voice, almost a whisper.

You see, at that moment I was tempted. I could've said that she could make it as small as she wanted and given her the go signal. I could've moved back a little bit and told her that it couldn't be that small a party. I saw myself saying both of them at the same time and my brain just seemed to spark and I fumbled over my words. That never happened to me. Sure, I was often nervous with women, but never so much that I couldn't speak.

On one hand, I had never actually broken up with Hanna, and I did love her. True, she hadn't replied to any of the two messages that I sent her, and that did make me slightly angry. On the other hand, it had been almost six months of not seeing her, there was probably a reason why she hadn't contacted me, and I would've heard if she had been killed in action. So this was it. Hanna hadn't made an effort to contact me, that meant something. Katie was sending some pretty obvious hints. If I had just behaved like a regular person and not flirted back with her I could've avoided all of this.

Goddamit. Either way I was an asshole. One way I lead her on for months, the other I might be cheating on her.

"As small as you want it to be," I replied.

Well, fuck.

She smiled and I forgot all about it. Well, maybe my dick forgot all about it. Well, this was bound to be interesting. Hell, you could make a romantic comedy out of it, the one where the guy is the asshole. Yup, that's me.

Her smile became a grin and I melted into a puddle of goo. "Great! It's going to be great!"
Sure it is…

Before either of us could say anything else the manager walked up to our table and told me that they were closing down and that I had to leave. I shrugged and paid for my two burgers, quickly swiping my card over the table and then standing up. I did my best to avoid looking as nervous and worried as I was feeling and then gave Katie a smile. "I'll see you tomorrow then."

"You'd better be here every day before you leave," she told me. "Or else."

At that I actually laughed. "Sure, bye."

At that moment she stepped up from the booth and leaned forward to give me a kiss. I let her do it and I realized that I was going to cheat on my girlfriend. At that time I didn't care. I really liked this girl and she seemed to like me too, besides, it had been six months without me even kissing anybody. I know that that's what a teenager would say, but at the time that's exactly what I felt.

I quickly returned the kiss before she pulled away and smiled at me. I stepped outside of the diner and walked for a block before pausing on a corner.

"Frank, you're a terrible person."

She looked nice. I wished that I had better-looking clothing on me, but I didn't really want to spend my money. Besides, somebody could've asked me why the hell I had decided to buy stuff that made me look nice when I had absolutely no reason to. Yeah, the reason I didn't buy any new clothes was guilt, and yet I was still going into a going-away party that would've been called a date under any other circumstances. I'm not making excuses for what I did, I'm just describing it to you. Right before I met up with Katie I was giving myself shit for going through with this and kept telling myself that I would tell her that I had a girlfriend the moment she showed.

And of course she showed up looking the most beautiful I had ever seen her. For a woman that was probably the most beautiful that I had ever seen, that was really something.

"Wow," I said.

She beamed and smiled prettily. "I'll take that as a compliment."

"You should. You really should."

And just like that, my girlfriend went to the back of my mind and I forgot all about my guilt.

I walked outside the door of my tiny rental apartment, trying to use my body to hide my unmade bed, candy wrappers, and dirty clothes from view. I had worn one of my two pairs of jeans, one of my two shirts, my combat boots, and the unnecessarily expensive coat that I had bought. I felt like she was out of my league just by standing next to her. You already know that I have a big ego and that I'm usually confident about myself, I'm not going to lie about it, I know it and you guys know it. At that moment I felt like I was seriously over my head. It probably sounds conceited or dickish when I say it, but I had never felt that way.

"I see that you brought out your fanciest clothes," she teased, running her hands along the flaps of my coat and then patting my chest. My stomach lurched at that.

"You're right, maybe I should've bought something."

Katie just shook her head. "How you look doesn't matter. Besides, I think you look rather…dashing."

"Well, men do like to be called dashing," I admitted, thanking her for the compliment. It put me more at ease and gave me back some of my traditional self confidence. Well, that sounded dickish.

"Come on," Katie told me, waving me towards the elevator and looking giddy. It gave me some reassurance that she was happy in this situation. Seeing her happy made me happy.

When we stepped out it was surprisingly cold. I had gone through half a standard year, the orbital period of Paris IV was shorter, that meant that six months was enough to go through two and a half seasons. I arrived here at the end of winter, it was now mid-autumn again, cold breezes and light showers were plenty around, but today was probably the coldest day that we'd had in several months. Normally I would've hated it, today it was the best thing that could've happened to me.

The moment we walked out the door a breeze hit us, blowing Katie's hair into her face and making her hold on to her knit hat. Unlike me, she was wearing thin leggings that did nothing to stop the wind. On top of that she had a dress-like shirt that went just below her butt and a short jacket on top. I wasn't exactly dressed for the weather, but my coat helped a lot with the wind, and in turn, the cold.

I pressed my chin against my chest, suddenly wishing that I had brought a cap or hat to keep my head warm. I cursed myself for my lack of foresight but then I felt Katie snuggling up against me for warmth. She put her arm around mine and pressed herself against me. It was a wonderful feeling. We said nothing as we walked the streets of Udinia. I had long since become used to the smog and pollution all around me and just reveled in the moment instead of focusing on the stinging sensation on my nose and throat. After all, you've got to look on the bright side of life, right?

Funny thing to hear from a cynical Marine such as myself, but at that time I was happy.

"Where are we going?" I asked Katie after going two blocks.

"Hmmm," was her only replied as she pressed herself tighter against me.

That made my smile even bigger than it already was, if that was possible. I pulled my hand out from my pocket and then put my arm around her shoulders, holding onto her upper arm with my hand. I've said it before and I'm going to say it again after this, at that time I just felt like I was where I wanted to be for the rest of my life. Sadly that wasn't a possibility. I would be leaving in two days and it was unlikely that I would come back more than twice a decade. Paris IV was a huge colony, maybe even as populated as Reach, but it wasn't a producer of important goods or a transport hub. It was just like a big city that happened to be out of the way.

After walking for some twenty minutes Katie stopped and pulled me towards a bench. This bench in particular was near the edge of a small bridge that overlooked a very long fountain, it was currently off, but the water reflected the lights from the buildings all around. It was as romantic as it could get in this city, perhaps the clearly visible line of smog ruined the illusion, but at that point I didn't care.

After a long while of silence, with Katie leaning against me I finally talked. "Was this the plan all along?"

Katie muttered something and shuffled her head from my shoulder to my chest. "I made reservations at this fancy restaurant, a friend told me it was great and super romantic."

"Romantic?" I asked in an exaggerated voice. "Did you have ulterior motives?"

That actually got a small laugh from her and she turned her head and looked at me. Her lips were awfully close to mine. "What if I did?" she asked, playing along. "What would that make me?"

I smiled back at her. "A woman of taste."

This time her laugh was not as small. She laughed for a while and pressed her forehead against mine. "You, Frank, you have a huge ego. Did everybody ever tell you that?"

"More than once," I admitted. "Doesn't seem to change anything though." Both of us laughed some more, even though it wasn't that funny. After we stopped I went on. "After that romantic dinner what did you have planned?"

"This walk," she revealed. Katie sighed and pursed her lips to the side. "I don't know why I didn't walk there first, walking with you just seemed so…"

"Right?" I finished, not even caring how corny I sounded.

"Right."

By that point we were so close that we didn't even have to move to kiss. Well, not at first. Katie turned her whole body so that she was facing me as opposed to lying against me. For a while we just kissed. There was no groping, no rubbing, no petting of any kind. It was very PG-13 if you ask me. I didn't really mind, I just wanted to enjoy my time here with her to the fullest, and this was a very fine way to do just that. But much like my stay here, it couldn't last forever. Unlike it, the good part came after that.

We walked back to her apartment very slowly, occasionally stopping to kiss some more. We alternated between holding hands and walking arm in arm. It took a lot longer to get to her house than it should've. Still, we got there and went inside. To be honest, her place was exactly what you'd expect a waitress in her mid-twenties to have. It was not exactly big and the furniture was obviously secondhand, but at that point I didn't care. It was about then that things started getting physical. In a good way of course.

It didn't take that long for both of us to find each other on her couch. After that, it took even less time for me to remove her leggings and for Katie to take my shirt off. I got little shivers as she ran her hands along my back. She seemed pretty surprised too, my back was a mess of scars from over a decade of combat. The biggest scar was the one that the elite in the fancy armor gave me in Jericho VII, running diagonally across my back.

"What happened?"

"Energy sword," I replied. She most certainly knew what that was, it was the most symbolic weapon of the Covenant, even ONI censors couldn't completely block the flow of information, besides, the swords served to make people hate the elites more.

"Here?"

"Plasma rifle," I told her, running my hands along her thighs. "I'll tell you all about them later."
She smiled and pulled herself back so that she could remove her dress over her head. At that time I just smiled back and let nature take its course.

"And here?"

"OW, that tickles," I exclaimed, shuffling away from her fingers. "I got my ribs replaced."

"But if your real ribs aren't there why does it tickle?" Katie asked.

"My skin is still there, same with the nerve endings. The only advantage of these is that they probably will never break."

"I can't believe I'm still finding new ones," she mused to herself.

I chortled. "Ha! Sometimes I forget how I got some of these myself."

"Showoff," she teased. "I bet you say that to all the girls."

"Only the special ones," I assured her.

She propped herself up on her elbow. "Ones? Has there been more than me?"

"Some things are best left unsaid," I told her. At this point the last person in the world that I wanted to think about was Hanna. Or Layla, or Marina. Hell I didn't want to think of what anybody back in Reach would think about what I was doing right now. So I suppressed my thoughts and just focused on enjoying the moment. I felt guilty when it wasn't that hard a thing to do.

"Can't you stay here for longer?"

"No," I said firmly. "You know I'd love to, but-"

"But treason is punishable by death and going AWOL is considered treason."

I poked her nose. "Exactly."

Katie rolled around in her bed. "You know, I can't believe that you never asked me out before I did."

I groaned. "I'm sorry, I am. It's just-"

"What?" she pressed.

I couldn't tell her the truth, I could barely live with it myself. It was a lot easier for me to think that there was nothing wrong with what I was doing. "I was only going to be here for six months. The moment I realized that I liked you I decided it would be easier to keep you as a friend, to keep things simple when I left." It wasn't exactly a lie, but it wasn't the whole truth either. It had been just over twenty-four hours since we had first stepped outside of my apartment. We had spent most of them in her place, just leaving a couple of times to get meals and my things form my apartment. One would expect a day packed with sex, but for the most part we just talked, laughed, and watched movies. She liked cuddling a lot, and I didn't really mind a beautiful woman leaning against me. Of course, there had been quite a bit of sex too. "You have no idea how much I regret not doing it."
"Fine, don't get all worked up," she muttered.

"I'm not-" I started before I realized she was only kidding. "Not cool."

Katie laughed and kissed me. "When will you be back?"

"I don't know. I know that I'm being assigned to another ship, but I don't know what ship, what fleet, what anything. Trust me, if I can ever come for a visit, I will."

"I'll hold you to that. And I'll check the casualty lists."

"You know how to spell my last name?" I asked.

"Yeah, memorized it."

"I wish I could tell you that you don't have to check them, but after…But I'm not so sure now." I pressed my head against her. "What time is it?"

"We still have some time," she replied.

"I have to report to base at sunrise," I told her. "And base is pretty far away."

"In that case you only have five minutes." When I looked at Katie her eyes were tearing up. It made me feel pretty darn bad, putting that together with my guilt I had trouble keeping a straight face.

"It's time for me to go then," I said sadly. I slung my legs down to the floor and started putting my socks on. Katie hugged my chest and kissed my neck. "Don't tempt me," I told her jokingly.

"But I do want to tempt you," she replied, "I don't want you to go."

After my socks I put on my underwear and pants. It was pretty hard to get my jeans on with Katie trying to drag me back to bed. It took some effort, but after kissing her hands I managed to get her to unclasp them and let me stand up. I put on my shirt and then grabbed my coat and my duffel bag. I turned around and looked at her. She was crying a little bit now, and it was taking all of my self-control not to sniffle. Yes, that sounded unmanly, but it's true.

"I'm going to miss you," she said.

"I'm going to miss you too," I replied.

Katie stood up and gave me a long kiss, putting her hand on the back of my head and pulling me against her. I returned the kiss with passion, dropping my coat and holding onto her waist. After a while I pulled back and sighed. I went down to pick up my coat again and stroked her cheek, feeling the wetness that the tears had left.

"This isn't goodbye," I assured her.

"It feels like it."

"We'll meet again. I promise."

She smiled, it seemed forced and sad. "I'll see you later, then."

I smiled back. "I'll see you later."

I left before any of us could say anything else or find an excuse for me to say here. I had already ordered a cab, and a driverless one was waiting for me outside. I walked towards it and tossed my stuff inside before going in and shutting the door. "Where to?" it asked me.

"Udinia Naval Base," I replied. "And make it quick."

It was pretty early in the morning, and there were only a few cars outside. It didn't take long for the taxi to leave the city proper and reach the outskirts. Udinia Naval Base was right outside the city, it was a mix between an actual base, a drydock, and a space port. From my window I could see several windows as well as a few frigates parked in the distance. Already small resupply craft were darting towards space to supply ships in orbit anchored to the battlestars or space stations.

"We have arrived at your chosen destination," the cab said.

"I can see that," I replied. "Thanks."

I only had one bag with me, so I cleared customs relatively quickly. There were only a few other marines and troopers slated to travel back to Reach, so we boarded a small transport ship. Nobody knew each other, so everybody kept to themselves. Once we were inside the ship we had a quick breakfast and we were allowed to take showers before being ordered to climb into the cryo pods. While I was taking my clothes off and climbing inside the tank I saw something that I had been expecting for a while now.

"Oh Frank, I'm glad that you're returning to your old self. Are you gonna tell her?"

I looked away from Schitzo and leaned back on the cryogenic tank, ignoring my subconscious. That is really hard to do, you know. The door closed above me and I suddenly started feeling drowsy. I was knocked out while my head revolved around the issue. What the hell was I going to do?

So, this is the first chapter that Sniper Fodder hasn't proof-read in a while. hat is because Sniper Fodder could barely work on my chapters since he got himself a new job, don't think that he was a crappy proof-reader because he wasn't. This chapter in particular and maybe all of the following ones were proof-read by Alshep and SilasWhitfield.

So thanks to Alshep and SilasWhitfield for proof-reading this chapter.

Now, as for the chapter itself. Interesting, huh? Guess that Frank doesn't have any redeeming qualities after all? Dick? Check. Superdick? Check. Unfaithful? Check. Yup, he pretty much sucks, but at least he sucks as a person because of the right questions. The reason I skipped so much time during this chapter was because I'm not exactly an expert on psychiatry or psychology and didn't want to drag this any longer than necessary, just understand that in addition to hallucinations Frank is also getting a pretty serious case of a PTSD-like disease.

And yes, because I am a dick, you won't be finding out more about the rest of Reaper until next chapter. Just know, because I'm not that much of a dick I'll try to hurry it up for you guys in order to thank you for all your kind reviews.

Now that you mention reviews, I'd sure love more of those :)

Remember to stay strong, my friends.

-casquis