Hey, all! Tuney here with a brand-new AU that's been in the works for-checks notes-four years. I heard some of y'all wanted more Fireteam Phoenix content, so allow me to introduce an alternative adventure of Agent Michigan. This story couldn't have happened without the cheer-leading and enthusiastic beta-reading of Minaethiel and BrambleStar14, so thank you guys for the unending support and feedback and late-night chats about headcanon.

I want to be as up-front and clear as possible. This story deals with mature themes. There will be depictions of suicidal thoughts, explicit discussion of self-harm, and episodes of PTSD.

But I'm also hoping we can have some laughs and good times along the way.

As a note, Phase 2 will be updating, we're just taking a break to get the next few chapters up to snuff. Stay tuned!


Ice and Steele

Written by TunelessLyric

"But I think that God's got a sick sense of humour

And when I die, I expect to find him laughing"

-Depeche Mode, 'Blasphemous Rumours'

The world was a wasteland. Figures trudged through the muck of what used to be a field, sinking with each step to the shins in phosphorescent blue and dark purple and red all mixed into a pulpy brown mud. A few brave scavenging birds began alighting on the lumps of higher ground, ruffling feathers and squawking to one another about the bounty spread before them.

Deep scars shredded what little else remained, leaving trampled grass sagging into the congealing puddles. Here and there were perfect bowls of blue glass where artillery gouged into the ground mercilessly. Cocked at irregular intervals were the broken teeth of signature drop pods. All empty, hatches blown free where the front panels hadn't immediately separated to release their precious cargo.

The world was a hellscape. Limbs and bits of bone or teeth grew from the slimy surface. A patchwork of armour in various mottles of greys and greens were tangled in sleek purple or orange or white. Every step was an effort to struggle free of the grasping ground, greedily starving for a few whole bodies.

"Christ. There's nothing left."

One of the handful of black-armoured figures rolled half of a corpse over with the very toe of a boot. The other half was nowhere to be found.

"All right," one of its fellows said, "I give up. If we missed the fight, what are we doing here?"

"Just making sure," replied another, voice solemn and low.

In fact, they all kept their voices down. It didn't matter. No one was left to overhear them. And the dead didn't care.

"It's still weird."

"Just search your square, yeah?"

One of them nearly yelped as the ground underfoot peeled away, collapsing into another hole, taking the black armour with it, who bit back the shocked cry out of respect for the bloody battle that had taken place here.

Even the dirt didn't want them present. Disturbing the silence. The stillness.

Even for them, this was unusual. Orders being what they were, there wasn't any room to argue. So each slogged on, each doing their best not to get bogged down in the muck. Each with contempt or disgust for their surroundings. They were no strangers to the battlefield. The weapons each carried attested that. But normally they were long gone by now.

Down in one hole, not far off, she lay. Panting, each breath like broken glass in her veins. Every shifting muscle cutting into her side like knives. Jackal claws had torn through her skin, baring red-stained ribs and long ribbons of flesh caked in mud. A hint of slippery snakelike organs dried slowly under the sun.

She was surrounded by more torn and twisted shapes. A grey leathery arm rested on a tan camouflage chest. Both protruded from a smoking Warthog with slowly burning tires. Shattered safety glass glittered like a clumsy mass of constellations that had fallen out of the sky.

And her victims. Laid out like they had been placed with care were the birdlike creatures who had torn her side to tenderized meat. One didn't appear to have a head. Another oozed bright fluid into the grimy puddle slowly rising over her thigh. A few broken figures in sleek red armour sprawled over the crest of her hole, plasma rifles still clutched in cold fingers locked into death grips.

Still she panted, body slowly numbing to the pain that had taken so very long to set in. Flying insects moved overhead in massing swarms. It was only a matter of time before they crawled all over her. Into her wounds. Into her very guts.

Unpleasant squelching neared. Part of her hoped it would pass her by to die forgotten in this magnificent grave of her own making, strewn with her own trophies. Her monument would be the jeep that would hopefully explode before she could slip unconscious. Just so she could be awake and aware when death finally came for her.

A small, very tired, so tired, part of her hoped she would not be abandoned.

The labouring footsteps slowed, a long shadow falling over her. On reflex, she tried to shiver, sending wave after wave of agony through her tortured body. She couldn't get enough air to scream with the pain cutting through her. The claws tearing into her over and over as her hands trembled.

"Maverick!" The voice that called out was tight. Urgent. "This one needs to be moved right away."

"Don't get any closer to that Hog!" snapped another voice.

Another grumbled, too far for the words to be distinct.

"I can lift her myself, but I need help to get her out." The shadow peered down at her, evaluating. "Much longer and she won't live."

Another shadow edged to the lip of the hole punched into the ground. "I'll help, Crosshair."

"Like hell you will. Didn't you hear Firefly? Get away from there, yeah?" The grumbling voice was still testy.

She struggled to pull enough air in with each short gasp. Every one was more painful than the last, even with the sensation of sliding away from the solid ground at her back growing with each passing second. It was like storm clouds had rolled in to obscure her vision. Still, the heads of a few other figures were barely visible up on the surface. A line of funeral mourners all dressed in black with splashes of colour.

All for her. Even with everyone else she had ever known either gone ahead, or waiting back home. And there were precious few left hoping she would come back. Maybe even the one from the club would be gone by now. Better to give in now that there were witnesses.

She had always been afraid of dying alone anyway.

"Now or never, mates," said the one who had initially warned them. Firefly. His voice was subdued. Smothered.

Her first mourner half-turned his head. "Take her legs. Don't argue, you heard Maverick and Firefly. I'll take her head."

He had the more dangerous positioning. He would be closest to the Warthog. The last one out of the pit.

He stepped down first, skidding down the wall of mud and jagged rock in a spray of foul-smelling filth. Landing in the puddle with a splash that would have made her flinch had she been able to focus on things like that, he crouched with an unexpected grace. Her second mourner followed on his heels.

"Everyone else back," barked the tense voice of the leader. "Firefly, keep an eye on the Hog."

The other shadows shuffled back out of view.

The first one had reached her head. "All right, friend," he said, hand on the good side of her chest. "This is going to hurt, but we're going to get you out of here."

She couldn't answer. Couldn't respond at all. Could barely keep her eyes focused on the flat visor over her face. It would have been nice to explain that she wanted to stay.

"Hunter, get your hands under her knees," he went on, wedging his own gloved hands beneath her shoulder. The first slid into position without issue. But the second jarred her ruined side, making her breathing catch and black spots burst before her eyes, raining down more darkness.

"Lift on three. Three," both tensed, "two, one, mark."

They tried to be gentle. To lift at once. But the ground was uneven and one was several inches taller than the other. She managed to get a cracked sound out on the next breath. Never enough to encompass the fire in her skin.

"Crosshair," warned Firefly.

More squishing sounds as the rest of the team backed off even more.

"I'll lift her up as you climb out. Give me her legs," said Crosshair.

The shorter soldier carefully manoeuvred her into position, trying not to jostle her too much. He scrambled up the shifting mess of mud and gore. Crouching, he turned and held his hands out for her. Crosshair offered her small body up.

More hands filled the pit, all reaching down to take the fragile burden. Crosshair gave her over to them without hesitation. Trusted her to them without thought. Six pairs of hands supported her minimal weight. Her pall-bearers.

They shuffled away from the pit that had been her grave. With the space cleared for him, her savior clawed his way up from the mire.

"We need to go now," urged Firefly.

"I'll take her," offered Hunter.

With no time to argue, ten hands dropped away. The first step sent another jolt through her. By the third, her weak hold on consciousness slipped. By the fourth, the world fell away.

On the sixth, all seven men had broken into a dead sprint.

She never knew how far they had gotten before the fire reached the Warthog's fuel tank.

But they had just entered the treeline all of twenty seconds later when the vehicle exploded into a fireball that melted the water out of her pit and reduced all of her corpses to ash.


Steady beeping woke her. An annoying, repeating note that just wouldn't stop. It was the first time she didn't snap right back to consciousness, ready for anything. Instead, that beeping seeped into the numb black she had been lost in for so long. It cracked the door open to the sharp stinging all the way down her torso. She dragged herself up out of the crater deep within.

Swollen blue eyes opened with an effort. She was on her back, staring up at a neatly tiled ceiling. Having woken up in enough combat hospitals, she knew this wasn't one. It had the distinctly permanent feel to it.

But where was it?

Her arms responded slowly at first. Like nerveless logs, they dragged through the sheets. It was an effort to bend at the elbows and curl her fingers into weak fists.

"You're awake."

She knew the voice. Or at least recognized it. It was a little deeper, crisper, now that it didn't come at her from a helmet speaker. Coloured with a tinge of relief.

Turning her head, she was greeted with the sight of shockingly silver hair. Eyes narrowing, she tried to dig for the codename they had used on him.

"Crosshair," she finally rasped, voice little more than a rusted whisper. God, her mouth tasted like blood and burning rubber and alien sludge.

A thin smile broke Crosshair's reserved expression. He said, "Well, you know me. But we don't know a whole lot about you, ODST girl. A friend of mine ran your tags while you were out. What do you know, you and your unit were wiped by ONI. Maybe we start with that."

She wanted to laugh. An interrogation? "Got my name," she answered. It came out more sturdily. "All I am now."

Because she had started to remember the fight. The screaming and the dying. There had been far more Covenant than intel had suggested. Not enough UNSC boots to win. Just enough to fill a decent-sized grave. Her fists clenched tighter as she punched through the wall of exhaustion and painkiller.

He nodded. "All right. We don't have to talk about what happened yet. My outfit just isn't used to taking in barely-breathing corpses without asking a few questions."

"Why."

Not why they had. Or even why they had fixed her, putting several dozen stitches into her and putting her shoulder back into joint.

"We got there too late." Crosshair leaned his forearms against the back of the metal chair, closing a bit of the space between them. "We're not a charity outfit, but we knew the UNSC was wrong about the numbers. Friend of mine I mentioned before? He saw the briefings sent to the COs stationed out there. Covvies are kind of my group's pet project."

So what? What right did that give them to not leave her where she lay? Her bones were ready to rest with those of her friends. Her family.

"Why."

He grimaced. "We picked over the entire battlefield. You were the only one still alive. Couldn't just let you stay there."

She closed her eyes, not wanting to see the sympathy in his face.

"My friend looked into all the tags we recovered. We went back after we got your treatment started. Craziest thing. All of the rest of them check out. All the way back to high school dental records. But your unit? You never existed. It's your turn now. Why?"

A shrug pulled the skin around her stitches, but the poke of pain was easier than speaking. They were all dead. The realization rang through her hollowly. Every single one of them. White, Dominic and the rest. Her team. And she couldn't even give Crosshair a reason for it.

There simply wasn't one.

They had been on every side of her aboard their ship. All had climbed eagerly into their drop pods, joking and jostling. They had gathered at the LZ, all business and ready for a tough fight. And one by one, they had all left her alone.

She didn't know why. Might never know why.

Opening her eyes to look at Crosshair again, hot tears spilled out.

Expression closing, he nodded as if that solved the mystery for him. "Rest up, Hannah. We'll see what we can do for you."

Grief slammed into her with the weight of a truck. Turning her head away from the silver-haired man, she opened herself to the pain and wept until the nothingness crept back in.


The next time she broke through the surface, the beeping was gone. She felt stronger, like her body finally belonged to her again. Or maybe she belonged in it. Moving was much less of an effort, though everything ached with stiffness. Fewer lines and leads snaked from her to all kinds of machines.

Instead of the beeps was incessant tapping. Annoying, constant, never pausing for a moment.

Her glare came to rest on Ian Harper, banging an emaciated folder against a fingernail. His head dipped and bopped, apparently to whatever tune was in his head. His gaze latched onto hers, a wide grin spreading across his face.

"Well, hello, Han. Nice to see you back with us. How are you feeling?" He was jarringly chipper. Waving the folder, he went on, "Look, this is all the stuff we found out about you when we picked you up."

He flipped it open and held it like a children's book and he was reading to a class. It was empty. "Little disappointing, right? But wait! There's more," he practically sang.

"Don't call me Han," she said as soon as she had a gap big enough to slip it in.

Harper gave her a thumbs up while he retrieved a significantly thicker folder from under his chair. Settling it on his lap, he stared at her, sobering abruptly. "Funny thing. When we looked again a few hours later, all of this was there."

He began flipping through pages, frowning thoughtfully. "Some really interesting stuff in here. Impressive, Mystery Girl-your résumé, I mean. But I think what you'll care about most is in the last few pages." Shutting the folder again, he placed it on her bed within easy reach. "Shouldn't be much longer before you're up and about again. Thought you might like some reading material to pass the time."

Hands in his pockets, Harper stood and began whistling. Hannah tracked the sound out of the moderately-sized medical ward and down the hall. Then she was alone again. As she should be.

Piling the pillows behind her so she could sit up, she pulled up the white t-shirt she had been dressed in by the medical staff. Lines and lines and lines of dry scabs ran over her side. From shoulder to hip, they looked like tire tracks from above. Most were impeccably straight, but a few veered toward the centre of her abdomen, where her intestines had once been visible. They were almost healed.

And they would scar.

Leaving them, her attention turned to the innocuous-looking folder. With nothing better to do to pass the time, Hannah began to read her life's story.

It was simple enough. Glassed planet as a child. Normal education after resettlement on an Inner Colony. Enlisted with the Marines at eighteen. Some after-action reports written herself, describing various horrors of the Human-Covenant War as it raged through entire systems before her eyes. A swift reassignment to the ODSTs with a period of specialized training. And then more evals, reports and a few promotions.

She skimmed through it, knowing nothing all that spectacular was contained within. But now she knew the intimacy her rescuers had with her. What Lieutenant Ian Harper of the URF knew about her.

One page was simple. Mostly blank except for a few short lines.

Redacted

File missing, query again?

Turning to the next page, her eyes flew across the writing. She got to the end, barely comprehending. Hannah read it again. And again, still not understanding what it was telling her.

Logged, erasure of 5 personnel files: White, Douglas J., Thompson, Dominic B., Steele, Hannah S., Gregor, Pascal M., Roberts, Theresa O.

Files restored from hardcopy redundancies.

On 12 May, 25— at 16:03:31 Galactic Standard Calendar, Fireteam Orange (hereon referred to as the personnel) was officially transferred as per internal request from agent Mars. When initially inputting transfer, a hardware malfunction occurred and a power failure led to the accidental deletion of the personnel's dossiers. As per Systems Removal Code 5663, all files deleted were digitally shredded. Mars reintroduced the aforementioned files on 13 May 25— and attached their subsequent transfer. Approved, the personnel were successfully reassigned to the UNSC Marksman.

On 15 May, 25— the UNSC Marksman fell under heavy fire on routine patrol in the Lambda Serpentis system when a Covenant fleet jumped into range with no warning. With no reinforcements and heavy damage sustained, the UNSC Marksman was destroyed at 02:49:01 15 May, 25—.

Gregor, Pascal M. – KIA

Roberts, Theresa O. – KIA

Steele, Hannah S. – KIA

Thompson, Dominic B. – KIA

White, Douglas J. – KIA

The folder shook in her hand.

Lies. All of it. They had never been to the Lambda Serpentis system. They had never transferred to the Marksman. Her teammates hadn't even been alive at sunset the day their files had been erased.

"Don't you want to find out what they're trying to cover up?"

She couldn't answer. Couldn't bring herself to tear her eyes off the file. Hannah waited for the tears to come. For the wracking sobs and screams. She wanted it.

But inside, all she had was a smooth wall of ice.