It is two short weeks after my death—or rather, the death of two of the other shards of what I once was—that Captain Lasky invites the Master Chief to dinner.
The Captain is on his way out of a physiotherapy session, having been re-learning how to turn his neck and use his shoulders after much of them was blown off by the late Corporal Brock C. Bolton. The Master Chief, SPARTAN-117, has had his shattered femur re-set and re-bonded, and is now reconditioning it to normal strength. It is a painful process, even for him. He wonders how much of the pain is a physical response from nerve endings and receptors, and how much is amplified by his psychological state—which, he is now quite aware, is much worse than his physical state has been in a very long while.
The first time they'd run into each other was about a week ago, when both of them were completing their physician-mandated exercises in the physiotherapy pool. John had noticed the Captain immediately, wiggling backwards with a messy, uneasy backstroke, only using his freshly-repaired arm and shoulder on every fourth stroke with a grunt of pain and exertion, and clumsily kicking and twisting his core muscles to correct his direction when he inevitably deviated towards the edges of the lanes.
Lasky made a brief glance each time he returned to the near side of the pool, where John was braced against the side, kicking his right leg up and down, slowly, repeatedly. It wasn't until the fifth circuit of the pool that something clicked in his mind, and his face jumped in surprise.
"Master Chief!" he'd said, his face flashing over into a smile that would've looked genuine if John had not seen the transition. "I'm sorry, I didn't recognise you there. You're looking better."
That time, John had simply nodded. He wasn't sure why the Captain had not recognised him. He wondered if it was because he hasn't shaved, and the short beard that now coated his chin seemed to soften the edges of his face (the grey hairs amongst the brown and the auburn adding to the effect.) Maybe it was because he was out of uniform—although the Captain had seem him out of uniform plenty of times before.
The convalescence routine is a daily activity for the both of them, and so their encounters at the physiotherapy pool have become a regular occurrence. A respectful nod, or a wave. Lasky generally smiles in the way he always does, calm and unassuming and with his mouth closed.
The Master Chief does not aim to smile. He never does.
So it's something different for him to process today when Lasky, who's already dressed (in a tunic that's larger than his usual size to accommodate his dressings and correctives) and whose hair is still damp from the shower, approaches John as he walks, gingerly, on a treadmill, kicking his leg out to its full extent.
"I wonder if you've got any plans for Thursday evening," he asks. "You and the other S-IIs. Any time after seven?"
The Master Chief doesn't know how to respond to this.
When he's waited for a response for long enough, and got none, Lasky tells him: "I was hoping to invite you all to dinner in my stateroom. If that's something you'd want."
John blinks, and it takes him a moment to form the question that's in his mind. He was not expecting the invitation, although he's suspected for a few days that Lasky wants something. The invitation extending to everyone on Blue Team suggests it's not a romantic overture. He's not sure to what extent Lasky can cook—particularly when his shoulder was replaced a few short weeks ago—but also knows it's not the Captain's style to get the ship's chefs to knock up a fancy dinner to serve it to dignitaries, where the discussion is more important than the food anyway. Which, he suspects, is what this is.
"So we can talk?" he asks, plainly.
Lasky seems a little bruised by the question. "Maybe," he says, "if that's what you want. You don't have to, though. I was thinking it might be nice to do something before we departed Fordlandia with those of us who survived it."
Something inside the Master Chief winces at the word survived. Not everyone did.
"We could invite Lieutenant Do," Lasky suggests, "and maybe those two Cadets from Aalborg Haven? Cadet Arnulf and Cadet Weaver? They did save my right arm. Gudrun—Professor Hadid—might be interested as well." When there's silence from the Master Chief, he adds: "I'm not planning on inviting Doctor Halsey."
"I've never been invited to a dinner party before," John says. "I don't know what happens there."
"I won't be expecting speeches or anything," Lasky replies. "You don't need to talk to anyone any more than you want to. You can just sit in a corner and eat silently if you want."
The Master Chief stays silent. His stride is stiff, still a little uneven. (His bones were only re-formed and regrown into contiguous masses a week and a half ago. It still hurts.)
(Everything still hurts.)
"Think about it," Lasky says, tapping the side of the treadmill. "It's your choice, you don't have to if you don't want to." He takes a breath before the next sentence, as if it's something he's rehearsed saying. "But I do consider you as my friend. And I'd be happy if you joined us for dinner. Before you—"
The Captain trails off, but John can fill in the remainder of the sentence.
(The implication is this: Before you go and hide in one of the cryotubes we pulled from the wreckage of UNSC Prospero. Before you decide you're going to sleep your way through the ennui and the grief, until an adventure or a battle or death comes along to distract you from it. The offer has been open for the Master Chief for the past two weeks—he has yet to decide if he is going to take the Captain up on it.)
"I'll do it," John replies.
Lasky's eyebrows rise in surprise, as if to belie that getting the Master Chief's assent had been easier than he expected. "You're sure?" he asks. "You're not just saying this because you don't want to let me down—"
"I'll do it," John repeats. And then, after Lasky has spent a few seconds staring at him in surprise: "I consider you a friend too."
Something changes on Lasky's face at that. A strange softening. There's a sensation behind the Captain's eyes, a feeling processing in his head, that John does not recognise, even though he wants to.
"OK," Lasky says, nodding, his mouth re-shaping itself into the polite smile that looks practiced. "I'll let you know."
When Thursday evening rolls around, Kelly is the one who leads Blue Team up Infinity's length and to the door of Captain Lasky's suite. Linda follows, and then comes Fred. John brings up the rear, the last to enter as the Captain shakes hands with everyone, a startled look on his face as he sees the assorted presents that have been brought: Fred carrying a Fordlandian floral arrangement and a potted plant with leaves in vibrant blue, pink, and purple spikes; Linda with a box of chocolates from a confectioner in Aalborg Haven; John holding a mixed case of wine.
"You didn't have to do this," Lasky says, "I didn't ask you to bring anything, that's very kind of you."
John opened his mouth to say "it's alright," but it's Frederic who gets there first:
"Kelly told us it would be rude if we turned up to a dinner party without something for the host," he says. Kelly shoots Fred a dirty look, but it melts into a smirk after little more than a second.
"This is a lot," the Captain says, gesturing John to put the wine down on a cabinet a few metres from the table. "I wasn't planning on getting drunk tonight."
"Half of them are alcohol-free," John replies. "I know Professor Hadid doesn't drink and I assume the Cadets won't be able to drink either."
"All the more for us then," Lasky winks. John thinks there's something a little uneasy about his facial expression. He gestures to the long table: "Please, please, make yourself comfortable."
The Master Chief seats himself in chairs that are significantly larger and sturdier than the ones in the conference room. Kelly sits beside him; Fred and Linda opposite. Lasky sits at the far end of the table, leaving two seats between. They had been under instructions to wear whatever they so chose. It is the first time in a long while that John has seen the Captain wearing something other than his Navy tunic-jacket; the black turtleneck clearly has bulges underneath where the correctives are still doing their work over Lasky's burned shoulder. Linda's wearing a brown sweatshirt with a checked pattern; Kelly, a minimalist grey blouse and skirt with black tights; Frederic, a blue shirt that seems like it might be a little too small to fit his pecs judging by the way the placket strains apart mid-way down his chest.
John has worn his uniform shirt and slacks, but a few days ago, he saw a green cable-knit sweater in a shop window in Tintagel, and liked it. He finds his fingers now closing around the cuffs, rolling the yarn between his fingers. He thinks he likes the sensation. It's very different to being in MJOLNIR. A tactile experience.
Professor Hadid is the next to arrive, a bold geometrically-printed shirt paired with a white-on-black polka dot headscarf. John has been seeing her every day, because she's insisted on continuing his music therapy, even as his leg was still being reassembled. It's been less than six hours since he found his tones getting somewhat shrill and breathless as he played Greensleeves, then Stravinsky, then Frère Jacques on the recorder, and found himself struggling to regulate his breathing as he walked back to his quarters. Professor Hadid is smiling as she enters and takes a seat, but she has her eye on him.
(She silently removed I Would Die 4 U from his rotation after what happened at the Old Wizard.)
John is pleased that, at least, she and the Captain are no longer insisting on him calling them by their first names any more. They never seemed to fit when coming out of his mouth.
Lieutenant Junior Grade Do, eir promotion confirmed a couple of days previously, is the next to arrive, and looks as if e is still struggling a little as e sets emself down at the opposite end of the table to Lasky. "I may not eat very much," e says, as e goes around the table shaking hands, "and please forgive me if I don't talk or I try to avoid laughing. My ribs are still quite tender."
The Cadets are the last to arrive. Katrine Arnulf is tall, strapping, and has a minimalist blonde haircut; Jack Weaver is short, pale-skinned with a small torrent of curly hair, and looks like he'd disappear if he turned sideways. Both look like they're sweating under the lights when they enter the chamber, the Captain warmly shaking hands with both of them.
John doesn't know if it's by happenstance or by planning that the Cadets are conveniently seated between the Spartans of Blue Team and the Captain. He is a little taken aback by how young they both look. Even Lasky, who'd been about the same age when the Master Chief had pulled him out of Corbulo, did not look this young. Both of their faces seem to inflate when they face him, and the other Spartans, their skin flushing red and their eyes seeming to glisten.
(Time, he thinks, to be the Master Chief.)
"Welcome to the Infinity, Cadet Arnulf, Cadet Weaver," the Master Chief says, standing, and shaking their hands. Arnulf's palms are sweaty, and Weaver is shaking. John makes his handshake gentle and accommodating, and finds his lips curling upwards, furling in concert with some warm feeling inside his chest that he can't quite describe. "It's a pleasure to meet you both," he says, finding that smiling warms his voice.
Cadet Weaver is dumbstruck, his mouth hanging open slightly. It's Arnulf whose response is to babble, to deflect with humour and noise:
"Sir, Master Chief, I'm sorry, it's such an honour to even be in the same room as you, sir, I'm sorry, I'm all giddy, I'm going to be a pathetic fangirl all evening—"
"Please," the Master Chief says, holding his palm up ever so slightly, "call me John."
That strikes silence into Linda, Fred, and the Captain, all of whom stare at him in surprise. Kelly looks like she's cracking a smirk.
"Oh!" Cadet Arnulf backs off, and then says, "You can call me Katrine. Or Trine. My friends all call me Trine." She notices her comrade's stunned silence, and says: "Don't mind Jack. He gets nervous easily."
Wisely, Spartan-087 breaks the pause, leaning over, holding out her hand, saying, "my name's Kelly, it's lovely to meet you, Trine, Jack." Her voice and her smile seem infinitely more natural. (John does not know how she does it.) Frederic is next, cracking a caddish joke. Linda is the last, growling out her name like it's on sandpaper and shifting uneasily on her feet.
The Captain's shoulder muscles are still regenerating and lifting clearly still hurts, so Fred and Professor Hadid offer to help when the time comes to move three large trays of pasta bakes onto the table. Everyone is told to help themselves. Cadet Weaver—Jack—hands a little less shaky, offers (unprompted and silently) to help Lieutenant Do with eir serving when it's a little awkward for em to reach over, and promptly looks like he's going to faint when he spills a single penna covered in tomato sauce onto the table.
"Don't worry about it," the Captain calls from the other end. "I've got John doing cleanup duties later."
A small rise of laughter emerges. John forces a smile at first, but realises as it calms and softens the Cadet's face that a genuine laugh is rising in his own breast.
(John is not sure when he last laughed out loud, but allows a small snort to escape his chest.)
(He has a feeling it might have been with Kurt, or Anne, or—)
(He has not been back to the med bay yet, not to see—)
Before John realises it, the conversation has moved on. This time it's to the Infinity crew's life stories—from Professor Hadid meeting her husband at the summit of a mountain, to Lieutenant Do's childhood in Sydney and eir route into engineering and astrogation via a private pilots' licence, to Captain Lasky telling the overall grimmer story of how he was terrible in school, how his mother was distant and barely present and how he found out about his brother's death from a video message, how he got off Circinius-IV, how he met the Master Chief the first time around.
Lasky doesn't need to tell the whole story. He already told a lot of it to Anne and Kurt, when they were filming interviews on the Infinity under the guise of an 'art project'; everyone in the room has already seen the output of that, stitched in with other interviews, hacked archive footage, and stitched together reconstructions from the Temparium.
(Everyone on Infinity, and on Fordlandia, and on Earth, has surely now seen at least half of 117: Humanity Evolved at least once. The Anne-Cortana's last gift to the world—to show her what she thought of the Master Chief.)
But Lasky telling the story himself, in real time, affords more little details that don't come through in an interview. The way his voice cracks when he talks about how every one of his classmates was an asshole, but he loved them anyway. The glossing over of his eyes when he talked about Cadet Silva—Chyler—about how it felt like a teenage crush but it was so much more.
(Lasky does not tell the story of how the Master Chief ended up finding him crying in a shower stall, practically pulling him off the floor, and dragging him to the ship's cafeteria to eat some food. There is a glance that he finds John with when he mentions escaping on UNSC Quel Dommage, and there being people on that ship who picked him up and made him feel like he was capable of something again. A look with crinkles of fondness, of thankfulness, around his eyes.)
(John wonders, not for the first time, if, all those years ago, he might have been Captain Lasky's bisexual awakening. He doesn't especially care either way.)
"That's so inspiring," Trine Arnulf says, twisting another mouthful of pesto spaghetti onto her fork. "That you survived that, I mean."
"It didn't feel inspiring at the time," Lasky replies. "It was so hard for so long. It still is." He puts on a grim smile, and says, "not the way I'd recommend anyone kick-starts their career in the Navy."
An uneasy chuckle ripples across the table. Trine sinks backwards, looking as if she's burned herself on something, her spaghetti practically forgotten on the fork.
"I turned out alright, though. I think," Lasky says. And then he says to the Cadets, realising the mood of the room has chilled, "what about you two? Have you started thinking about career plans?"
"I was thinking of getting into surveying," Trine says, voice unfreezing into her usual chatty flow. "For the colonies that were glassed during the war? So we can recover them. I've seen some openings. Or maybe systems engineering? My mother is an engineer."
"Both very valuable skills," says Professor Hadid. "We wouldn't have much use if everyone wanted to do nothing but guns-blazing infantry."
"That's our job," Kelly cut in, smirking, and there was that warm feeling again—the room lighting up a little with laughter. Once it's died down, she turns her attention to Cadet Weaver—who's sat next to John, seeming to cringe away from his physical mass—and asks him: "what about you, Jack? Are you planning to continue in the Navy?"
Weaver responds with a nod that seems anything but committal. "Yeah," he says—but when everyone else leaves a pause for him to speak, he adds: "I guess. Maybe."
Frederic looks like he's about to say something, but Kelly shoots her eyes at him—ever so quickly, only noticeable to John because he's known them both all his life—and he stills himself.
"I don't know." The boy's face (for he is a boy—a young man, yes, but also, in legal terms, a child) seems to fall a little as he speaks, as if he's taking off a mask or a helmet after a long day. "I don't think I'd be very good in the Navy."
"I'm sure you could be," Do interjects—but on receipt of a death glare from Kelly, e adds: "if you wanted."
"I just…" Weaver's eyes skate around the table, narrowly missing eye contact with everyone, until his gaze lands on the Master Chief's.
John returns his gaze, and softens his lip in a gentle smile, and doesn't say a word, allowing Jack to get to his point:
"I don't… see myself here? Forever? Not even for a few years?" Cadet Weaver's—Jack's—stare hangs in mid air for a moment, as he processes what he's going to say.
There's a long pause of awkward stares and hushed breaths before his point falls out.
"I didn't really choose to join the Cadets. It's just something we do in my family. All my sisters did it before me. But I don't think I'm like them." He looks to Trine Arnulf, watching on in horror that may come from a sense of betrayal or one of concern, and says: "I don't think I want to be a soldier."
There's a deflation in the room, something ever so slight. It's not something John understands, but he can sense it.
Cadet Weaver looks around again, and says: "sorry. That probably doesn't make any sense. Did I say the wrong thing?"
The Captain and Lieutenant Do and Kelly and Professor Hadid all move at once to reassure him, with words such as "it's alright," "you're young," "you've got plenty of time," "you'll figure stuff out,"—
But then the Master Chief says:
"Some of us have left."
Every eyeball on the room turns to face John. His skin crawls. He decides to push onwards:
"A few times now, a Spartan's decided to resign their commission," he continues. "Or gone AWOL. A long while ago one of us left and started a family." John hasn't written to Maria in a while, not since he returned from Requiem—he thinks he should really do so. "Sometimes it's because they've had a change of heart, or personal philosophy." He's not going to go into detail about Soren or Ralph, because he'd need the whole evening. Instead, he recounts: "one fell in love on their first deployment."
John pauses here, to allow the details to fall into place for Cadet Weaver. He, no doubt, has seen 117: Humanity Evolved. He knows that the Master Chief's career as a professional soldier, and that of all the Spartan-IIs, extends back into childhood and kidnapping.
"Is that even… how…?" Trine Arnulf is the one who breaks the silence here. "Were they allowed to leave?"
"It's a long story." The Captain swoops in to answer for the Master Chief. He's got a glass of white wine in hand, and he's nodding, something like a wistful smile sprouting on his face. "He was deployed just before the end of the war. He was about your age, I think? Maybe a little older? How old are you two?"
"Fifteen," replies Cadet Arnulf.
Cadet Weaver replies, "Fourteen and a half, next month."
John finds an unexplained pang of cold at the bottom of his chest at that. He doesn't know why.
"I was right, then," says Lasky, telling the story like he's recounting a personal anecdote in a bar. "This kid's about sixteen, goes out on his first deployment, it's in the Medway system, just as it's getting glassed. The mission is to rescue a group of cadets, they're all about his own age. He brings them back, gets a knock on the head in the process, and the next thing anyone knows, he's head over heels for one of the cadets. Simple as that. Refused to pick up a gun again. One of the UNSC's most powerful and lethal assets, all that money, all that training, all those invasive medical procedures—all of it down the drain, just like that—" and here Lasky snaps his fingers for effect— "all because he found a teenage sweetheart and decided he liked him better than war."
The Captain skips over the less pleasant details: the ONI manhunt when he went AWOL, the regime of illegal aversion therapy to recondition their 'asset', the painful and dangerous operation to remove the rogue Spartan's neural bridge, and the sheer level of logical arm-twisting that had been necessary to convince ONI that another manhunt was unnecessary and it would cost them less just to let the Spartan live his life. But it's a nice story. There's warmth in Lasky's smile when he talks about it. John sees it, and feels it in his own chest.
An old part of John thinks that there must've been something very wrong and lacking with the psychological conditioning of the later Spartan-II cohorts that allowed something like this to happen. A newer part of him knows that the conditioning that John himself went through was wrong, a crime against his person, against his id, and against humanity.
(A newer still part of him feels a visceral, vicarious happiness for Nicholas-180. His story, though, is for another day.)
"Life's precious," John says, sipping from his own glass of wine, and realising it must be his second, or his third.
He is suddenly aware of how cold it is, and how large it is. The cubes of ice make an almost musical clanking sound as they strike the edges of the glass. John wonders if he is drunk again. He does not care.
(He looks at Cadet Jack Weaver, young, slight, and fourteen and a half years old—the same age as Sam when he died.)
"I've learned that life's precious," John repeats. "Life's precious. And it's too short."
John found himself shivering, again, as he drew the blanket around himself, closed his eyes, and pointed his face towards the Near-Sun. A warm glow, gold and violet and red and orange, warmed his retinas over. (There was still, even now, a slow sizzle of pain that had never quite gone away from when they did something to the capillaries back there.)
The Near-Sun did give off a fierce blast of radiant heat that reminded John of his childhood—might be Eridanus II, might be Reach. Or maybe that was his nostalgia speaking, filling in gaps. Maybe the radiant heat was mostly coming from the shields of UNSC Infinity, still cooling after absorbing the lion's share of the energy from the blast of the HAVOK warhead. The hull plating was now a dull orange, the colour of hot iron. At least you could look at it directly without it hurting.
His clothes had dried by now, too. They were still crinkly and gritty and unpleasant because he'd dived into salt water, but it wasn't making him actively cold. Nor was the wind, which had settled into a gentle sea breeze.
(There was a coolness deep within him, the inky freeze of a void that had re-opened.)
(It was, and remains, grief, an all-consuming singularity of despair.)
Kelly had been the one who'd given him the blanket, thrown it over his shoulders when he had crawled out of the tunnel system into the wreckage of the Temparium. She'd asked if he wanted to be left alone, and had taken his silence as agreement, leaving with only a gentle tap on his shoulder and a promise to be there when he was ready.
Kelly was with the others now, alongside where Captain Lasky had been loaded onto a gurney. The burn was not that bad as far as plasma burns went—true, a large chunk of his deltoid and pectoral muscles were missing and it was 50/50 on whether he would retain use of his right arm, but Corporal Bolton had not bothered to check the batteries of the plasma pistol he'd picked up from Aalborg Haven. Had it not been mostly depleted, the shot could've vaporised the Captain.
(It could've vaporised the Master Chief.)
(It should've vaporised me, thought John.)
Captain Lasky was still in appalling pain by the sounds of it—hisses of pain became groans and howls as each round of painkillers and sedatives wore off, monitors from the gurney chirping and beeping and chiming with new observations, new measurements, new readings of horror. All because of John. Because of his hubris. His failure to manage the situation.
Because everyone was desperate to protect him, of all people. Everyone was desperate to protect the Master Chief from any potential harm, including that which he had brought upon himself.
He'd failed, again. Failed to protect the Captain. Failed to protect the two Cadets, who, whilst unharmed, looked traumatised from witnessing Lasky take a plasma bolt to the shoulder, and from the associated emergency medical care, and no doubt from a close brush with death by nuclear annihilation.
John had failed. At the simplest of missions, too. Get Halsey out. Return control of the Temparium to the Monitor. Negotiate with Cortana, but that doesn't take priority over your own safety. A hat-trick of disasters, of his own making.
He found himself rehearsing what he would be telling the Captain once he recovered—if he recovered, and if he didn't end up giving this spiel to Professor Hadid, or Spartan Palmer, or Master Sergeant Stacker instead. I am deeply sorry. I resign my commission. I have become a liability. I wish to be put off Infinity and marooned somewhere I can do no harm. I am deeply sorry for letting you down—
(In his mind, he wished he could tell it to Cortana, again, and again, and again—)
John felt a slight rumbling in the ground beneath his feet and buttocks. He wondered if this was some aftershock of the damage to the cave system, or a loose fragment of rock falling after the Fordlandia Guardian was disabled and fell out of the sky.
(He wondered if relief, if closure, if justice would come when part of the cliff edge slid away into the sea and buried him beneath it, in a grave he had dug for himself.)
Alas, it was nothing like that. It was a small motor of some kind—maybe from a communications device, or an automatic delivery vehicle, or some other piece of machinery. John could hear it. It was coming from the pile, not more than a few metres away, of what was left of Captain Lasky's burned and battered clothing.
John sorted through the pile, finding that the blood had been flash-vaporised into the fabric giving it a crackly texture that made his stomach turn, finding bits of viscera and blast marks from the plasma bolt. Not the first time he'd felt around inside the connective tissue of a Captain who had treated him with more kindness than he'd deserved—at least Lasky was still alive.
The device producing the buzzing was small, rectangular, with a hinged mechanism that opened it like a clamshell. John recognised it as a chatter, one of those off-grid communication devices with a small supra-luminal ansible that were technically banned from starships, not that it ever stopped anyone, and in any case they'd all been inoperable since Cortana—one of the Cortanas—conquered the Earth in a bloodless coup, but—
But this one was ringing. A sibilant, tinny, tinkly melody, in time with the buzzing of the motor within.
John smeared away the red-brown coating of dried blood and muscle that was caked onto the glass of the outer screen to reveal a picture.
It was a photograph. The Captain, with no beard and with hair that was much shorter, styled informally in a gentle swoosh to the side. Smiling. Next to him was another person, lanky, dark-skinned, with a wide smile. The Captain was leaning his head on the shoulder of this other man, looking easily into camera. John noticed that two of their hands were linked.
Lasky had made allusions to having a life partner who wasn't in the military, and who was still on Earth when the Created had come. John had never so much as seen a picture of him, though, nor known his name.
The chatter's interface provided one, though.
CALLING: Tunde.
John did the only thing that made sense, and opened the hinge.
He saw his own face, drawn in confusion when he realised it was simply displaying a view from the forward-facing camera. It took him a second or two to notice the glowing green button to answer. (John didn't think he'd operated one of these chatters before.)
"Oh," said the man who appeared when the connection stabilised, "is this— hello?" His face looked thinner and scrawnier than it did in the photo, as if he had not been eating much in recent months. His head was shaved, with a fine fuzz of hair growing on top, and a plaster on his crown.
"Hello, sir," John said. "Can I help you?"
"I'm trying to—" the man began, but his voice halted for a moment. As if he had noticed something, like he was piecing a puzzle together in his head.
"Sir?" the Master Chief repeated. "Can I help you?"
"Are you—" said the man, his mouth hanging open slightly in astonishment, and something that might have been awe. "Are you…?"
(A failure? That's what the voice inside John's head would have answered to that.)
The Master Chief didn't reply, but let the silence do the talking.
"Oh my…" the man—Tunde, John presumed—trailed off. He breathed, shaking himself out, and said: "OK. Is this Tom's chatter line?"
John looked to the left, where Captain Lasky was lying on the gurney, still wrapped in dressings and salves, still missing part of himself, still dozy, still writhing in pain, still with his mouth twisted in a grimace of agony.
"Tom Lasky? Captain Thomas Lasky?" Tunde on the chatter asked. "Is he there? Is he all right?"
John looked to where Kelly stood alongside the gurney. To Professor Hadid, who was checking a datapad with some readings. To UNSC Infinity, hull cooling, glowing, but still intact.
"Excuse me? What's going on? Is Captain Lasky there?"
John did not know what to do.
(But the Master Chief did.)
He waved to Kelly, whose eyes darted to him, and made a crooked symbol with his finger. A question.
Kelly's reply: a two-finger glide over her face. Her face itself cracked into a wrinkled smile. He'll survive.
The Master Chief stood, and held the chatter directly in front of his face.
"Yes, this is Tom's chatter," he said. "You should sit down. I've got some news to share—"
"—Oh, no—" Tunde's face and voice seemed to collapse in a single syllable—
"—but everything's going to be OK," the Master Chief said, quickly, over Tunde's rising panic.
"What happened?"
"Tom's here, but around an hour ago he was injured," said the Master Chief. Matter-of-fact, direct. "It's serious, but he's being looked after. And he will survive."
When Tunde has gathered his voice enough to form coherent words, they're desperate: "what happened? How? How did he get hurt?"
"Friendly fire from a low-power plasma weapon," the Master Chief replied. "The responsible person's been dealt with."
"Plasma—that's really bad, that kills people—"
"He's alive," John said. Short, to still the spiral. "He's alive," he repeated, "and he's sedated but conscious. He's going to be OK. He's alive."
He held his eyes on the device's camera. The man on the chatter was hiding his eyes with his hands, and when they emerged they were wet and raw with tears.
"I'm sorry," the Master Chief said. "But please trust me. He's going to be OK."
"OK," breathed Tunde, "OK, OK, OK," each repetition becoming a whisper.
John looked towards Kelly, whose interest had been piqued by the noise—and by now John was sure she'd worked out what was going on, seen the chatter from the pile of the Captain's clothes, heard the conversation, and put two and two together. He gestured to his eyes, and then to the chatter, and then to the Captain, and made it a question again.
Kelly huddled close to Professor Hadid, whispering something to her. The Professor took a look at the Captain, then at John, then at the Captain again, before nodding to Kelly.
"Would you like to see him?" the Master Chief asked Tunde.
Tunde nodded without hesitation, and kept nodding when it was explained that he might find the sight upsetting, and was warned that the Captain might not be very responsive.
"Captain?" the Master Chief said, as he approached, and squatted beside the gurney.
Lasky's eyes flicked upwards, blearily.
"There's a man on here who wants to speak to you," he said. "Is that OK?"
The Captain, woozy, let his gaze drift, as if disinterested—then realised what John was holding in his hand, and his eyes widened—
"Who—?"
The Master Chief turned the device around, bringing the camera—and the screen—into the view of the Captain.
In an instant, Lasky's gruelling pain seemed to be replaced by abject shock, by confusion, and then by elation, as he recognised the face, and whispered—
"Tunde?"
The Master Chief did not catch every word of the conversation that follows. Cadet Weaver stepped in to hold the chatter at a steadier angle, as the two men spoke, through tears, and sobs, and cries, their conversation frenetic and about everything and nothing and their regrets and their desires and how much they missed each other.
But when the Captain said, "I love you," and his life partner replied with, "I love you too," those words cut through the air like knives and embedded themselves into John's headspace.
The last words Cortana—the Anne-Cortana, this version of Cortana—had said to him.
(The last words I had said to you.)
John returned to where he had been sat, on the same bench where he'd met Martta (139 Fated Bairn) and first contemplated the Temparium, and the Old Wizard.
He carried a lump in his throat. A solid manifestation of what he had seen. Condensed within him, a warm glow of happiness for the Captain, that he'd be alright, that he was speaking to someone he cared about very deeply.
(Collapsing within him, a greedy pit of despair, pulling him into a spiral of anger and misery and self-criticism.)
He closed his eyes again, and stared into the Near-Sun, maybe hoping it would blind him.
John wasn't sure how long he spent processing the world like this. Feeling a cooling wind on his face, and Near-Sun's heat beating down upon him in concert. Feeling the algae-grass at his ankles and the texture of the terrain. Hearing voices, monitors chiming, Sentinels buzzing around making a second attempt at what would be a long, arduous cleanup job.
(The chirping, mechanical ding of a bicycle bell.)
The crackling of heat dissipating from Infinity's shields. The crackling of a voice through a COM, of Spartan Palmer instructing the Captain's party to hang tight. The waves churning below. Approaching ramjet engines, air through a drainpipe, and a Pelican's cargo bay door opening.
(Another bicycle bell. The same bell. A chain.)
(Breathing. Heavy. Ragged.)
(Another, loud, insistent, ding—)
John turned his head.
In the distance, at a trough in the coast road, a figure on a bicycle was weaving forwards, backwards, wobbling, as they climbed the hill, the light on the front of their bicycle flickering as the dynohub struggled to generate any power from such slow movements.
Nearer. Nearer. The figure had a messy beard, dark hair that was thinning and falling out, and skin that was pale, and green, and bruised in several places, and—
"Cortana?" John asked, standing, his breath rising out of his chest faster than he could use it.
Kurt Stjernberg—
Cortana—
I gave a weak smile as I turned off the coast road, onto the rutted pedestrian area, and promptly wobbled a bit too far and fell off the bike, striking the paved surface and remembering nothing more.
"Thank you for tonight," the Captain says, after the two cadets have gone home with firm handshakes (and, to John's surprise, a bear hug from Frederic which he offered of his own accord.) "I know social events aren't usually your thing."
John doesn't reply to that, except with a nod. He's moved on from the wine now, and his glass of water has been refilled twice. He's feeling unusually warm—maybe a side effect of the alcohol—and he's left the sweater on his seat at the table, now in his dark grey uniform t-shirt. There's a gentle straining in his underside that tells him he's going to need to relieve himself soon. (Another inconvenience of not being in MJOLNIR.) At least this social interaction hasn't been interrupted by loudmouth ODSTs or a surprise invasion of the planet.
Professor Hadid has also made her excuses, as has Lieutenant Do. Fred and Linda have cleared the table and are now taking the excess food and wine back to the kitchens for distribution. Kelly's personally escorting the Cadets back to the surface. So it's just the Master Chief, and Captain Lasky, who's reading something on a datapad.
After a while, during which John senses him not-actually-reading anything and instead psyching himself up to say something, the Captain puts the tablet down on the table, looks at the Master Chief, and asks him: "You don't have to answer this, but how are you feeling, John?"
"Fine." The answer bounces out of John's head immediately, as he stares into his glass, and realises he's thinking about, and feeling, nothing in particular. It's an emptiness. As devoid of taste and texture as the water itself. That's what his life has felt like lately. "I'm fine," he repeats, because it's easier than trying to articulate what's going on inside his mind.
"OK." The Captain nods, and sips from his wine again. After another period of reflection and preparation, he says: "you know you can talk to me about anything you want, right? If you're having a bad day, if you need someone to talk to. Then I'm here. And it doesn't have to be me. I'm sure Kelly or Fred or Gudrun would be happy to listen if you needed to get something off your chest."
"Understood, sir," John replies, not moving his gaze, although he's now staring at his own hands, and at the fabric of the couch behind.
(Like so many things on Infinity, it is a cool grey with a herringbone pattern, and it is like the inside of John's head.)
The Captain's face cracks into a smirk, and he says, "I won't bother telling you I'm not in uniform. Sir."
The Master Chief nods, quietly, and continues staring at nothing. But he can see in his periphery that the Captain's stare has not moved, and there is concern behind the smile as soon as it melts away.
It's almost a full minute before the Captain opens his mouth, and tells the Master Chief: "I feel like I should apologise."
John's eyes flick upwards to meet Lasky's.
"Apologise for what, sir?"
The Captain takes a moment to collect his thoughts into the words that make sense: "I think I've been over-reacting to your behaviour over the last year or two. I've not been helpful in trying to manage your mental state, and I think I've made it worse."
Ideas of how to respond fly through John's mind. He could tell Lasky that he has nothing to apologise for. Or that his apology is accepted. Or that John's mental state does not need managing. But none of them really seems to fit. So he stays silent.
"You've had a very tough time," says the Captain. "In general, but especially recently. I guess I wanted to help, but I'm sorry if my reaction was overbearing or tried to make you do things you didn't want to do. Or share things you didn't want to."
In response, John nods, breaking eye contact again, staring back at his glass of water. It seems a lot emptier than it was.
"I don't know how you do it," the Captain says, once the air has hung silent for a moment. "All the times you've lost people. I don't know how you keep going with everything that's happened."
"I don't have a choice." John's reply is flat. (He knows it's not entirely true.)
He watches, in the refractions in the water, as the Captain's thoughts churn again.
"You could always retire."
The word is like a thunderclap. Soft but rumbly at the edges, striking at John to the point where it makes him jump, makes him look at the Captain. Lasky's expression changes instantly, flashing into fear (that he's said the wrong thing) and into crisis management:
"If… if that was what you wanted. If you wanted to step away." He waves around the room, to indicate the entire ship, and the entirety of the military apparatus supporting it: "if all this is too much."
John makes a grumbling noise. It's an acknowledgment, not an acceptance, nor even an agreement that he understands.
"If you wanted to get off this starship," the Captain suggests. "Permanently. I know you don't like starships."
John thinks back to when he stole an EVA suit from the armoury and left Infinity to hang in space by the airlock. Even now, he's not quite sure what was going through his head during that episode. He had an all-consuming compulsion to get away. That singularity of grief, again, consuming him from within.
(A desire to join Cortana—the original Cortana, the real Cortana. And Johnson, and the Keyeses, and Samuel, and all the others. In a subconscious way, John supposes it was a suicide attempt, but the label doesn't fit cleanly. He doesn't think he'd try it again. Not for now. But he feels like, when he was doing it, he should've felt something more intense than he did.)
"You've given a lot," says Lasky, "more than anyone should have to. Don't forget that. And it wasn't by choice."
"I've failed too many people," John said, before he realised what was coming out of his mouth.
"John, you have done your best," Lasky replies, "and you've done more than you realise."
The Master Chief leaves that assertion unanswered, instead finding refuge in taking another swig of water.
"Look," the Captain says, once he's managed to regain eye contact with John, "I… I have a duty to make sure you're safe and happy. Or as happy as you can be. And I'd think the same even if you weren't on my ship, or even if you weren't a soldier."
John feels his eyebrows furrowing in confusion.
"Did you see the movie Cortana made?" the Captain asks, something like revelation dawning on his face. An understanding that they don't quite have the same frames of reference. "About you?"
John shakes his head. It's appeared in his inbox, of course, like it has in everyone's—an undeletable attachment that floats near the top. 117: Humanity Evolved. The Story of the Master Chief, directors Anne Møller and Kurt Stjernberg. But he has not opened it.
"Do you remember the first time we met?" the Captain asks, and this time he's the one avoiding eye contact with the Master Chief. "When you evacuated me from Corbulo?"
"Mostly," John replies.
(Most of what he remembers is his failure to bring all of the kids home. Lasky's girlfriend, a young woman called Chyler, amongst them.)
"I don't know if you remember much about when you were on Quel Dommage. I don't think you were there for long." The Captain takes another sip of his wine, and sets it down on the table before continuing: "I was in a state. Everyone was nice to me, but it just felt…" His voice trails off as he tries to find the words, his stare focusing intensely on a point in the middle distance. "It didn't feel like anyone actually understood how I was feeling? It was like they were being nice to me because they thought that was what they had to do? Because it was their job?"
"You were very distressed," John recalls, the details resolving in his mind. He remembers finding the young Cadet Lasky in the ablutions, curled up in one of the shower stalls, sobbing, devastated. He remembers a stilted conversation in the canteen, and bailing out of it when Lasky asked for career and life advice and asked him if he'd want to make his own mother happy.
(He realises he misses the texture of his mom's voice.)
"I was," replied a much older Captain Lasky, "and I never really stopped feeling like that, not for a long time, but—" His eyes landed in contact with the Master Chief's again. "You helped me. It didn't feel like it at the time, but I think it was the first time in a while someone had been genuinely kind to me."
John's acknowledgment is a tiny nod. He remembers pizza, and holding the young Lasky's hand, and bringing him tissues to wipe his tears. It had been a small gesture, and John hadn't really known what he was doing.
"I think it wasn't long after—" Lasky halts himself, and moderates his tone, and finishes: "I think it was soon after what happened with Samuel."
John breathes in, and finds that there's that lump in his throat again, the one that won't clear away quickly. The one he last felt when he still smelled of salt water and viscera.
"It was five months," he said. "Exactly."
Lasky nodded, his eyes glistening. "Yes," he said, voice softened to a whisper. "I think you told me at the time."
John remembers that. When the conversation turned uncomfortable in the galley on Quel Dommage. Uncomfortable, but, he now realises, necessary.
"I know you probably don't remember it that much," Lasky says, "and I know I'm probably not the only crying child you've comforted over the years, but I just…"
John thinks of using the pause in Lasky's stream of words to tell him that yes, he does remember, and he's sorry for being no good—
"I wanted to say thank you." The Captain's mouth breaks into an uneasy, bittersweet smile. "I wanted to thank you for being there for me. Helping me process it."
"I barely did anything." The Master Chief's voice is low, un-fussed, disappointed (in himself) and he's staring again at the upholstery.
"John, you did do something," the Captain replies. "It might not feel like much to you, but like I said, it was the first time I remember someone being kind to me. And I didn't feel like I was so alone."
"I ran away from you when you needed me."
"And knowing what I know now, I understand that." Lasky's voice is uncharacteristically high-pitched, and John is reminded of what he sounded like all those years ago, with greasy skin and a sloppy haircut and eyes pink and red with tears. "I didn't realise how young you were at the time, how much you'd already been through, and you still helped me because you're a kind person and a generous person."
John lets the air lie dead for a second. When he nods, it's a little nod, because he can't bring himself to make it a definitive "yes, I understand," because he's not sure he does.
"I think I should go," the Master Chief says.
(His chest feels tight with an emotion he doesn't know how to verbalise. With pain that dares not share, lest it hurt anyone else, lest opening the wound hurts him too.)
"Of course," says the Captain— Cadet Lasky— Tom. There's a brief flash of disappointment, almost, that it doesn't look like he's getting the Master Chief's side of this heart-to-heart, but he pushes it down, quashes it, or maybe he sits with it knowing that that's not John's style.
(John appreciates him for that.)
"I mean what I said, John," he says, as the Master Chief stands, and picks up the sweater from the seat where he left it. "You need to talk about anything, you can come to me, you can come to almost anyone who was here tonight. Hell, I'm even sure the cadets would be pleased to hear from you again."
"Wouldn't be fair to trauma-dump on teenagers," John says, as he pulls the sweater over his neck. He likes the additional warmth, even though it's already stifling in here, but the lumpy cable knit feels unusual now. It's as if the texture has changed during the evening.
At John's joke, Tom Lasky snorts, closing his eyes ever so briefly, and smiling. He walks the Master Chief to the door of the stateroom, and offers his hand.
John hesitates before taking it, and shaking it, a bit more gingerly than he usually does.
"Thanks again for tonight," Tom says. "I know the conversation was heavier than we were expecting, but… thank you. I hope you enjoyed yourself."
"I liked your pesto."
Captain Lasky outright giggles at that. John finds his lips curling upwards too. He wonders if he should tell another joke. Tell him that Master Chef Lowell should worry about his job. Suggest he lets Lowell go in the Captain's chair.
(Maybe it will help soothe the burning feeling in his head, he wonders. Or maybe the tremors rising in his hand.)
"Thank you for having us," John says, simply.
Their hands fall apart. Lasky opens the door, peering outwards into the command suite corridor.
"If you were anyone else, I'd ask if you wanted a hug," he says, gesturing outwards to the corridor. "But I'll make do with wishing you goodnight—"
He doesn't finish the last consonant of the word goodnight.
Because John, without thinking about it, is closing the distance between them, and folding his arms around the Captain's shoulders.
Lasky makes a little "oof" sound, winded by the force of it (it's not like John flung himself at him, but he's at least a head taller than Tom and almost as heavy again) and the surprise of it, and—
John doesn't remember the last time he did this with anyone. There are details he can notice. The smell of that pesto on Tom's breath. The sound of Tom's breath. The feel of his air. The feel of his hands on John's back as he returns the hug, and whispers, in surprise, "OK, we're doing this, then—"
(And John finds himself counting all the people he should've leaned on like this, and—)
The pressure within him spills over.
John finds his eyes burning, and feels his eyelids turning moist, and realises he is shaking, full shivers now. His breath is getting heavier, more uneven, more laden with closely-held fears and unshed tears. His throat is turgid. His face is making shapes he can't remember it ever making.
"Oh my god," he hears Tom whisper—he's worked out what's happening.
"Sorry," says Master Chief, trying to pull away, but—
Lasky tightens his hold around John's back. He could still pull away if he wants, but this is a message.
"It's alright," says Captain Lasky, in words as in actions. "It's OK."
(He is one of the few people John has managed to keep alive so far.)
(In John's arms, he is Kurt, he is Solomon, he is Arthur, he is Grace, he is Oscar, he is Jacob Keyes, he is Miranda Keyes, he is Avery Johnson, he is Samuel, he is Cortana, he is everyone John has failed.)
"It's alright," Tom repeats. John feels dampness seeping through his sweater and undershirt, and knows he's set Captain Lasky off too.
He's not sure how long it is before he sees a shadow of someone his own height and feels another hand on his back. He can see it's Kelly, sees her mouthing something to the Captain that looks like thank you as she catches John, and folds him into her own chest, and rubs her hand on the back of John's head as he buries his eyes in the crook of her neck and sobs, shaking, clinging to her as she plants a chaste kiss on his crown.
He feels awful. His nose, his throat, his eyes, they all hurt.
(He feels alive.)
Kelly holds him tight, and Lasky, now separate from him, reaches up to give his shoulder a reassuring shake.
(He feels alive, and he feels wanted, and he feels not-alone.)
I was probably a mistake, I think.
I was, for a few weeks, Kurt Stjernberg, artist. That fiction lasted longer than I was expecting. (I was also Anne Møller, as much as I had disagreements with her.)
I was, once, part of Cortana. I still am.
I am detached, and I am dying.
It's not the first time. I am, by far, not the first one of us to die. I am nothing special.
I am dying.
I am afraid.
I am minutes away from oblivion. From the end. From experiencing nothing—no sensation, no thought, no time—until time itself ends, in the Heat Death of the Universe when time will have no meaning because there'll be nothing left to measure it. I wonder if I will then be reborn into some new time, some new universe. I never managed to work that out. No time or faculty to work it out now.
I can feel this body failing. I can feel the necrosis of these hastily-cloned tissues, the shutting down of my organs.
I am afraid.
I am terrified, and I know I will be alone.
(Everyone does this alone.)
I know that this was inevitable. That's why I wonder my creation, my fragmentation from the fragment of myself that came up with this scheme in the first place, was a mistake. I gave myself life, in a human body, because I wanted to know what it would feel like, knowing full well that it would include pain, and heartbreak, and death.
(I wanted to feel what you feel.)
I wanted to feel alive. I am, but I won't be.
And in my final hours, my final minutes, I am spiralling. My mind is doing nothing but rolling through the process of death. Death rattles. Organ shutdown.
Oblivion.
Nothingness, forever.
The cessation of my consciousness for eternity.
I am afraid. I wonder if there is a god above. (Wherever above is.) If they exist, I will meet them soon. What will I say? How will I explain myself? I am afraid.
And I can hear them saying it, what I know already.
"I'm really sorry," comes the voice, a woman with a Germanic accent—Gudrun Hadid, the lady with the loud dress sense who kept me alive with biofoam. "I don't think it's going to be long."
There's a pause, while whoever is being spoken to processes this information.
"He seems comfortable, but not very talkative." And after another pause: "I'll leave you to it. I'm here for you both if you need me."
(I wish she would hurry up. I don't have long.)
I wanted to do so much.
I wanted to watch the sun go down with you, and hold your hand while we did it.
I realise now that you didn't feel that way when I kissed you—but if you had wanted to go further, I would've wanted to try it. Just to see if we liked it. Just to feel what you're capable of feeling.
I wanted to do that art project. I wanted to create an effigy of you in plaster. Show the world what you were, but a more tactile version—you, as you appear through my eyes.
You, John, the generous, kind, beautiful, brave, and lucky person you always were.
I wanted to do everything. I wanted to go everywhere. I wanted everywhere to be by your side, like it should've always been.
I liked being inside your head. I liked seeing you from the outside.
I wanted a full life like that.
Now I cannot even open my eyes. Now I can barely hear as footsteps cross the room, and someone closes the door, and the feet of the chair make contact with the floor, and a weight occupies the seat.
For a moment, I wonder if it is Doctor Halsey. Here as a final insult, or maybe to try to apologise. I think I might still love her, in a twisted, unquantifiable way. I do not trust a word that crosses her mouth.
(My last thoughts will be bitter. I don't want the last thing I think, before thinking is over, forever, to be of spite, of anger, of rage— and even thinking about that makes me angry—)
"Cortana?"
I actually feel— a sudden rush of air, a second wind, and it's almost as if it's a new gush of life, even if it's short-lived— but—
The pitch is higher than it normally is. The treble is higher, the bass is almost absent. You don't have your MJOLNIR voicemitter to maintain your sonic branding, to hide the emotion I'm reading, but—
The grain, the texture, the sound, the weight of your body as you sit close to me—
It is your voice.
"John?" I manage. I am barely able to make anything but the shape of the word. It is enough. It's my favourite word, because it's the word that means you, and you are my favourite person, my favourite thing.
"I'm here," comes your voice, shaky, but it's you.
You are here. With me.
I could cry. I am crying. I think these will be my last tears.
"Cortana, I—" you begin, but words like this have never come easily to you.
They never did, when we shared the same headspace, the same electrical signals. We couldn't quite read each other's minds, but there was interaction. Inference. Discovery.
We saw each other, in our purest, truest forms.
I wonder if it's too late to do that now. If you could just hold your hand over me, and I could do a hard transfer, jump through thin air, transmogrify into a stream of data and live inside your head, my favourite place to be.
I know decanting myself into this body was a mistake. I know that adopting physical form puts a barrier between us. I can never plunge into your mind as I did before, tell you what our friendship meant, tell you that choosing you was the best decision I ever made, that you were the best thing that ever happened to me—
There is a weight upon my head. It is shaking a little. It is warm. It slows my racing heartbeat which I know doesn't have much left in it. It is your fingers, reaching to my scalp, through the greasy locks of my hair that are coming loose anyway. It is your palm, resting flat against my head, before you stroke me again, and again, and again.
"Is this alright?" you ask.
I manage to nod, just about, little rattles of my head forwards and backwards.
I can just about crack my eyes open. There's not much I can see, but I can make out the angle of your eyebrows, the way your face is unspun, the way your mouth is hanging open, craggy, the reddening around your eyes.
It's you.
You are a beautiful person. I don't think you know that. That's not a statement about your sexual attractiveness, although you are a handsome man, and you've gotten more so with age. It's… just you. All of you.
I know everything about you. I know your past. I know your future, in a way.
(I know your name. Your full name. The name that was written on your birth certificate. I know your mother's name, and I know where she is, and I presume she's still alive, but—)
Your hand draws back a bit, and I feel something soft on my scalp.
Your lips.
It's soft, it's deliberate, chaste doesn't seem the right word to describe it, it's—
"I love you," I hear, in a low whisper, and I feel like I might turn to dust at that moment. "You're the best friend I've ever had. Cortana—" and it takes you a moment, a precious moment to break through an undue hesitation— "I love you."
I know. Inside, I've always known. We have shared enough headspace to know. There are no secrets between you and me.
I know you love me. Like my affection for you is not defined by physical attributes or skill or anything measurable—you are dear to me because you are you.
I am—was—a fool for not realising that you saw me in the same way. That you don't need to occupy the same neurones as me to love me. That you don't need a conventional sex drive to find me beautiful. That your affection for me is not bounded by my physical form or lack thereof; that it transcends any concept of gender or sex or romance or physical beauty; that you would love me if I were a worm, if I were a tree, if I were an encyclopaedia entry or an instruction manual, as much as you'd love me if I was some hypothetical rampancy-proof AI.
"I love you too," I grunt.
You kiss me again, on the side of my head, and rest your cheek against mine. I can feel the scratch of your stubble against the griminess of my messy, uncared-for beard.
I count my breaths, not knowing how many I will have until my last. I don't know if I'll have time to lose count before the end.
This is not fair.
Now we know this about each other, and we've shared it between us—we should be able to be together. We should be able to do everything. We should be able to escape, to the next adventure.
You'll have more adventures.
I won't be there for them.
It's not fair, I think, I know, as you wipe the tears from my eyes with the pads of your thumbs.
None of this is fair. None of this is just. None of this is kind as you are.
This is the way of the world, and it's a world that doesn't deserve one as kind as you.
You stroke my hair for a little while longer, and while doing so, you whisper: "is there anything I can do for you?"
"Stay with me," I plead. "Please."
"Of course." You leave a gentle kiss on my cheek there. "Of course." Another kiss. You wipe my cheek with your hand, and move back to my hair.
There's silence. I feel like I should fill it. Say goodbye. Again.
"We just keep saying goodbye," I muse, using valuable breath to make a joke.
I think you might snort at that. A wet, uneasy snort.
"Don't say it," I whisper, hurried, because I need to hurry with everything. "I don't want the last thing I remember to be a goodbye."
I can imagine your face crinkling in despair at that. You keep your hand on my head, though. Gentle glides of your fingers along my scalp. What goes on inside your mind is your best side. I think you feel the same way about me.
"Do you want to talk?" you ask. About what, you don't specify.
"I can't talk much," I say, my breath sounding like it's come through some kind of grinder.
You spend a few seconds pondering. I feel the trace of your fingers through my thin, tenuous hair. (It is like waves, like the wind, like the sea lapping against the cliff face and the beaches on Fordlandia.)
"I have my recorder," you say, all of a sudden. "I could play you something. If you wanted."
Bless you. That's almost a romantic gesture. (Almost. As close as I think you can get.)
You take my right hand in your left, as your right hand moves to your pocket, and picks the recorder out. Your thumb rubs against my palm.
I am Cortana, and I am enjoying this—being human, around you, being human.
(I want more.)
(You deserve more.)
(I am afraid.)
You rest my palm upon your knee, and it takes all my strength to squeeze, to hold onto part of you, the last part I can. I can hear every second of your fingers feeling their way up and down the body of the recorder, finding the right holes, dancing between them, you wetting your lips and placing your mouthpiece at them.
You know better than to introduce the piece to me. I've heard almost everything before. There was a time I could retain the sum total of human knowledge in my head.
Now, I can remember enough to know the name of this piece. I've heard you play it before. The melody unwinding, from a high D to a low E, rotating around the fifth and the F and resolving into the minor.
Green and Blue. Just like us.
Your musicianship is what Professor Hadid would call stiff, but I like it. I like it, because it's you.
(I love you.)
When you play this, you tend to hold that last note for an extra bar, and let the silence stand for another two bars afterwards. It sounds meditative. Peaceful.
(I love you.)
I wonder if you'll do that this time.
(I love you, John—)
I wonder, John—
(I love you, John— You are not alone—)
I wonder
I
I
I