Prologue: I Love You
The surest way to become a pacifist is to join the Infantry - Bill Maulin
The Master Chief crawled to the nuke sitting on the hard-light bridge. He arms it. Beep, Beep, Beep, Beep. He looks up at Earth, contemplating Johnson's words. "Don't let her go. Don't ever let her go." After a moment's hesitation, he steeled himself for what he knew he had to do. The fate of humanity once again rested upon his shoulders, and he hated it. For the first time in John's long career as a spartan, he hesitated. He knew that by doing this, he would be dooming Cortana. He almost couldn't bring himself to do it. When he activated the nuke, he would be breaking his promise to one of his only true friends, dead or alive. He would be killing his closest companion for the last 6-7 years. With a roar of anguish and grief, he slammed his hand down on the detonate trigger.
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He wasn't dead. The Master Chief chuckled quietly, bitterly almost, his brush with death causing conflicting emotions to appear within his mind, but only for a moment. His training quickly kicked in and he took stock of his situation. He stood up slowly, looking around, taking in the sight of this blue box he was standing in. A box with lines of light, code, and patterns that looked suspiciously like the skin on Cortana's Avatar.
"Cortana."
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"Cortana do you read?" he said, quickly standing up all the way, straightening out and assuming a guarded posture, remaining vigilant for any potential threats. He began to internally wonder where his companion was, his concern evident only through his stiffened posture and clenched fists. "Cortana Come in." He was beginning to become desperate, yet he remained in control of himself, staying calm despite his internal strife. Then it happened, a soft light, accompanied by ringing and slow, deliberate footsteps.
He turned around slowly, not believing his eyes. Before him he saw Cortana, but instead of the small avatar that he would see in his hand, or a computer terminal, she was larger, lifelike, tangible, beautiful. Her skin, made up of those same patterns and lights he was used to from her avatar, but now, they were real. She was so human-like. A physical entity occupying real space, not just a hologram. "How...?" John said breathlessly, her form acting like a metaphorical gut punch. He couldn't breathe; he was too shocked for words.
Cortana, amused, with a slight tilt of her head, says "Oh, I'm the strangest thing you've seen all day?"
"But if we're here", still in disbelief, John looks her up and down, his heart beating rapidly in his chest, threatening to break through the armor that was seen as so impenetrable by so many.
"It worked, you did it. Just like you always do." Cortana blinked rapidly, as if to blink away tears, an action that John noticed, and couldn't help but think of how human it made her look. Still smiling, a single real tear rolled down her cheek, eventually settling on the dimple created by her soft, sad smile. John, despite his complete lack of understanding of how normal people interacted, reached up and wiped her tear away with his gauntleted, comparatively massive, hand. Cortana leaned into his touch, more tears threatening to spill out of her eyes. He hesitantly pulled his hand back, unsure of how to proceed.
Master Chief looked around, mind racing, Cortana's rapidly worsening rampancy on the forefront of his thoughts. "So how do we get out of here?"
She looked down, offered a sad smile and said, "I'm not coming with you this time."
"What?" Master Chief said incredulously, they were so close, he could feel it. They were in Earth's orbit, Halsey, and by extension a cure, were within their grasp.
Cortana looked down vaguely at where she trapped the Didact. "Most of me is down there, I only held enough back to get you off the ship... and to say goodbye."
"No."
"John"
"No. That's not-We go together!" He said it with so much conviction Cortana almost believed him.
"It's already done."
"I am not leaving you here!" John realized he was pleading with the world when he said that, not Cortana. He hated that. Hated how weak he sounded. How utterly helpless he was to stop the inevitable.
"John..." Cortana stepped to him and touched his chest piece. John's breath hitched, he realized he was crying. His eyes spilling small tear drops, unable to hold them in. Cortana reached up and unclasped the seal to his helmet, lifting it off his head and gently placing it on the floor of the hard-light box. Cortana then reached up to the taller spartan and cupped his face in her hands. She looked at his face, blinking away more tears. "I've waited so long to do that." John, not used to his face being touched, nearly flinched away from the contact.
"It was my job to take care of you" The man's expression was nearly unreadable. "We're a team, there has to be a solution." He said, face set in a grim mix of grief, sadness, and unrelenting determination.
"Oh John..." Cortana said breathily and quietly. "We were supposed to take care of each other." She gave him a pointed look, and another bittersweet smile. "When I'm gone," John made a strangled noise in his throat involuntarily. "I won't be able to look after you anymore. You'll need something to keep you grounded. John, I have been in your head for almost 7 years now. I know you, maybe even better than you know yourself. You're going to blame yourself for my death. You will throw yourself into mission after mission as a distraction." Cortana gave him a look that could only be described as something in between loving and adoring. "I have a gift for you John." John froze. "Something to remind you that you are just as human as everyone else." Cortana smiled. "Life gives birth to life" Cortana pulled her hands away and held them out in front of her, with a look of intense focus, something began to materialize, seemingly out of thin air. "Do you remember what the Librarian said the composer was originally designed for? A way to digitize consciousness, corrupted by the Didact."
"Cortana... what is this..." The object in Cortana's hands began to grow more tangible, he could almost make out the vague shape of a cylinder.
"Where the Librarian activated your latent forerunner genetics and immunity to the composer, she instead gave me life. Or some form of it. She's the reason I can stand here, as a physical entity." Cortana was now grinning ear to ear. John was completely frozen. In Cortana's hands was a pod with a small clear door. Inside, was a human child, female, with wispy red strands of hair and startlingly electric blue eyes. "Life gives birth to Life" Seeing John's absolutely baffled facial expression, Cortana laughed. A hearty full laugh, the likes of which causing an unfamiliar ache in her midsection. "I'm sure you're wondering how the hell this is even possible. Your immunity to the composer was only half-effective, it still downloaded a copy of your genetics. I accessed that copy, combined it with my digital matrices, and used what was left of the composers hard-ware to essentially '3D print' a child." Cortana looks John in the eye, "Our child."
Cortana very gently placed the pod on the floor of the box. She stepped up to john, leaving almost know space between their bodies. She once again cups John's face with her hands, balances on the tip of her toes, and kisses him. A kiss full of love, compassion, longing, and sadness. "I love you, John." She chokes out, tears running freely down her face.
"I... I lo-" Cortana puts her finger on John's mouth, shushing him.
"I know, John." She says, a sad smirk marring her otherwise picturesque face. She picks up his helmet, placing it back on his head slowly, deliberately.
"Cortana... Please." He pleads with her, with the world, his anguish spilling over into his voice, cracking it. Don't go remains unsaid.
Cortana stepped back slowly. She knew her time was up; she could no longer maintain her hard light presence. John stood there, still as a statue, unable to process his emotions. "Goodbye, John."
"Please don't go." He whispers. She took one final step back; with a small smile she looked at John for the last time.
"It's okay, it's gonna be okay John." She took one final step back and faded into the wall.
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John was petrified; he couldn't move. He stood there, for what felt like days, the lingering feeling of Cortana's lips on his remaining. The walls fading rapidly shook him from his paralysis. Quickly, he realized that the structure he was standing in was swiftly disappearing. Soon he would be exposed to the vast emptiness of space. Thinking fast, knowing that he must protect the child... his child... from anything that may harm her, Chief curled up around the pod, clutching it tightly, refusing to let go. He commanded his armor to lock around his arms and torso to secure his child.
The Master Chief was in shock, slowly drifting through space with his child, who he still has not come to terms internally with being the father of, grieving the loss of Cortana, ponders what led him to this moment. "I failed her. I failed her and all she could think about in the end was how much she cared for me, and I let her down." He thought of Cortana's 'gift'. The Child. She needed a name. And yet, he couldn't bring himself to think of one. The Chief was so Greif-stricken, all he could think about was how Cortana was better at naming things than he was. How she deserved to be here, naming the child with him. He was brought out of his musings by a bright light suddenly shining on him.
"Infinity Actual? Pelican Nine-Sixer. We found him."
Authors Note: First Chapter of my first story and it's ambitious as hell. I have decades of time to cover here, and hopefully I actually follow through with that. A couple things about this AU, the halo universe species as it stands would absolutely, totally, brutally, wipe the Me universe. So I will be making significant changes to them, to at least make it more comparable. Also, with the plot I have in mind, certain characters would not make sense at all in the AU in their canon form (Including but not limited to Saren, maybe Anderson, that ones up for debate still). Some characters may seem to act ooc but that's not entirely intentional, I'm just not the greatest writer lol. Bear with me please, if this goes well we're gonna be here a while.
