Prologue: The Tower
A/N: Based off a really, really strange dream I had in January. As a side note, I don't take kindly to flamers, so if you don't like this story, don't read it. Simple as that.
Full Summary: AU. What would you do if a deity not your own took you from you home and cursed you to roam the universe as a monster? Would you submit? Would you end yourself to prevent suffering? Or would you resist, fight the one who did this to you? This is the story of the one who fought, who was not alone in his resistance – and who won. Master Chief x Cortana.
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I have defied gods and demons.
I have walked the Edge of the Abyss. I have governed the unwilling. I have witnessed countless empires break before me. I have seen the most courageous soldiers fall away in fear. [I was there with the Angel at the Tomb.] Child of my enemy, why have you come? I offer no forgiveness; a father's sins… passed to his son. We exist together now; two corpses… in one grave. There is no escape; our conviction is as an arrow already in flight. Your life will only last until it reaches you.
I am your shield; I am your sword.
I have seen your future, and I have learned: there will be no more Sadness. No more Anger. No more Envy.
A collection of lies, that's all I am; stolen thoughts and memories. I'm just my mother's shadow; don't look at me, don't listen! I'm not who I used to be… A Demon folded in black clouds: you have brought nothing into this world, and we shall ensure that you take nothing out, for we own nothing which we have not stolen.
Could you sacrifice me for the sake of your mission? Could you watch me die?
You have been called upon to serve; you will be the protectors of Earth and all her colonies. There will be a great deal of hardship on the road ahead, but you will become the best we can make you. This place will become your home.
This place will become your tomb.
What I have helped create will save you or destroy you. This sanctuary, this unbroken circle has effectively concealed its power for how long? Perhaps a hundred thousand years. Whoever made such a place must now live in chains; there is no other explanation for their absence.
It asked, and I answered. For a moment of safety, I loosed damnation on the stars. I have walked among fortresses and shields for thousands of years. I wander the universe, seeking forgiveness for my horrible crimes against God and man. I live in a prison of mine own device; Time has no end, no beginning, no purpose.
I know you: your past… your future.
Side by side, we march as one
Humans and Elites will die
Earth shall fall if we strike together
So forth shall all of life.
Now the Gate has been unlatched,
Headstones pushed aside;
Corpses shift and offer doom,
This Fate… You must abide.
Welcome back [to the Stone Age], vermin. Welcome home. I am a monument to all your sins.
This – is the way the world ends.
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You.
His eyes snapped open. He beheld the innards of a great tower stretching heavenward above and around him, seemingly continuing up forever. It was all of the colors of the rainbow and more, other colors that he had no name for, had never seen before. They swirled and clashed dynamically within the strange, semi-translucent crystalline material that the tower was constructed of. He stared at it for what felt like hours at the unbelievable clarity of vision, of hearing, of smell…
Through the glass, darkly…
Realizing that he was neither alone nor onboard the Forward Unto Dawn, Master Chief Petty Officer SPARTAN John-117 rolled over and forced himself to his feet. He swayed ominously under a sudden wave of disorientation – running chasing something ahead though white city streets – rounded corner human like figure trapped against dead end – food! – and gasped sharply, clutching his head and falling to one knee, barely able to maintain balance.
We see you, Reclaimer.
The warrior managed to turn his head, despite the onslaught of sensory information from outside himself – and beheld two of the most beautiful women he had ever seen. Ordinary men – and possibly some women, too – would have instantly begun plotting ways to get into their figurative pants, but he was – had always been – far from ordinary.
Each of the women was the exact inverse of the other; one had black hair, the other white. The first had pale skin, the second dark, and the former had blue-violet eyes, while the latter's seemed to be an orange-ish gold. The dark-haired female wore an equally dark robe and silver and ruby jewelry, while her inverse wore a white robe with gold and emerald pieces. Both, however, had an identical air of elegant cruelty about them that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. "Who are you?" he growled, "And where is Cortana?"
"I am Selenica," the darker-skinned one said, lifting her chin as if conferring a great honor. She reminded him of some old movie or comic book character that he had seen as a child – W-men? Y-men? He was not sure; all he recalled was that her name had something to do with weather. "And this is my sister, Epheria," she continued, gesturing to her slightly taller sibling, "You don't need to worry about your construct right now. We have a task for you, one for which you have already been given what you need."
"Oh?" He forced himself upright, unafraid of these devil-twins that caused goose bumps all over his body.
"We want you to help the other Gravemind destroy this world," Epheria said, and before he had even consciously processed her words, he was already refusing.
"Over my dead body." Wait, "other?"
"That's too bad; you're much too valuable to kill-"
"- And you no longer have a choice in the matter."
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John exploded from the forest floor, eyes seeing yet not seeing, mind processing without a conscious thought going through his head. He reflexively dropped into a defensive crouch, hands up to protect himself from attack. His breathing was harsh, panting, gasping, heart pounding away in his chest – and he was starving, stomach growling angrily, audible even through his armor, yet - it wasn't … food… that he wanted…
The woman who had poked his shoulder recoiled instantly, a plasma dagger appearing in her hand. She took a step back, demanding, "Who are you?"
She spoke in a strange, foreign language that he had never heard before and still understood perfectly. "I… I am John-117. I'm… from the future, I suppose." He realized that this must be true; human technology had not yet reached the level of the armor she wore. There was no doubt in his mind that she was a Forerunner - and he dropped to all fours, gasping for air as he fought against the internal beast that instantly reared its ugly head at the thought, desiring to attack, to claim her knowledge and add it to what he already knew.
"What are you!?"
"I didn't ask for this," he grunted, forcing the beast into submission, caging it inside his mind, "I don't want this. I would rather die."
"How are you from the future? Your combat skin is so…primitive."
"Life – or, rather, what life remained – was set back to the Stone Age after the Great Cataclysm, the firing of the Halo rings, because of the Flood." The Spartan got to his feet but swayed unsteadily, having momentary trouble focusing his eyes, but the problem swiftly faded to nothing.
The woman visibly tensed at his words and stared at him for several moments. "You know of the - it is not just a - Come. We must go to before the Didact and the Librarian. They must hear what you have to say, however little it may be. "
She took him to the closest Forerunner city, where the Didact met with him for the first of many times. He told the Promethean everything he knew about the Flood, the Forerunner-Flood War, and the Halo rings, and consented to have tissue samples drawn for analysis. The fact that he was able to infect corpses they brought to him, to control the Flood he created, was enough to convince the Didact and the Librarian that he was telling the truth about his curse. They also believed him with regards to the arrival of the enemy Flood and the Halos' "success." They, in turn, told him about the Human-Forerunner War spawned because of the Flood, and set him up as guardian of Erde-Tyrene, when the Librarian had preserved the last known humans.
When the Flood finally returned to wreak havoc on the Milky Way, John and his zombie army took over for the (rather pathetic) Forerunner resistance. He bought them much needed time against the intergalactic invader that consumed worlds with barely a thought, killed entire species with just a single spore, leveled mountains with a whispered word. The Ark – the sacred haven from which life would rise again – was built twice over; his helmet cam footage showed enough reason for their doing so, what with the "Origin Ark" being hit point-blank with the replacement Installation Zero-Four, code named "God's Rifles." (Venera, the Forerunner who found John-117, was the first to refer to his alternate universe as "the Origin," and the name stuck.)
THIS IS MY FINAL ENTRY, AND I AM LEFT WITH ONE HOPE
THAT ONE DAY, SOMEONE, ANYONE IS AROUND TO WITNESS THIS WARNING
{/}(IF YOU ARE THAT WITNESS, AND IT SEEMS WE PINNED ALL OURS HOPES ON THIS SINGLE SUICIDAL PLAN)
KNOW THAT A THOUSAND OTHER PLANS WERE TRIED AND FAILED
{/}(MILLIONS OF BRAVE AND HONORED SOULS DIED TRYING TO AVERT THIS TERRIBLE, DESPERATE SITUATION)
KNOW THAT ENERGETIC AND TENACIOUS AS LIFE IS
IT HAS AN ANTITHESIS JUST AS POWERFUL
IT IS THAT THING THAT WE MUST OBLITERATE
As planned, the galaxy was wiped of all life and reseeded by the AI the Forerunners left behind after they fled the galaxy to hunt the Flood back to its home world. Humanity's sibling race managed to extract a promise from him before they left the Orion arm of the galaxy; he would activate a beacon on the Lesser Ark to call them back to the Milky Way when the Halo Campaign was finished.
He and his army, collectively referred to as "the Infected," roamed the galaxy like wraiths, watching stars be born and die, nebulae grow and recede, collecting data on every phenomenon that they observed for future study, continuously learning, continuously growing, as was their nature. Even though the Chief was truly a Gravemind, a controller and central concentration of intelligence for the Parasite, his relationship with the Infected was more like that of a hive or a network. Those whom he infected kept their consciousnesses, they merely became part of a vast, interconnected web of combat personnel with the Spartan acting as the "wireless transmitter," though he was affected by those personalities that had particularly strong characteristics.
John moved to Earth in 10,000 BCE, remaining until 2400 AD, causing the Infected to begin calling him "the Meddler," but he merely snorted. "It is instinct for me to gather knowledge," he said, "I won't let it consume me, but I must know."
"Like Socrates?" a smart-assed Forerunner named Lil'Ame asked.
"Yes, Lil, like Socrates," he replied sarcastically.
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August 17, 2517, 101182 cycles post-cataclysm (PC) (Forerunner Calendar) / Elysium City, Eridanus II.
'Not to be disrespectful, sir, but why are we here again?'
[To see who is replacing me amongst the Spartans, if anyone. I've told you at least sixty times in the past twenty minutes.]
'Uh-huh, okay. So why can't you just hack the system and find out?'
[AI.]
'If Mendicant Bias couldn't fight the other Gravemind until the very end, can't you just… you know… "do your Grave-thing?"'
[… If I wanted to kill them, yes.]
'We could be spotted.'
[That wouldn't be a problem if you would stop freaking out!]
'This is a bad idea.'
[Keep telling yourself that, Harena. There she is.]
'That's Catherine Halsey? She doesn't look like much.'
[Don't underestimate her. She can be worse that Gramlek on a bad day.]
'Oh dear.'
The Spartan-Gravemind and one of his many Infected sat at a coffee shop across the street from the school where Doctor Halsey and Lieutenant Keyes were observing the children, conversing aloud but also wordlessly on entirely separate topics. They watched the blonde-ish woman approach one of the children and go about with the same test of luck that she had on him, tossing the coin into the air and having him call it before he caught it. [Database says his name is Darius Lethr.]
'Leather?'
[No, Lethr, you dumbass. According to this, he would have been my half-brother.]
'Wow.' There was a moment of silence. 'I can see the resemblance.'
[Oh, shut up.] In a smooth and seemingly effortless motion, the Spartan stood up, offered her his arm, and moved across the street, prowling closer, ever the silent predator his "Grave-brother" was not. Harena moved elegantly with him, two high-society civilians on a "date."
'What did you look like as a youngling?'
[Just like everyone else.]
'LIAR!'
[Ask Cortana.]
'But that's thirty-five years from now!' she moaned, giving him a plaintive look.
[Suck it up. We've all been alive for much longer than that.] The Spartan turned them both away toward their LZ, Harena staying close as they made good their escape.
The other Infected were waiting for their return on the Perfect Storm, their flagship, demanding to know who was replacing their Loico Inkáno, literally their "Corpse Mind-Master." "Darius Lethr, huh?"
"He's lucky enough. I only hope he doesn't take my number; I'm rather attached to it," he growled, which made his subordinates laugh. "Set a course for the Lesser Ark; I want to do one last run through with Offensive Bias."
"Of course, Loico-cáno."
"And stop calling me that!"
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0800 hours, September 22, 2517 (UNSC Military Calendar) / Epsilon Eridani System, Reach Military Complex, planet Reach.
When Catherine Halsey woke for the sixteenth time at her desk, stylus in hand, diagrams of "MJOLNIR armor" strewn over the digital surface, she decided that this had to stop. The "other" had to be contained, restricted in some way, but its input was too valuable to stop completely with drugs or therapy. "You've got to quit doing this," she said aloud, seemingly speaking to the empty air. Had any telepaths been listening, they would have heard the response from inside her head.
'No.'
"Why? Neither of us can keep going on like this."
'My Spartan. He waits.'
"The Spartans don't even exist yet," Halsey insisted, trying to sway the other self that lived inside her.
'My John does exist,' it hissed, clearly angered by her insinuation, and it sent the flash of a migraine through her forehead, 'He waits for me on the Destroyer of Worlds.' An image flashed inside her mind; a soldier in green armor over a black undersuit, standing atop a purple-and-silver platform that overlooked a vast city of technological wonders. The golden visor depolarized for just an instant, letting Catherine see a set of intense, thoughtful blue eyes before the image was gone. 'My John,' the other whispered, retreating back into the darkness of Halsey's mind and giving the impression that she was wrapped tightly around the image, 'My SPARTAN…'
The scientist furrowed her brow. Out of the one hundred fifty candidates for the program, there had not been one named 'John.' She got to her feet and walked back to her room after gathering all of the diagrams, placing them on her nightstand as she changed into work clothes for the day. "Will you tell me your name now?" she asked, "You've been with me since birth, and I still don't know your name." She began getting ready for the day, heading into the bathroom to shower.
'…'
"Please?"
'…I am Cortana, of the same steel and temper as Joyuese and Durandal,' the future AI murmured, 'and I am his shield, I am his sword.' Cortana lapsed into soft mutters in the back of Halsey's mind, so low that the scientist could barely hear her.
The woman had never told anyone about the "other" voice, the other mind inside her own, knowing what had happened to those in the past. Besides, she couldn't afford to get rid of "Cortana" even if she wanted to; she had many great ideas and was utterly invaluable to her work. The "MJOLNIR," for example; the other had completed and corrected the designs that had taken her weeks to compile – and in a single night.
'I have walked to Edge of the Abyss… I have governed the unwilling. I have witnessed countless empires break before me. I have seen the most courageous soldiers fall away in fear. I was there with the Angel at the Tomb.'
…though sometimes she worried for the other's sanity.
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Twelfth Day of Remembrance, 101182 cycles PC (Forerunner Calendar)/ UNSC-F flagship Perfect Storm, Fleet of Shadows, Soraceon System.
"I HATE WAITING!"
The universe's only SPARTAN/Gravemind hybrid twitched open a green eye, slitted pupil contracting as it reacted to the overhead artificial lighting. He sensed the malicious intent to his left mere moments before Kenera, Venera's twin, attempted to flip his beach chair and send him sprawling onto the artificial sand. He successfully dodged the attack and alighted meters away before stepping aside as the chair came flying at his person. It landed with a splash in the artificial ocean some twenty meters behind him. The Spartan quirked an eyebrow at the furious Infected, clearly waiting for an explanation for her bizarre behavior.
"Can't we hurry them up?" Kenera demanded, waving her hands wildly like some kind of demented monkey, "I'm going stir-crazy here!"
"So go into cryo," John grunted, wading out into the pristine water and collecting his beach chair, intent upon resuming his "tanning."
"Cryo gives us too much time to think! Everyone would have to go into cryo for it to do its work, and we still don't know what would happen if we did that!"
"So go BASE jumping."
"I'd rather go swimming in shark infested waters with a gaping flesh wound," Kenera deadpanned, an uncharacteristically serious expression on her face.
"Go try out my armor."
"And get killed by it? I think not."
"Run a battle sim of the Halo Campaign."
"Already did that."
"Bury yourself in sand." John righted his chair and flopped lazily upon it, briefly cracking his neck before slackening comfortably on the plastic. 'I'm on vacation, dammit!'
Chunk!
The Spartan shifted on the chair and beheld Kenera bent over with her head stuck in the sand.
'I'm buried. Now what?'
[Go clean yourself off and bother your sister,] he chuckled, returning to enjoying his downtime for as long as it would last.
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0637 hours, May 13, 2551 (UNSC Military Calendar) / UNSC-F Perfect Storm, Fleet of Shadows, Installation 04, Threshold System.
His frontal lobe was itching again.
That was never a good thing. It always began with itching when something bad was about to happen, like the Great Cataclysm and the Flood, the one with actual water, not the Parasite. He knew that he was likely responding to the Fall of Reach, now that he was so much more sensitive to quantum fluctuations in the space-time continuum. It was one of the side effects that came with being an unnatural Gravemind, apparently. That many neurons crammed in one skull meant that there were bound to be unanticipated things happening. Or it could just be that those two crazy goddesses wanted him to go insane that much faster. Or maybe it was a hyped-up version of the Gultanr's "predictive resonance," their "future sight"…
Any of which would explain why he was banging his head against his desk, and not because of the insane amount of paperwork he had to complete and file. The plane of his workspace was almost entirely filled with stacks at least ten to fifteen datapads high, so he barely had room to twitch, much less work.
The flesh between his shoulder blades itched, and his self-preservation instinct caused him to snap out a hand and catch the plasma dagger before it impacted on his armor and bounced off. "Must you do that, Dacien?" he asked, lifting his head so that he could rest his chin on his desk.
"Someone has to keep you on your toes, sir," came the voice from the shadows beyond the doorframe.
"Oh, rest assured, your sisters already have that covered," he growled, sitting up, green eyes effortlessly detecting the outline of the figure leaning almost carelessly against the wall, "and if you value your life and/or are here to give me more work, I highly advise that you give me the name(s) of the Infidel(s) who submitted it for completion, lest you find yourself permanently welded to the wall."
"Relax," Dacien chuckled, pushing off the wall and loping into the room in his eerily effortless gait, the same unnatural walk that all Infected had, "I'm here on the orders of Nep'Thalia. You're to either let me help you finish quicker or go to your quarters right away."
"YES! – Er, I mean, take these stacks." The warrior dumped a pile of at least thirty pads into the platinum-blonde's lap and promptly began scribbling away on another.
"Sir, some of this hasn't even happened yet."
"I won't have time to file it later, so I want it complete now and ready for editing as necessary." Another pulse of pain through his brain almost rendered him undone, but he fought through it. He noticed Dacien's wince, realized that his plan of "work, then relax" wasn't "working" out so well; a trickle of warmth on his face confirmed that. He touched the wetness with the tips of his fingers. They came away sticky and stained with his still-red blood.
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"Sir?"
"Unless you have aspirin, go away."
"Responding to the Fall of Reach already, I see."
"I was like this before the Great Cataclysm, too, only that was much worse." John carefully adjusted the ice pack on his forehead, wincing when another pulse of sheer agony ran through his mind.
"I remember; you could barely move for almost three years after the Incident. I was impressed you were able to do so much before it."
"I want to help now as much as I did then, I really do, but my appearance would not go over well."
"Oh?"
"What would you do if you were the UNSC, and a previously-unknown black-clad SPARTAN popped up out of nowhere with five fully-manned, super advanced ships, claiming that the Covenant was going to glass Reach?"
"Umm…"
"Then, as if that wasn't bad enough, there are seven – seven! – oversized cock rings out there that can kill everything in a twenty-five thousand light year radius. Not only have we not once tried to destroy them in the hundred thousand years that we've been roaming the galaxy in, oh no, we helped build them! And the Flood… I don't even want to think about their reaction to that."
Areana, the head of the medical team, smiled softly, recognizing the need to vent frustration at helplessness. "Feeling better?"
"A little," he grunted. Then, "I miss Cortana."
"Did you leave a message for her?"
"I thought about it, but the risk of it being discovered by someone other than her was too great. I'm going to wait in the Control Room." He sighed. "And I'm not sure that this is the right path to take. She…"
"You are worried that the damage the Gravemind caused was to too much of her to handle and that she might not be… stable."
"Yes. That, and… what if she isn't here? What if she's still in the Origin?" He sighed again. "I don't like the thought of her being alone there."
"That would suck. Who restricted you to quarters?"
"Nep'Thalia."
"Ah." She was Didact's niece, and one of a handful of remaining semi-direct relatives of the SPARTAN-IIs (meaning relatives of the Librarian, who seeded the human race to lead to the birth of the S-IIs). As such, the Master Chief showed her respect that he rarely afforded anyone else. On the battlefield, she was a no-nonsense kind of soldier, but she knew how to have fun off duty. If she restricted their Gravemind – the highest-ranking officer in the entire Fleet of Shadows - to quarters, then she was truly concerned about his reactions to "disturbances in the Force."
"How is 'the beast'?" Referring to the internal monstrous ball of Flood instincts that John fought every moment of every day: the shadow of a potentially malicious Parasite that struggled against his will for its freedom.
"Quiet, for the moment. It seems to know that I'm not in the mood to tussle with it right now."
"Good."
They both knew that if the Spartan lost the fight against it, succumbed to the urge to :take:, there would be a cascade of failures throughout the 'Hive,' and the majority of the Infected would be truly consumed by the Flood. It was only because of his incredibly strong force of will that kept them holding on…
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The secret side of me, I never let you see
I keep it caged but I can't control it
So stay away from me, the beast is ugly
I feel the rage and I just can't hold it
- "Monster," Skillet (Awake)