2The cramped closet stifled her thoughts. She felt closed in, constricted, compressed. Choked. A sensation she was all too familiar with. A sensation she didn't much like.
"Don't come out until I get you." Father chided. Ever since Mother died he hadn't been the goofball she'd known growing up. Mother went shopping one day and never came home. A battle in which she wasn't apart had claimed her all the same.
Her chatter was the only thing occupying her attention away from her current predicament. Idly tapping away sending messages to Katrina. She was the only friend she had left. Ellie had left Eridanus II long ago. With the UNSC and their so-called Operation Trebuchet still showing no signs of stopping, many of her other friends had likewise Either that, or they were dead.
That thought, that so many lives had been snuffed out before they'd had a chance to blossom, nearly stifled the joy of her childhood. Stargazing in the grasslands outside Elysium City, building sand castles on the beach, swimming.
Swimming. She shuddered at the thought, feeling in her jacket pocket for the picture her father had taken. She thought it was stupid to carry such a thing as a memento, let alone a good luck charm. She stopped as her hand felt the archaic relic of halcyon days. A picture of her and the friend who'd saved her life the day the picture was taken. Her only friend who'd died before the fighting got worse. Who hadn't even died from the fighting.
She choked back tears which threatened to escape the wellspring from which they flowed forth. He'd promised to marry her, to keep her safe, a stupid promise. They had only been six at the time. But it was a promise which seemed much nicer to dwell on. An idyllic reflection on the blissful ignorance of youth.
Life now seemed so dreary, so stifling of every scion of hope that she dared not think of it. She shook her head free of her silly aspiration. He was dead, and he wasn't coming back. There was no Prince Charming to cart her away from the dreary reality of living on a once beautiful planet torn up by years of conflict. He was dead. Dead. Dead. Dead.
Katrina had long since logged off, bidding her goodnight. She wasn't sure if it was because she was tired or if the artificial brownouts were set to throttle her neighborhood. She was left alone, now, with her own thoughts. The cold gnawed at her and she drew up her hoodie around herself.
She thought of Father, what he was up to. About a month after Mother died was when the cloistering had begun. She'd heard him speak through the confines of the closet many a night. Hushed words, insulated from her ears by the thick walls encompassing her every breath.
She'd had her suspicions, but jumping at shadows got people swallowed whole by them. Mean things thrashed in the night.
She let out a yawn which she made no effort to mitigate. She slid down from resting her back on the wall and nestled herself in a pile of clothes. It wasn't long before darkness overtook her vision and sleep consumed her consciousness.
It was a dream she hadn't had for a while, a dream which she would've found oddly serene if she got the time to ruminate on it in the morning.
She was there again, in the water. She'd walked too far. Her parents were talking with his, distracted. Only he was watching out for her.
Her foot slipped in the sand, her arms flung into the air. Muffled screams let nothing but air out and water in. Pure terror strangled her as she struggled to surface. Liquid smothered everything. Cold liquid froze her under. Darkness beneath the water enveloped her, dragged her further in.
Water filled her lungs as she tried to breathe.
Cool water. Calm water. She floated now on a cloud of aspirations, carried away by the currents of peace to the Elysian fields. Content to die, scorning life.
More thrashing. More thrashing. Something splashed in the water. Something grabbed her. Pulled her. Willed her to dare to live against the pressures which threatened to strangle the death throes of vivacious idealism. Pressure on her shoulders as someone grabbed her and brought her up where she was free to breath. Determined resistance against the drag of the water which slowed his every step. Hope against hope luck would be on his side as she was laid flat onto the sandy shore.
Wet coughing as the liquid strangulating her body exited. Wet coughing. Wet coughing.
Coughing. Muffled coughing.
She awoke to the sound of muffled coughs, muffled thumps, and muffled crashing.
"Don't come out until I get you." Father had said. Father who'd taken the picture of her and her savior that fateful day. Father who'd grown so cold and so distant. Father whose newfound melancholy choked the sprouts of mirth in her.
She opened the door to the closet and peered outside.
A pool of ichor flowed into view. A green metal boot pressed onto it. She looked up. A green giant flooded her eyes. She inhaled sharply and constricted herself into the closet.
Her mind raced. Dark things in the night thrashed outside, threatening to snuff out the life which had welled up with every breath. Fear sought to paralyze her, to drag her down into herself.
Breathe. Breathe. To breathe was the irrational hope of the spark of life. To breathe was to defy the asphyxiating clutches of death. To breathe was to move. To move was to live.
She realized, as the lake of blood flowed into her confinement, to stay still was to die. She thought of the boy, the dead boy, who had saved her life. She pulled the photo out of her pocket but dared not look at it. She thought how he must've thought. That to stay still was to let her die. To stay still was to let her die.
Parisa took a step into the lake.
000
A girl rushed out, clothed in coal colored fabric which only served to accentuate the luster of her hair.
His enhanced reflexes had clocked her in before she'd even left the closet. He already had his gun up, but he hesitated to fire for a split second.
Hesitation gets people killed. He thought. He squeezed the trigger as she twisted her head backwards and he got a view of her face.
She was indescribably familiar. Memories flooded into his mind. His mind which had long since grown cold, calculating. To think was to survive. To survive was to think. Yet long had it been since he'd had thoughts such as these.
His mind took him back, far back. To the very planet he was now standing on once again, to his parents, before his conscription, before his training. It took him to a lake, to a soft summer day with nothing but the wind in his hair and smiles all around, to cries and clamors.
To a girl struggling for air, gasping and thrashing in the water.
All those memories had left little time to consider easing off the trigger.
A soft whimper, a clatter of brass and steel and blood and metal and air and meat and hair and
The girl stumbled backwards to the floor, completing the twist she'd been in the process of making.
He'd slung his rifle and grabbed her before she'd hit the ground. He followed her path to the floor in a graceful arc belying the heavy bulk of his armor, kneeling down and letting her raven-hair pool to the floor. Locks of hair sopped up her own blood, taking on the burden of both the liquid and its red hue.
His aim had been true. One shot to the chest had done the job. She was shuddering with every breath in his arms. The hair which had gone unsoaked writhed with her, moving in an undulating mass of tendrils. She looked up with blue eyes that pierced him to the core. Blue eyes he felt-No. Blue eyes he knew he'd stared into before.
Her striking blue eyes no longer held him with their stare but he found himself frozen in place all the same. She had drifted her gaze downwards but he didn't dare follow it as if the most fractional of moves would shatter the fragile tableau that had been etched into ephemeral glass.
Air was entering through the wound, he could hear it. A wet sucking sound which air used to draw itself through the freshly opened path. Her lung had collapsed, blood flowed out of her mouth. Choking her. Blood came out with every gritted breath, smothering her more and more with every vain attempt to keep air coming in. She coughed and blood came out. Blood drowned her. Blood vied for dominance over air in each of her breaths. Blood flooded in to snuff out the wavering candle which burned within her. Tears congealed together as they flowed out in contrast to the coagulating mass marring the surface of her figure.
She brought her hand up onto his chest plate to give his number designation a red lacquer. As if to push him off of her in her last act of protest.
More memories flooded in. Memories from the void of the past crawled out to rear their heads. Memories which he'd thought had been choked off long since they'd been made. Memories which served no purpose other than to be stuffed down and subdued for the sake of the mission. The grasslands and prairies of his youth. Memories seemingly too vivid to be memories strangled him, wringing his body and constricting him as if to make him small enough to send back in time. He was held captive by a current which flowed all around him. A planet which he hadn't stepped foot on in years. A planet which he'd left as nothing but a child. A planet which he'd now returned to as a soldier, a warrior. Memories which served to remind him that he was a soldier, not a machine. That ultimately, he was just a man.
A killer.
It wasn't until the girl he held in his arms had stopped moving that he dared do so. His gaze tracked down to where she gripped onto a photo for dear life. She didn't squeeze it within a fist but pinched it almost daintily at the edges as if more concerned for the integrity of the photo than the need to ease her pain.
From his perspective, he couldn't see the picture itself, just the caption on the back.
Lake Gusev
August 3, 2517
John didn't need to see the other side of the picture to know what was there.
AN: Gloria in excelsis Deo! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. This is something different from what I normally write, I wanted to experiment a little. Let me know what you think.