They'd had rougher landings. On a scale that ran up to "freefalling out of a Forerunner dreadnought all the way to Earth", this one didn't even register as a blip. John took a second to reorient himself, watched the full systems check flash green-for-good across his HUD, and then heard an impossible sound: laughter. Strange, soft, shaky laughter, but still recognisable.

"I've missed this," Cortana said, right above his ear. He didn't jump, but his hand slipped a little on the dashboard. She sounded less like herself than the echo that had dogged him from Truth's flagship all the way to the Flooded city. Flashes of energy in the corner of his vision. Mutterings that might have been poetry, though a different kind than the heroic elegies they'd covered with Déjà. Screams. They'd stopped him in his tracks often enough that onboard the carrier, Sergeant Johnson had cut across his path just to ask, You holding up all right, son? Fine, he'd said, careful to keep up a pretence of eye contact; the sergeant would find that reassuring. People broke down in war, if they'd been fighting too much or seen sights they wished they hadn't or sometimes for no reason at all. Spartans never did. Spartans were built to a different spec... and yet there he was, trying to line up on Jackal snipers with her afterimage burned into his retinas.

Behind him, one kind of metal scraped against another. Cortana caught the twitch before he could reach for his pistol, held his hand steady. He thanked her – started to thank her inside his head, as if she could hear him there. Didn't matter. She released the armour after a countdown of three, and he let himself turn around.

"Spartan. Another difficult manoeuvre." Cortana's linguistic subroutine lent the Arbiter's voice some humanity. He'd folded in on himself to fit a space made for smaller forms, head down against the chest and limbs drawn close to the body. Insects from old classroom holos scuttled through John's mind: grasshoppers, cockroaches, praying mantises. The Arbiter's armour had always looked too run-down to do much good in combat, but John could see damage that hadn't been there before he came storming through the Flood defences on High Charity with a flamethrower. A suit breach ran half the length of one forearm, its edges already crusting over with purple.

John thought about the three best ways to subdue an Elite at close quarters, and said, "We're ready to go. How about you?"

The Arbiter, gaze unwavering, growled a flat "Yes."

"He's not," Cortana said. "I think he hopes you'll follow his lead and ignore the fact that his arm's oozing like a – a dropped plum, a crushed grape. Spilled wine and beetroot pulp." John felt her shake her head, or imagined he did. "Sorry. Sorry. I'm all right. He's crazier than you are." That last was more like her, exasperated and admiring both. She switched to speaker. "Arbiter? You need to let the Chief take a look at your arm."

The Arbiter's head snapped around as if he were searching for her on the back wall. After a moment, he hunched down again and said, "We cannot wait."

"Some cultural hangup." Cortana spoke from below his ear this time. "Don't knock it. You Spartans have plenty." To the Arbiter, she said, "He'll make it fast. Take that one out into the field and you'll just slow us down."

A hiss, so alien it had John's entire body tensing. Then the Arbiter said, "I will allow it."

"All right," Cortana said, on a mock exhale. "Chief, there's a medkit -"

"- above my head. Thanks." Switching to a private frequency, he said, "Will the sealant work on him?"

"Of course." Cortana's tone was light. "Skipped the reading again, didn't you? There you go." The kit had come adrift in its moorings, but seemed intact. John wiggled it free. All the while, the Arbiter's gaze never left him. Cautious? Predatory? If Cortana understood, she wasn't telling.

There was a distinct gap in his knowledge of Elites. He'd seen them get blown up, shot down, run over. He'd never seen one perform field medicine on another, not even while he was allied with them. They had two settings: dangerous or dead. With that in mind, he said, "Can you do this yourself?"

The Arbiter went very still. A whisper, tight with frustration: "Chief, don't make this more difficult than it has to be." Before he could ask what she meant, Cortana added, "He'll do it. This won't take long, I promise."

John held the medkit in one hand and half-wished he had a weapon in the other. The Arbiter's eyes, pupils swollen, did not leave off tracking him until he reached for the arm; then they wavered and came to rest on the far wall. The odd delicacy of that gesture reminded John of civilian casualties he'd had to patch up. Almost all of them refused to look, didn't want to know what was happening to them. He bit back an obscure flash of anger, said, "No Flood residue", and shook out a cloth.

Cortana blinked an acknowledgement, but the Arbiter himself made no visible response. The slow, unearthly rhythm of his breathing did not change when John started to clean the edges of his wound. It didn't smell like the lifeblood that pooled around their corpses after you'd killed them, a faint chemical odour no cleanup crew could get rid of. This scent was different, harsh and sweet all at once – fresh tar, burnt sugar, spilt coffee in the mess? John couldn't place it. His fingertips brushed intact skin: hot, dry, rough enough to leave a slight impression on the gauntlet. "Done," he said, and threw the stained cloth away in defiance of proper disposal procedure. "Just the biofoam, then we can move."

The Arbiter clicked his mandibles in untranslatable acknowledgement. John retrieved the bottle of foam, squeezed a small measure out into his own palm. "This might burn a little," Cortana warned, and he thought, oh, right, I guess I should have... For all their apparent lack of combat nursing skill, Elites made good patients. The muscle under his hand was taut, hard as iron, and yet it wasn't until the spray reached the deepest part of the gash that the Arbiter made a sound; small, indistinct, almost below the level of Spartan hearing. Steady, John didn't say. Instead, he touched the fingers of his free hand to a join between plates. It was the same gesture he would have used with any of his siblings. Fighting alongside Elites was too much like fighting alongside a fellow II who'd been given extra enhancements on top: just a touch stronger, faster, fiercer. The thought felt disloyal, so he shelved it.

"There," he said, stepping back to get a better look at his handiwork. "That should heal up fast. Maybe even clean."

"We do not scar easily," the Arbiter said, as if John hadn't had ample time and opportunity to figure that out himself. In the absence of an open wound, the undersuit's repair mechanism had begun to kick in. Its wearer, still averting his eyes, took a step toward the hatch that would release them from the Pelican. A memory caught John off guard: Kelly, ten years old, sprinting far faster than the exercise's time limit required. Anyone else and he might have seen the fall coming. When they'd helped her up, he had tried to catch her gaze. She'd turned away, lips tight with pain and some additional sensation.

Not squeamishness. Shame.

"Hey," he said.

The Arbiter, still moving forward, glanced over his shoulder.

"Thanks. Back there." He jerked his head at the roof, the sky arching beyond it. "You probably saved both our lives."

A pause, brief enough that somebody less familiar with an Elite's normal gait might have missed it. Then another click – different, more prolonged than the last. The noise hung there for a moment or two, until his armour caught up with "It was expected, Spartan".

"Not sure how close that is," Cortana said. The sharpness of her tone confused him, but there was no trace of wild amusement underneath. "If we survive this, we'll all have to work on our communication skills."

John put the if in a compartment of its own and focused on survive. You thought as far as the next step in your current plan, and no further. The Arbiter was at the hatch now, prying it open. Was he holding his head a little higher, standing as tall as the ceiling would allow? He couldn't help but imagine medal ceremonies, humans and Elites lined up shoulder to chest. Empty ammo chambers, dry plasma batteries, a cannon saluting thin air. In an effort of will, he exchanged those images for snowdrifts and Flood and the control room where 343 Guilty Spark was brewing up a second cataclysm. The objective and its obstacles.

He'd deal with what lay beyond that later. They all would.

We survive.

The hatch groaned open. Thel 'Vadam led the way.