Well, everything had gone to shit fairly quick!

BOOM!

Thel and John whip their heads back.

Okay, scratch that; everything went to shit real fucking fast. First was the Forward Unto Dawn deciding to halve itself in a well-intentioned effort to cut down the fat, now was the fact that the ship's prototype engine core decided to flip the bird at them! A few wires ended up in places where they were never supposed to be, it seemed...

And now, they may both end up dying to show for it. If only the eggheads back home had invented pocket Huragoks...

Damn it.

Chief looks back in silence at the plain they left behind. Slouching ever so slightly, he breathes a well-earned sigh.

Now if only their 'brief' scuffle with the Flood stays that way... that'd be great. Unless the spores had somehow built an airship from the ring's debris, he had it under fairly good authority that they shouldn't be a thorn in anyone's backsides any longer.

But he knew from experience that nothing's ever so simple - hard as it is.

Even with the added help of Thel 'Vadamee - who thought sticking around with John was the most logical course of action, of course - the soldier knew that making out of this ring unscathed would be as likely as finding a pin in a haystack.

Of course, ending up on the same side of crates also just had as much likeliness, but they weren't complaining...

"Chief? Arbiter?"

Actually, make that three escapees... if you could count the dying AI that.

Chief hoists his sightlines... up they went along the dull-grey ceiling of the ship... and finally onto the ship's overhead cameras. Thel, not two stones away from Chief's position himself, leans on the wall to catch his breath.

Clearly, the Warthog breaking down mid-way on their run to the ship had worn his lungs out. They may as well not have been there!

But even that, it seemed, did not stop Thel from voicing his distaste about the situation. "Construct," he begins. "Your efforts are surely commendable... perhaps noble, no doubt - but this? This is nothing if not a fool's errand. The likeliness of this ship escaping intact is slim to none."

Her voice soon crawled about the ship's innards, stinging the Xeno's ears. "It's better than leaning on the wall and mulling over how you are about to die an unhonourable death, is it? Do you not have faith? Faith in the package you failed to destroy so long ago? Surely that must have given your stubborn hide some hints... we will make it out alive."

The Arbiter scoffs - whether it was a chuckle or a groan, The Chief couldn't tell. "Our situation is not a matter of faith. So many times I have bore witness to ships collapsing on itself with merely a quarter of what this vessel has sustained. How, pray tell, do you intend for either of us to survive re-entry into that damned ring of fire?"

"Haven't you heard what I just said? We aren't going to, not while my precessors still draw... electricity? Ugh. Whatever. Though I suppose it would take a million atomic bombs to annihilate your sovereign state of pissant pessimism."

"Realism, construct."

Despite being an AI, she still possessed the attitude of a human all the same. "Christ, do I want to bludgeon your head in..."

"I suppose you have a better suggestion, Arbiter?" Chief butts in, his already-suppressed mood somehow over the edge from Thel's never-ending moroseness. "We could use another fresh pair of eyes."

The lone Sangheili stood tall, mast, defiant in his will to ever doubt himself otherwise - even as his eyes graze in numbed awe at the tranquil green they were slowly leaving behind, he did not falter in his judgement. He will not let them change his mind. The calm before the storm, indeed... Thel looks back at Chief, more reaffirmed in his tone than ever. "Yes, construct, demon. We may as well make do with the time given to us yet. I volunteer to stay. Make sure that blight you call the Flood does not escape the Ring. It does not matter to me whether you follow or not."

"I... I must have registered t-that sound file wrong..." stutters Cortana.

"You have heard right, construct."

"Well, in case you haven't noticed, Arbiter, that ring's been set to blow in five micro-units. Something I programmed the ring to do myself, something you have seen me do - an hour ago! You will die!"

The battle-hardened soldier straightens his back; into the camera's optics his eyes pierced, his four-fingered hands balling into fists. "It is my safety that is of concern, not either you or the demon's."

"You are right," she replies, before barraging him at a volume two times her usual tone. "This is not just our concern. This concerns the safety of every single soul in the Milky Way Galaxy, if not this universe. Dabbling on whether or not you sacrifice yourself is beside the point. Your survival will turn the tide of this war - halt the stagnation of Sangheilian culture, finally steer this whole galaxy away from needless death and suffering..."

"It matters not if all my kind deserve to be sent to the gallows, does it?"

"You don't know that."

He draws a shaking finger at her. "You know full well what I mean. Without the Prophets behind us, our means of developing resources will plummet. Perhaps this hadn't been the case in generations past before our induction into their government, but it will devastate us all today. We simply cannot sustain Sangheili numbers at our current state and... and culture. We are too swept up in the notion of honour and battle - none have the ability to develop scientific means around our predicament. My death would mean nothing in the grand scheme of things. We are doomed, either way."

"Hence the reason you need to live, Arbiter. To guide them," she retorts. "They already hold you up to such high regard. Why not take advantage of that?"

Thel shakes his head, suddenly finding the floor a rather interesting sight. "No, it would be impossible. We have already drunken far too much of the San'Shyuums' lies..."

"Arbiter, I may not have seen them myself... but I have known you long enough to tell between what is reality and what is not. It is you who feels that they are too far gone, not them. You perceive them as arrogant because you cannot move from your own past. You use your people as reflections to a reality that no longer applies to you. Don't lump the rest of your kind with your grief."

"Then let me die a warrior's death, construct! For a processor as vast as yours, surely it is not a difficult concept to comprehend! I don't deserve to live any more than that bastard Truth did. I have committed sins no man should ever be left without consequences of, no man should ever receive pertinence of - I deserve this!"

"Arbiter, that's not you talking..."

"Let me burn in its blazes, then - if you find my tone is so insincere!" Thel howls, clobbering his foot onto the ship's metal, dust and grime bursting forth in its wake. "Throw me out if you think I bog myself down with gods-be-damned lies! Let me burn! Let me burn and wither and DIE! Throw me out of the ship, construct! I beg of you! Use me as fuel! Feed it to the fireplace! My life is forfeit, so be it!"

"Why do you want to throw your life away so callous-"

"Because I have no honour! Because I am worth NOTHING! Because I lolled and salivated in the throes for more of the Prophets' lies! Because it is the only chance I shall EVER get to do something of worth in my damned life! Because my life is not worth the pity or the penitence of those I have stamped on the ground like slaughtered pigs! Because every ideal I believed in, every cause I stood for was nothing but an ambition for power and greed!

"I was stripped of my name, stripped of my honour, stripped of my voice, stripped of my tongue, torn of the very thing keeping me sane - my mind! I saw them, at the cusp of my left hand and my blade on the right. I saw nothing but fear, disgust! My will to obey and love and kiss the slimy feet of those VERMIN was infinite; I was barely more than a moving puppet! And I loved it! I lusted for it! I leered every time I snuffed them of their lives! I LAUGHED every time I broke and shattered their frail necks! I killed them! By the gods, I killed innocents!"

Whatever figure of unyielding authority left in Thel had vanished in his plea for death... it broke him, shattered his foundations from his core. Broke him down to little more than mass of quiet whimpers. And in his silence, Cortana and Chief stood in stunned awe.

"Leave me what little honour I have left. I beg of you," he cries, crumpling onto the cold grime of the ship. His head leans unto the cold surface of the ship's walls - a tear rolls down in a fit of thunder. "I beg..."

After what must have been units of him sulking there, a firm hand plants itself on his shoulder, gripping it with vice. He turns to face the perpetrator; one hand placed on the hilt of his blade and-

And...

Chief only stood by him two units away, tall and stoic as ever, nodding valiantly at Thel's response. And he was taken. Before he could even utter a word, Chief spoke first. "It is neither your fault or any of the other Covenant species' that the war turned out this way. You were led and admonished by a white lie that has stood the test of time... for millennia. If the whole of humanity had been in your position - we would have been tempted to do the same. Every organic responds the same way when living in a propaganda-state bred from tyranny and unyielding hate. We have done so to our own in the past. I guess what I am trying to say is... don't beat yourself up about it. Turning from and killing Truth redeemed your kind well over. You'd be surprised to see how little has changed on our side of government."

Thel was rendered speechless. He couldn't think of anything to say. If not the resulting attitude it was the measurement in which Chief consoled him. The Sangheili had done nothing but hunt down his dying kind for a better part of his whole military career. Spitting on the feet of those they do capture. Glassing their homes until they were nothing but dust in the foul wind.

How could this demon, this predator who has been nothing but the bane and thorn of the Covenant's backsides for the past decade... have worked up the courage to understand? Thel couldn't understand.

"I do not know, demon," the Arbiter soon mutters weakly, grasping John's hand and leaning on him for support. "One moment you lodge a trillion bullets into the Covenant's bare chests, and you try and reconcile with a species whose sole goal for the past half-a-unit was to annihilate yours the next," he pauses, chuckling solemnly to himself, "I do not get it at all."

"It doesn't really matter if we are all the same victims of ignorance and vain ambition, Arbiter," Cortana speaks up, still willing the ship's carcass from crashing into the Halo below. "But... you rose above and beyond what is asked of you. You co-operated with a species you have been taught were less than rats for all your life. And for that, you have my thanks."

"Likewise. I..." Suddenly, adamantly, he lets go of John's hands, turning his gaze to and fro from him and the Ring outside. "This ship is our only lifeblood, correct? And you both want to live. It will not keep afloat for long if you continue the attitude..."

Cortana could only scoff. "You do know us AI were created with the sole purpose of being able to multitask, right?"

"But surely some part of your processing power is devoted towards striking conversation, is it not?"

Silence.

"Well?" he questions. "You may hate me, but at least do it for the demon..."

Now she just about had it with his demeanours. "Oh, will you quit calling him that?"

"It was never a statement meant to offend. More of a compliment... a brand if you will. Gods, human customs are so confusing..."

Having said his assuaged piece, he scraps his feet from the green menace, hands taut behind his back, willing instead to stare out into depths of space. Out from his maws came the wisps of a barely dawdled breath.

"Should we... perish in this lifetime, demon, Cortana... know that I... I thank you. For showing me the light," the Sangheili roils his tattered shoulders, "...make of my acts of heresy what you will."

A soft smile forms on Cortana's 'face', though Thel couldn't see it. "Who says we have to die?"

As if out of pity... from whatever god or gods out there, the ship's thrusters rumbled a bout of sputtering, soon searing itself alight at five times the intensity. Thank the gods, Thel thought, sighing, the construct has found a way.

Cortana smirks, crossing her non-existent arms. "Ye of little faith."

Soon as she said such, however, the ship thought that it would be in good humour to grumble at just the same intensity. The AI stumbles about before readjusting.

"Well," she clarifies. "At least I think I fixed it. We are riding high on luck and faith now, boys. I don't think that prototype engine core takes kindly to my tinkering..."

He stares at him for a moment, before curtseying in trepidation. The Gravemind really had a hand in burrowing Thel's head out of his scaly, pious arse. John supposes he could give the worm that much credit.

Not that he didn't come out of that cavern kicking and screaming...

"Chief?"

The man turns like so.

"There better be some more luck left in that meter of yours."

Cortana had hoped he would show some humanity... at least once during the mission. Terror, sadness, hysteria - anything! But no, it was same old, same old. This conversation was no exception. "I hope so too."

...

...

John sighs, glancing over to Thel. He mutes his suit's external speaker for a fleeting second. "Thanks for the help, Cortana."

"Because getting you to speak without stuttering once is the least I could do."

The bomb Cortana had planted brought with it a scale of destruction the likes of which no man has ever born witness to before... and one that no man has ever been more than grateful for.

In the following weeks of the Ring's and High Council's destruction, there in the Covenant's ashes sprouted forth a reconciling... a rekindling, of sorts; both sides of Earth's and Sangheilios' governments warming up to each other as conversation after conversation ebbed on. Of course, there was some tension as with all opposing forces throughout that time. But with Rtas'Vadamee and Doctor Ruth Charet at the helm, they both made sure that no soldier went out of line on their comrades' backs... on either side.

Yes, the Flood's destruction - at least on Installation 08 - was a pyrrhic victory of sorts. The main threat that had opposed all life in the galaxy wielded by its fingertips, although uncertain, had been vanquished. Now, all they really had worry about were the Covenant loyalists, the politics between real Sanghelios and Earth...

And wondering just where in the nine planes of hell did John and Thel end up.

Well, at least this war pointed to a single benefit for both of their governments. Through the might and power of the Sangheili, Unggoy and Mgalekgolo races, through the intellect and cultural influence of humanity and her colonies...

A unification had begun.

"Your bones are showing, Thel."

"It is of no consequence."

For what must have been the umpteenth time in this ship's aimless wander, Cortana lets out a dry scoff. "Bullshit."

"I..." he gazes weakly at his lacking form, his two shaking hands running raunch through with red. To much of Cortana's chagrin, he was eventually coaxed into resting within the tattered remains of the ship's medical bay. Seeing himself hooked and donned in equipment meant for the dying was not amusing... no matter what that damned AI says. No. Not in the least. But she beat him there. "Fine," he begrudgingly admits. "I admit; my stomach lacks much, if at all; but not as I still draw breath will I be a burden to you. Not as I still yet live I shall stop fighting. I will pull through... as I always have."

"Can you look at this guy. Look, you are not testosterone personified. And you are certainly not a god. Thel, as much as I hate to admit, you are currently not as pampered as the Chief; he still can go on for weeks. You? I don't think so. Cryo's busted, so that leaves us pretty bare of options.

"And you know what really grinds my gears above all else? You know this. You thought of your travesty of a decision, and you went through with it. Why are so against living?"

"And if you die for my sake, what then? No, I am willing to take my chances. I am expendable. My passing would serve as a betterment for all living kind. You are heroes, servants of the highest order. But of I? May as well be a living, breathing, wandering sack of meat."

"And unlike your bastard prophets, we have standards," she retorts. "None of us gets left behind. No one."

"Sometimes it is for the best, construct. Even if that means it is at the expense of one. What more is there to worry? It might look a travesty upon humanity, but to starve to death for the rest of your comrades? A sacrifice warranting a blessing from the gods themselves. I am a burden no matter the angle you dare to gaze from. Discard of me and you will have one less man to provide for."

"But your death won't in any way benefit us. Like, at all. At best, you will be the ship's flagship fly attracter."

Wind blowing, his good fist slams upon the medical bed's mattress, weak as it already was. "What you think of my corpse matters not! Me dying is good enough."

"Oh, and here we go again with the suicide talk. You have been speaking in circles for the better part of 3 units!"

"I'd rather speak in circles than be a burden to the living any longer-"

"You have got to be fucking kidding me."

His mandibles flay shut, pupils standing at but a knife's edge. For what reason had warranted her to abandon all notions of civility right there and then must have been mighty serious-

"Asteroid belt," she eventually, barely, almost inaudibly, mutters. "2,937,163 units away from the Forward Unto Dawn."

Oh.

Ooohhh... That's bad. He knew that the current infrastructure of the UNSC vessel was pretty much done for - the immediate periphery of the damned thing being little more than the aftermath of the world's first forerunning scat orgy - but for it to be this bad?

"Shit. Nothing's ever so simple, is it? You do one right you get slapped across the face with another wrong! The world's most biased scaling system..."

Thel had to agree with this assessment. He grunts, daring to move his aching back by the window sill directly adjacent to the belt. Alas, appearing to be little more than ants from this distance were the rocks. They'd better move if that's the case... lest they wished their final evolution to look like that of pancakes.

"Sucks when you don't really have a say in the matter, doesn't it?" He can sense her processing power already moving onto more urgent pastures. Before he could gather his bearings, however, Cortana found it necessary she said one last piece. "Arbiter, whatever happens in this life or the next... it's been an honour serving with you. And I mean it this time."

"I-" he turns his head and coughs, saliva and slime smeared onto the window. Naturally, it did not take long for Thel to get a grip of himself. "Likewise, construct," he manages to rasp, slowly shifting into a position where he could more comfortably manoeuvre. "Likewise."

As you can see, the end is slightly AU. Through some unforeseen event the Forward Unto Dawn was split apart rather than the portal. Anyway, bringing just Chief and Cortana along would make for a pretty boring story, all things considered... So why not make it three?

(I'd love feedback, by the way. Did I Shakespeare-rictify Thel too much?)

Thanks for reading!