Hell, he’d spoken it thousands of times to 16 year old Marines staring at craters where their buddies had just been standing.
“Marine, listen to me. You can grieve later. Right now? I need your help.”
“I.. yeah.. yes.. yes sir!”
She was panicking. Even in his own state he could clock that as easy as his own heart rate. That had yet to evoke anything other than pure dread deep in his chest, and he doubted it ever would.
Steel met ice, terror met worry, and Artemis became the only person in the galaxy to see Carter Harkness truly terrified.
Hands against his cheeks, cold, yet absolutely scorching. Why? How did that make sense?
Cold environment, cold body, foreign touch that’s hot. Basic, 259.
That’s never been your choice.
The grip shifted to his biceps, and he could finally feel his heart rate decreasing.
“Noble Leader, seek immediate medical attention. Noble Leader, please respond, you are alarming me.”
Slow, methodic speech pattern. Her tone was almost melodic. The sort of slow, soft music that calms you down. And it was most certainly working.
There was no hesitation with that one.
“Grey. The bulkhead. Black. The SRS over there.”
“Stop. You’re wasting time, 259. You’ve calmed.”
Carter blinked rapidly, eyes locking onto a shadowed form in the back corner behind Artemis.
One covered in a rainbow of different colors of blood.
Another blink, and Carter inhaled sharply.
Carter blinked, tilting his head to meet the redhead’s gaze.
Three things he could see. That was enough. Didn’t matter if he never finished the rest of what she’d asked of him; the point was to get him to come back to the present, and that had been managed successfully. He was focused on her, now; that was what she wanted.
Instinct had Artemis wanting to take a step back. To create distance between them. Her skin prickled; although there were no goosebumps dancing across her flesh, it certainly felt like there was. Discomfort, borne of years old habits of being wary and avoiding others, crawled down her spine.
She had to. He needed her, and now wasn’t the time to be selfish.
Now wasn’t the time to give in to old fears, to allow herself to become B312 once again. She wasn’t that person any more.
I’m not. You’re not going to cage me again. My name is Artemis. I’m a human; a Spartan. I am my own person. You do not own me. I own me.
“Hey.” About how many times had she said that, now? At least it worked. “Welcome back, big guy.” She allowed a small smirk to twitch her lips upwards. There was something lacking in her words; despite how she fought not to distance herself from Carter, there was less of the gentleness that had been present earlier. She was tired, on edge; needed to give herself more than one thing to focus on.
This time, Artemis did take a step back, if only so she could retrieve a brand new bodysuit; her old one had been beyond repair, had been worn before she’d been assigned to Noble Team on Reach. Her armour, however, was much more fixable, but she had to wait for it, hence the new kit.
“We should get geared up,” she suggested, the smirk being replaced by a brief, tight smile; she’d run out of reassurances to give, and switching the subject felt like something safe she could turn to. “At the very least, we’ll be battle-ready. Something about the atmosphere here suggests we’ll be deployed sooner than we think.”
As she spoke, she stripped out of her fatigues to put the bodysuit on, leaving herself in regulation undergarments; now that her midriff was bare, it would have been hard to miss the ugly, angry patchwork of still-pink scarring all over her abdomen. Fortunately, only Carter was there to see; not that she had any qualms about changing in front of other soldiers, but she wasn’t keen on answering questions, or subjecting herself to unwanted staring.
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