Busyness to the point of over-working was not uncommon.
But near-constant, pulsating loneliness was.
Carter-A259, Spartan-III warrior, exemplary combatant and charismatic leader, had seen enough of war to know its horrors inside and out. What it did to people, good people, how it twisted their minds and made them see the galaxy differently. He himself had experienced loss, and pain; had held hope in the eleventh hour only to watch it get swept away as the Covenant war machine had raged on and swept everything aside in its path on the “Great Journey”.
He’d watched as Noble Team had formed and reformed, time and again, as each Spartan had been consumed by the fight against the alpha bravos that had already taken billions of human lives, and would not stop until all of humanity had been entirely eradicated. He’d watched planets fall, seen them glassed, been on the ground when it had happened, or fled merely moments before it had started. He’d seen the aftermath of the plasma bombardment; the glassy, black brittle stuff that had formed on the surface of worlds that had once held so much life.
But then Reach had happened, and everything had changed.
All of his team had perished in the deployment that had been damned from the very beginning, from the very moment that he’d uttered the words Affirmative. It’s the WINTER CONTINGENCY. He’d made the sacrifice, for the mission, to protect what was left of his team. Carter had never expected to survive. He had never expected to be haunted by Reach almost every waking moment since he’d woken up in a hospital bay on Earth, and wondered where the hell he was, and what had happened to the rest of his team — his family.
And so he’d sunk into oblivion. Thrown himself into his work, allowed himself to be consumed by it, sleeping only when he needed to, or when he collapsed from sheer exhaustion. It wasn’t atonement, it wasn’t penance — it was simply to move on. And he was trying, he was trying so damned hard.
He hoped that NOBLE would be proud of him as he helped humanity rebuild after it had nearly met its end during the War.
As absorbed as Carter was by his work, so his mindset was often distracted. This time was no exception. So utterly focused was he on his datapad that he didn’t notice someone approaching — didn’t realize that he was in their path. Not until it was too late.
The Spartan slammed full on into another soldier, and his heavily-muscled mass would have knocked them off-balance, if not sprawling to the floor. Pure instinct had his arm shoot out to encircle the stranger’s wrist, movement faster than the normal human eye could register. His other hand steadied their shoulder; when they looked into his face, they would see his deep blue eyes welling with regret, and concern.
“I am.....I am so sorry, that was.... Completely not like me, I’m sorry, I should have been watching where I was going. Are you alright?”
@perpetualxfire || liked S.C.