Fred trying really hard to give Veta a good Christmas gift. Except he's never really celebrated Christmas and hasn't given someone a gift before. So he goes to the Internet to research, what to get someone and how to give it to them.
There are many suggestions but he finally decides on giving her "something personal and meaningful" and he has the perfect thing. While he was on Gao he took some mud from one of the healing pools. He wanted to carry it and see what exactly was so special about it. He never ended up doing anything with it though.
But he thought it would be the perfect gift for Veta, to give her some special mud from the healing pools on Gao, her home planet. It was both personal and meaningful.
Veta, the champ she was, acted very excited and happy to receive such a gift. He gave her his explanation to go along with it. It earned him a little kiss on the cheek.
The woman didn't have it in her to break it to him that taking anything, mud included, from Gao's healing pools was illegal. Instead she smiled, it wasn't the best gift she had ever received but it was clear he had put thought into it.
She wondered if he'd ever given a gift before, the thought made her a little sad at first. And made her heart race a little as she thought of being the first person Fred had given a gift to.
“I need to make sure the kids are okay—” she pants, doing her best to shove aside the pain that spikes through her body as she tries, for the third time, to look over her shoulder.
Also for the third time, Fred sighs. “They’re fine,” he assures, threads of exasperation weaving in at the fringes of his voice. “I can see them. Will you just sit still?”
“Ash took a direct hit from the—”
“Veta.” Huge hands—hastily stripped of their armor and now stained crimson—clamp firmly, but gently, against either side of her face, keeping her anchored. “The kids are fine,” he repeats. Slower. Softer. “Trust me, they’ve been through a lot worse. You can check on them after I get this shrapnel out of you. Stop moving.” A slow second crawls by. She’s reminded—again—how much Fred’s eyes look like the ocean. “...please.”
Her instinct to nod is overridden by the heat radiating from his hands, still pressed tight right below her cheekbones. If this were anyone else, she’d feel threatened. Cornered. She doesn’t.
She breaks the settled silence a few moments after he’s finally released her and resumed his first-aid. “...you called me Veta.”
He doesn’t look up. “Trying to get your attention.”
She hums; a neutral non-answer. His hands had left echoes of warmth behind her jaw—smears of her own blood, too, but amidst the sting of injuries and biofoam, it’s doing her more good to focus on the former. “......you called them kids.”
Just a bit of my favorite part from one of my current fics. Link to the full piece under the cut!
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“Fred, you are three times the woman’s size, of course she’s going to tell you that,” John found himself saying. “Unless you’re trying to flirt, in which case, you’re doing it badly.”
“Like you know how to flirt,” Fred muttered.
“I have been flirted with far more than you,” John replied.
“That is true,” Linda piped up.
“How?” Fred pushed. “How has John been flirted with more than me?”
“Well, for one thing, Lopis doesn’t actually flirt with you,” Kelly answered, “And two, Cortana was flirting with John from the moment they met.”
“And she never stopped from what I remember,” Linda added.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
She's breathing. Her chest rises and falls steady and rhythmically and perfectly strongly. She's moving. Her fingers tighten and curl around the too-soft hotel pillows as she sleeps atop them. Her toes wriggle as she pulls her knees closer to herself, making the heavy comforter over her body slip past her hips. He reaches over impulsively to grab it and pull it back up, but freezes last-second.
He's not supposed to be awake, but he couldn't sleep. He doesn't want to risk waking her up by disturbing her, but if she wakes up cold, he wouldn't be able to forgive himself. The conundrum makes him anxious. He pulls the blanket back up over her shoulders as stealthily as he can. Her heartbeat doesn't change.
He wants to bring her in close and drape his arms over her. She's so small and vulnerable, it incites the need to protect, in an extremely foreign way. Maybe it was the movies they had been watching. A taste of normalcy for the Ferrets, a bit of impartation of childhood from the Inspector. He can't stop looking at her.
He knows there are words for the things he feels, but he simply doesn't know them. He does, clinically and academically, but not in the ways that make them powerful. He feels fit to bursting with these nameless sensations, amplified by her presence, compounded in how her just-growing-out shaved hair tickles her forehead. It's been so long since he's seen her sleep this soundly.
She must be either very tired, or very safe. He feels his eyes heat up.
He wants so badly to sink back down into the bed and fall asleep beside her, but he knows it's impossible. He's slept as much as his body will permit him.
Taking a break from the SpOps crew to give yall a bit of Freta cheese. Fred is wintergreen mint and lemon, both sharp but also sweet. Veta is just straight coffee and Habanero jelly; a different kind of sharp, some bitter, and a persistent fire with only a teeny bit of sweetness.
I hope I did them justice, I haven't read Last Light so all of my Veta lore is secondhand and it took me a day to settle on markings and flavrs...
Pre-Halo 5 Fanfiction that just expands on an idea I can’t do anything else with. Siblings often observe more about us then we realize, and Kelly has had it up to here with her two brothers and their himbo obliviousness. It’s really rough and I just threw it all together so I hope you enjoy.
The Master Chief was not one who went into missions blind. Intel was required to keep risk of fatalities and complications low, and right now he was in desperate need of intel.
Frederic-104 was John’s second in command, and though he outranked the Chief, he had stepped back on John’s return, to ease him back into their old roles. He was a capable leader, but Fred had never thrived under the anxieties of leadership he once confided to John.
He appreciated his brother’s stability and humor more these past few months than he had anything else. Yet recently there’d been a noticeable air of agitation surrounding Fred, and though John knew he wasn’t the most up on interpersonal matters, he gathered there’d been a change in Fred’s focus. Some detective he had met and her team.
John knew on these matters the two other members of Blue Team, Kelly-084 and Linda-058 would be the best source of wisdom. Linda was away at the shooting range, and no one bothered Linda when she wanted to be alone. Kelly was, as usual between missions, in the gym, there was almost nothing else you could for R and R that did not drive a Spartan II crazy. Bed rest was out of the question even during medical recovery.
The Infinity’s gym was a cavernous and layered room, tiered with levels like many of the sections of the ship. Equipment for ODSTs and Spartans after all had some differences. Kelly stood near the weights in the Spartan section, where admiring IVs stood far away from her but watched in open admiration of the mythical Spartan II at work. He ignored them. As John approached, Kelly met his eyes through the mirror before her, the decades of familiarity meant he didn’t even have to say anything. She could tell her brother needed a talk. He heard the weight clang onto the rack as she followed him to a nearby hallway.
When they rounded the corner, John leaned onto the exposed metal girder between them, which half jutted out of the wall, shooting up like a pillar into the plastimetal ceiling above. By leaning he gave them an air of privacy, making it clear to anyone approaching they were not to be bothered. He took a deep breath and contemplated her a moment before beginning.
“Kelly, what’s your sit-rep on Fred’s current operating capacity.”
“Physically? He’s never been better.”
“Not physically. Emotionally.” John corrected.
She scoffed. “John surely you can describe someone’s emotions other than operating capacity.”
A slight smile ghosted his lips before fading, “I’ve never been taught the procedures for that.”
“No I suppose not.” Kelly joked.
“He’s mentioned Veta Lopis before, and the events on Gao briefly.” John continued. “Do you have know of any reason that this could be affecting him personally. Do you believe it to be affecting his focus?”
“As for affecting his focus that’s difficult to quantify, though he’s not the one I’m concerned about.” John ignored that swipe as Kelly moved on. “ Though I think it’s pretty obvious that she’s important to Fred.” Kelly squinted up at the gym lights, carefully phrasing her words which immediately warned John that there was something on her mind.
John nodded at her to continue.
“I knew it pretty shortly after Gao… even if he didn’t…and doesn’t.”
John sighed and though he wondered if it would affect mission performance he remained silent. He knew he had not been exactly all clear lately and it showed, it would be hypocritical of him to comment now. Instead he thought of a better question.
“How could you tell?” He asked.
Kelly paused again, which was unlike her.
“Her name, not just how often he says it but… how he says it. Haven’t you noticed?” John shook his head, and awkwardly crossed his arms, leaning back against the wall of the passage in thought. He’d been too preoccupied to notice Blue Team. They’d been through a lot these past fews years without him and had changed in his absence. He owed it to them as their leader to pay closer attention. He had lost his footing with his team and though they’d been patient with him, he needed to find it again.
“Look, don’t believe me? Make him say her name. I can not explain it but her name sounds different coming out of his mouth. I don’t know…” Kelly faded off with a laugh and shook her head in silent frustration with something. She suddenly seemed to switch topics. “I don’t like things to change, I never have… it’s like losing control.”
John remained silent, but kept his eyes locked on his sister’s trying to make it as clear as possible that he valued this rare admission from her. But it was already over, Kelly pulled the towel off her shoulders in a languid motion of casualness.
“Did you need help with analyzing anyone else’s operating capacity? Or perhaps you ought to speak with him, it might do him good having you to help him understand.”
“No. I won’t do anything further at this point, sounds like there’s no harm done if he doesn’t realize.”
A ripple of amusement crossed Kelly’s face along with some other more indignant expression. “Well I think it would do him good to come to terms with the reality of the situation.” She turned to go back to the gym, and John was just beginning to mull over her words when she spoke again.
“John,” Kelly asked, spinning on her heel suddenly. “What was the name of your ai friend, the one you lost?”
John felt a strange sensation of pain rise up in his stomach, and a slight betrayal that she would bring up something so casually. Spartan IIs were usually so careful about the pain their fellow Spartans felt.
“Cortana” He said, voice low. There was for him no harder word.
Kelly raised her eyebrows pointedly, as she turned back around. “Oh... right.”
Fred though….he deserved to know what he stood to gain or lose. John roused himself and decided to leave the gym another way so he would not have to face Kelly. After this next mission to Argent Moon, he’d get his head straight and he’d find out more about this Veta.
The Master Chief took a slight step back as he watched the other Spartan march away. Her name still on his tongue, realization hit John like a powerful electric shock, and he found that he could not move. He remembered, before she was gone, he found increasing pleasure in hearing Cortana say his name. How he found himself with her name on the tip of his tongue, and took pleasure in pronouncing it. As if everything she was was encapsulated in those syllables. Saying her name, and feeling attention turn on him generated a sensation undefinable but if he had to John might describe it as almost sacred.
All at once he understood something he’d been afraid to. Loss wasn’t so bad if you never realized what you had in the first place, but now that illusion was gone and John felt exposed. He knew he lost her… and in the back of his mind he knew that whatever it was that he’d lost, he’d never find again, but now John realized just what he had. A wave of fatigue consumed John, and he felt a sudden urge to rest.
