Of course, John did not say a word about it. He wasn't much of a talker anyway.
....
True, he never felt more old or tired. But John knew deep inside that his age wasn't the problem, war machines as honed as him worked perfectly until they got blown off the ground. This was something else.
They said SPARTANS did not know of fear or remorse. That they felt nothing.
John could prove them wrong, if he cared. In his chest there was this hollow place, like a black hole ever expanding since the day he lost her, swallowing his sanity away. Because that was how it felt like: it was a loss, she wasn't the only person he cared about but was his best friend, even if she wasn't a real person at all. Cortana felt real to him, and it was enough. She had a smile he could see, a laugh he could hear and a personality he liked a lot, once. She understood him. She was real to him.
Now Cortana was gone. He kept the chip safe, like a charm close to his heart underneath the plates of his armor, but he could feel it was empty. It did not matter how many times he tried to plug that thing in the first terminal he could find, when nobody was looking. The result was always the same: a redundant error message in the screen. A painful error message.
They say that SPARTANS never die.
Then, why did he felt like a part of him was already dead?