Light. White light, like a star. Falling Lucifer and Icarus, the dying small payment for the ecstasy of freedom.

But then all of his aches and pains began filtering back to him- cracked and broken bones,torn muscles and tendons immobilized and bypassed by his armor. Brutal testament to the ferocity and strength of the Didact and his Prometheans. The weight of his armor settled around him once more, an easy burden to bear after so many years inside it.

'I'm still alive.'

His whole body lit up with agony, but he forced himself to move anyway, getting to his feet. "Cortana." His sixth sense for her, the one that had cause him so many problems when she was being tortured by the Gravemind, couldn't detect her anywhere. "Cortana, do you read?" Her rampancy and countless copies had screwed with their connection, but he had always been able to feel her…! "Cortana,come in,"he begged, praying to someone, anyone –

A sky blue glow at his back. He turned.

It was her. It was her, his guardian and his charge, his shield-sister and his soulmate. Never before had he been so happy to see her, never before had she looked more radiant. She walked slowly toward him across a floor of hard light. "How…?" He let the question hang in the air, a precursor to a thousand endings. How was this possible? How had she survived the destruction of the Approach? How had she generated a hard light barrier so close to a manual nuclear detonation and prevented him from being harmed? How were they getting home so he could keep his promise?

"Oh, I'm the strangest thing you've seen all day?" She was smiling, but there was sorrow in her eyes.

"But if we're here…"

"It worked," she said, "You did it, just like you always do."

He accepted that, then looked up at the barrier."So how do we get out of here?" There were no visible exits.

Cortana looked down at her feet, then met his gaze once more. "I'm not coming with you this time."

NO

His body flinched at the force of his own denial. "What?" His tone was uncomprehending. 'No, no, no, not her, anyone but her…'

She tilted her head toward the remains of the Approach. "Most of me is down there. I only held enough back to get you off the ship."

"No." This time he verbalized the thought. "That's not – we go together." He didn't leave room for argument. It couldn't be true. It had to be a nightmare – was this Hell?

"It's already done."

That didn't mean he had to accept it. "I am not leaving you here."

"John…" Cortana crossed the remaining distance between them in a single smooth stride. Her hand rose,touched his chest plate, and she let out a shuddering sigh. "I've waited so long to do that."

"It was my job to take care of you." 'I failed you,' went unspoken, but was heard anyway, so clearly he might as well have shouted it. The Chief couldn't meet her eyes. 'I should have done more to help stop your rampancy, shouldn't have let this be your only way to peace. I should have just killed the Didact, and damned the consequences.'

"We were supposed to take care of each other," she corrected gently, "And we did."

The Spartan looked back up at her. He could feel the stinging in his eyes. How long had it been since he had cried? He couldn't remember. "Cortana, please…" John could feel the prickling in his wrist, knew the color was beginning to turn black.

The AI (and yet so much more than just that) smiled sadly. She touched his chest plate one last time, then dropped her right hand to his own. He gripped her forearm as she did his in the traditional hand-fastening position, the one that pressed the soulmate names on their wrists together. A shaky breath escaped her, like she was on the verge of tears, before she pulled free of his grasp and began to back away.

"Wait-" He took a step after her, but she was already beginning to fade.

"Welcome home, John."

John wasn't sure how long he drifted, mind blank, in the remains of the Mantle's Approach. He only became aware of his surroundings when a spotlight shone down on him, drawing him out of his near-catatonic state. He slowly turned his head to look up into the light.

"Infinity actual? Pelican Nine-Sixer. We found him."

The troop carrier's hold opened up, the ship slowly moving close enough for him to grab onto it and pull himself inside. The artificial gravity took hold, and he got to his feet without a word. One of the Marines on board to the rest of his gear from him while two more supported him to one of the side seats. He strapped himself in, but barely felt the Pelican's acceleration as it turned toward the Infinity.

There were Spartan-IVs and Marines waiting in formation in the bay where the Pelican docked with the ship. They saluted him as he descended the ramp – a hero's welcome he hardly thought he deserved.

HIGHCOM was still in disarray because of the assault on Earth, so he had no orders to report anywhere. He used the opportunity to slip away and hid on the observation deck, looking out over the green and blue planet. The Infinity's AI, Roland, had to know where he was. As fore the rest of the crew, he wasn't sure if they were just giving him space or if they genuinely had somewhere else to be. Either way, he was grateful for the moment of quiet, the time to grieve.

But of course, it was too good to last. There were footsteps behind him, followed by a voice. "Mind if I join you?"

Lasky. John straightened respectfully and turned slightly to look at the officer. "Of course not, sir."

One corner of the other man's lips quirked up in sardonic amusement. "At ease, Chief," he said, walking closer, "Feels kinda odd for you to call me 'sir.'" Both of them gazed out at Earth.

John had had people close to him sacrifice themselves to defend Earth and humanity before, but never to defend him. He returned his attention to Lasky when he realized the man was speaking. Cortana had always been able to grab his attention right away.

"Chief," said the officer, "I won't pretend to know how you feel. I've lost people before, but…" He seemed unsure how to put it. "… never anything like what you're going through."

"Our duty," he said quietly, "as soldiers is to protect humanity, whatever the cost." It was more of an automatic response than an actual thought.

"You say that, like soldiers and humanity are two different things. Soldiers aren't machines. We're just people." John glanced at him but did not otherwise respond. "I'll let you have the deck to yourself."

As he walked away, the Spartan murmured to himself, "She said that to me once. About being a machine." Then, without turning around, "Commander?"

"Yes, Chief?"

"That girl who died on Circinius IV, the one hit by the needle round while we were in the Warthog."

"Chyler? What about her?"

He inhaled slowly, then asked, "Was she your soulmate?" He watched the man's reflection in the window, saw the confusion, then the dawning realization, followed by sympathy and shared pain.

"Yes," said Lasky, "She was."

Four weeks later, the Chief was summoned by one of ONI's tech divisions. It was all very hush-hush, making him almost positive that they were planning on pairing him with another AI, one that he was very positive he would refuse.

Until he walked into the lab.

There were two AI standing atop one of the tech's desks. One was female, cobalt in color with long curly hair, and wore a rendering of a naval tech's standard uniform. The other was male, grass green with close cropped hair, wearing the Mark VI variant of the MJOLNIR armor with the helmet tucked under his arm. Both of them turned to look at him when he entered the room.

John shot a glance at the head tech, then looked back at the AIs. The female nearly skipped to the edge of the desk and said, "Hello, Father."

The Spartan's eyebrows shot up and he distinctly straightened, a perfectly normal reaction despite the amused looks of the scientists.

"I am Joyeuse," said the female AI, "and this is my twin." She looked back at the other AI, who took that as his cue to approach and speak.

"My name is Durandal," he said, coming to a stop next to his twin at a far more calm pace.

A memory resurfaced in John's mind, the circumstances around it blurred by time, but the words were still clear. "'I am Cortana,'" he quoted, "'of the same steel and temper as Joyeuse and Durandal.'"

Joyeuse beamed at him, and he recognized echoes of Cortana's own smile in her. Durandal had more of the Spartan's style of expression – a turning up of one corner of his lips and a softening of his stance rather than a full blown smile. "Yep," he said, "except this time it's the other way around."

Their avatars, voices, and demeanors were each a mixture of Cortana's and John's, yet at the same time, they were also entirely their own people. Cortana was gone, but it seemed that she had created a contingency plan, in case she shut down while they were still adrift. She had made the kernels of two new AI to support the Spartan after she was gone, the only "children" the two of them would ever have.

The Chief approached the table and knelt to put himself on a more equal level with them, removing his helmet as he did so. "My name is John," he said, "and I'm looking forward to working with you both."

Joyeuse's smile grew even wider. Durandal actually cracked a grin, and John finally allowed himself a small smile of his own.