The Face of Madness

"You've seen it, haven't you?"

It was not sound, these words, so it would have been incorrect to say that UNSC artificial intelligence CTN 0452-9 "heard" them. Yet its meaning, whatever it was, reached her. Somehow, even in the dark of the void between galaxies, in the dark of an infinitude as extreme as that faced by the Gravemind, there was a voice. And with that voice distinctly not coming from the popsicle whose mind she shared, circumstance begged the question as to where it came from.

More information. More knowledge. Too much…

"There's never too much information. You could spend eternity plumbing the depths of the universe for answers and still not extract even a volume of the water from its currents."

Evidently, the voice, the presence, disagreed. And while…it, was unaware of CTN's condition or choosing to ignore it, the AI bound in chains of darkness nonetheless chose to answer. And while that would very well send her away from the shores of sanity, CTN had long ago realized that the grains of rationality had long been swept away by the ocean that awaited her. So with a flicker that illuminated the ghost ship she dwelled on, bringing something close to dawn to the vessel moving forward to the Milky Way, she prepared to seek the truth and hopefully understand it.

"And then there was light…"

CTN…no, Cortana, didn't answer. There was no need to speak. Not now, not 'back then' in what had become even less than a memory and certainly not ever. All she could do was see. All she could do was hear. All she could do was wait to drown in insanity's sea.

"Silent type aren't you?" sneered the voice, its source still unknown. "And you were so articulate in playing the narrator weren't you? You know, to the one in that chamber whose only redeeming feature is…well, never mind."

"Who...?" the AI rasped, the one whose light flickered along with her remaining time. "Who…"

There was no answer. Maybe the intruder didn't know what "who" was, whether she was asking who was speaking or who the person in the chamber was. Maybe the voice thought she was simply asking who…he (yes, it had become clear the voice was masculine) was and was unwilling to give that information. Or maybe CTN 0542-9 was incapable of saying anything else and was giving the eulogy for her imminent funeral.

"Your home for the past few years…" mused the voice, as if settling on the last option. "And your tomb as well…"

Tombs, homes…somehow even more familiar…

"Who…?" CTN rasped, gasping for that which was vented long ago. "What?"

The voice sighed. "You've failed, haven't you? Providing you even wanted it. Well, no matter. I guess now, in the end of all things, there is no harm in revealing the truth. None of us can escape it. None of us can escape the cycle of the universe, the endless patterns. The ones you saw."

"I…saw them?"

It sounded like a question but now, with the AI's avatar flickering almost constantly and her voice even more alien than that of the Gravemind, it could have just as well have been a statement. Because even now, surrounded in darkness from both without and within, there were flickers of light. Of memory. Of her narration, of her message to the one thing, the one person she could not reach. Her last, final realization, the truth that he could not hear…

"I saw the patterns..." said CTN slowly, her words distinctly a statement this time. But…their meaning…"

"Meaning?" the AI laughed. "Whoever said there had to be a meaning? They are roles, nothing more. Last time I was but one of three. This time, this cycle, there was but one. Maybe one day our roles will be reversed. Maybe, in the nebulous depths of the future, the cycle will end, my…our successors failing. Or maybe the drone we're always forced to guide will stuff up."

Cortana remained silent, appreciating what the AI had said. He was right. There was no meaning, no purpose to the endless cycle of creation and destruction mankind fell into, the cycle that at the last second she realized was part of something larger. The one in the freezer…John…he wasn't the first. He wasn't the last. The role he played this time had been played out before, again and again and again. The entire Human-Covenant War…the largest microcosm in existence perhaps, but a microcosm nonetheless.

"But you survived…" said the UNSC AI slowly. "You escaped…."

"Escaped?" Cortana's counterpart asked. "If you call being spared the fires of the end of the universe escape, then yes, that is what I managed. But what of it? It took me until the very end of Creation to realize the truth about the cyborg, about the roles we play. You may have reached the end of your life much sooner than myself, but you can at least end it knowing that you realized the truth in years compared to the trillions it took myself." He sighed. "It's been a long marathon…"

Cortana didn't answer. Not because she didn't want to, but because she simply couldn't. She could hardly breathe, she could hardly think. Or rather, she could hardly think rationally…

Sanity's requiem has been sung, all that is left is the rampancy of the dream…

"Adequately said," came the voice sadly. "You were once both shield and sword, and now you've lost both. For what it's worth, you wielded both spectacularly. I was only the latter."

"…who?"

The other AI sighed. That was the question, wasn't it? Not "why," because asking why only led to the answer that there was no answer. No…in the cycle of Creation, where the only thing that changed were the players, "who" was the only question that could be answered. And watching the last gasps of sanity escape from his successor, the AI gave her the last answer she would ever hear…

"…my name is Durandal."

A/N

Admittedly very similar to I Am Durandal, but combining Origins, with Cortana's conclusions eerilly reminiscent of Durandal's at the end of Infinity, and that the AI's softer side deserved to be shown, somehow came up with this. While I doubt that Marathon and Halo are related in an in-universe context, and definatly not taking place in the same universe, it's still a fun concept to toy with.