Recollections, Part 1

He remembered.

There were so many years behind him now, so many battles and scars and tears, yet if he closed his eyes, shut out the present, and fell back into the thick fog of memory he could still feel the sting of hot concrete beneath his bare feet, the sounds and smells of the city, the anxious growling of a stomach that could never find quiet enough to eat. So much hunger, so much pain and animal fear, yet sometimes he still found himself yearning for that simpler time, a time where there had been no UNSC or Covenant, no Naval Intelligence or Insurrection, no war, no Spartans…

He remembered his mother, the frayed hem of her dress, the strained edge of her smile, the sting of her hand across his face. The stench of cheap beer and heated ration packs had always lingered about their apartment, mixing with the cologne of whichever man she had brought to her room that particular night. Some spoke kindly to him, brought him toys or extra food, and he wished that they would stay. But the men would always come and go, leaving her drunk and broken and angry with nothing to vent her pain on but the child crouched under the kitchen table on all fours, head bowed, eyes downcast. If she only threw things then the legs of the chairs kept him safe as the boxes and plates and curses rained down around him; but sometimes she came closer to kick and punch and then there was nothing he could do but cover his head and go inside himself as the blows fell across his legs and arms and back.

Those were nights of fear and pain, but then there were the nights where there were no men, just his mother and him by themselves. She didn’t drink those nights. Sometimes she even ate with him and they sat together at the table, mother and child gravely consuming the night’s ration pack in pleasant silence. Some nights she might even sing softly and he would listen, savoring the melody of her cracked, ragged voice.

But those nights would always end, and the next day she would be leading another man into her room. Then there would be more drinking, more thrown plates, and he would again hide under the table as the voice that had sung the night before would shower him with curses and insult that hurt so many times more than any kick or punch she could dole out.

And one night a bottle tumbled in between the chair legs and smashed against his face. He had not cried out, or at least he could not remember making any sort of noise. There had been a strange silence after the crash of the bottle and he had reached up and touched his face, letting the blood smear all over his grubby palm. He had looked from the blood to his mother, the question burning in his eyes. But there was no answer in her gaze, only pain and fear and tears. She turned away from her son and went back into the bedroom.

He never saw her again. She was the first person he lost.

That night he had simply turned and walked out, out of the apartment and into the alleys with nothing but the clothes on his back. He walked into a world of hunger and cold, a world where he rummaged through the dumpsters and trash sacks and squabbled with feral cats and dogs for scraps of food. He was always hungry, always dirty, always sore, but he had escaped the apartment and the sting of his mother’s voice. He was sick after eating from his first trash bin, and then sick again, and then again. And then he stopped vomiting. Hunger had overridden the need to gag as he feasted on the crumbs that fell from other people’s tables.

He did not remember how long he scampered about the city streets, snatching and stealing while avoiding angry shouts and kicks and bites from dogs. What he did remember was the man who had found him that cloudy day, crouching under a dumpster. The man had worn a suit and had smiled at the grubby urchin covered in trash and dirt and dog leavings. The man had come close and coaxed him out from the dumpster, then grabbed him and shoved a needle in his arm before he could cry out. The needle made him feel dizzy and he was sick. Throughout it all the man in the suit never stopped smiling.

They took him then, the colonial authorities, first to a hospital where he slept on a real bed for the first time. He was sick from the needle the man had given him, sick in a way he had never been before. He was in bed for weeks, barely awake as they pumped him full of medicine. As he drifted in and out of darkness he would often see the man in the suit standing over him, watching him. There was always that smile playing at his lips, but he never said a word.

They made him better, fixed his body, scrubbed off the blood and dirt and trash. But they did not wipe away the memories of the time spent sifting through garbage and crawling through the filth. There was a dog inside of him now, one that paced and thrashed and snarled even as they gave him new clothes and put him up in a home with many other children. There were beds there as well, but it was damp and crowded and he loathed it with a passion. The adults there yelled at him when he snuck out, yelled at him when he stole food, yelled at him when he brawled with other children over toys and scraps of food. The dog inside him snapped and growled; he would leave his bed and sleep on the floor, burning with hatred for the children who stole his food and drove him away.

There had been one boy, many years older and so much bigger than all the others. He remembered how the boy mocked and kicked him for days, taking his food, his sheets, even the clothes he had to wear. The dog had surged up then and he had shoved the larger boy, forcing him to the ground and sinking his teeth into his face. Even now, he remembered how glorious it had felt to fight back, to lash out, to be the one on top as his victim thrashed and screamed beneath him.

They put him away from the other children after that. He saw no one but the adults. He watched them, looking for glimpses of his mother or even the man in the suit, but they all wore the faces of strangers. There was one woman who spoke with him kindly, even taught him to write during those long days of confinement. The dog settled down when she was around and when she left he would spend hours reading the books she left him, scribbling his name in the margins: Саймон, Simon, Саймон, Simon…

But the woman left after a while and did not return. He was alone again, with only the books and paper and the restless growling of the dog in his stomach.

The Navy man came to him not long after. He had many things to say, about duty and war and the Covenant (back then he had not even been sure of what the Covenant were, just a shapeless terror the adults would speak about in hushed tones) and Spartans. He understood very little of what the Navy man was talking about, but he latched on to the notion that he would be taken away from the orphanage, taken to a new home. The thought of that alone caught in his mind and stuck there, the chance to find a new place, to become something new. He did not hesitate when the Navy man asked him if he wanted to leave.

And so he was taken away from the orphanage. They put him on a ship that flew away from the planet and off towards the new life the Navy man had promised. It flew him to a world full of weapons and orders and secrets.

A planet called Onyx.