User:RelentlessRecusant/Halo: Vector/Epilogue

There was a numbness. An infinite speechlessness, an infathomable noiselessness that began at the alpha of the universe and ended with armageddon and doomsday. It was a silence without end.

The dried tears splotched her face as if raindrops, and for a moment that was eternity, he stared into her glistening, starry eyes, trying to understand, trying to fathom.

He was so benumbed and his heart so heartbitten that the words he'd always wanted to say choked in his throat.

Finally, a tearful, sad smile appeared on Schore's lips.

"Let's get some coffee."

Jared was so paralyzed that he didn't know what to say.

Kimberly laid a gentle hand on his shoulder.

He stared into Lauryn's gleaming eyes, so haunted, so distant. Neither he or she had anything to say.

7 - 7 - 7

Six months later

Five people gather around a candlelit table, the scintillating flames of the candelabrum shedding downy over their vivid, lively figures.

Two of them, a woman and a man, sit together, making no effort to hide the fact that they are together. The woman's hair is black and luscious, and it falls to her shoulders, and her eyes are a gleaming viridian as she zealously dissects her appetizer apart with a hungry voraciousness, warmly urging all the others to partake. Her dress is a neat, trim button-up blouse, replete with a formal skirt. Her figure is tall, athletic, statuesque, molded from muscle and sinew by an expert craftsman into a predator, a killer's exacting weapon. Discarded in her back pocket is a Medal of Honor, as well as the rank insignia of a Master Chief Petty Officer of the UNSC Office of Naval Intelligence. She has forgotten them in her back pockets. She instead has the ID of a faculty member of Harvard University, Faculty of Arts and Sciences in her front pocket, and two sticks of gum, which she deems more important. Her husband is similarly built, with a tall-frame and a well-muscled complexion, and his callous hands are laced with heavy scars, his living reminder of his past. He is entitled to wear the insignia of a Senior Chief Petty Officer as well as most of the decorations awarded by the UNSC Defense Force, but he's forgotten that at home, lost in some dusty, unfrequented drawer.

One man, his features patrician but streaked with a gauntness and a quiet desolateness, sits alone besides the married couple. He is the Director of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute and the Chair of the Department of Stem Cell & Regenerative Biology, Harvard University, former Chief Scientific Officer of Acumen Science Laboratories and investigator of Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Despite his bleak, aging temperament and texture, it is now, near the end of his life, that he is finally at peace. He has had the daughters he would have never known, and finally has accepted the sister he has never seen.

At the far end of the table, a woman and a man sit together. The woman's hair is brown and tied into a slender, sinuous ponytails, and within the teardrops of her eyes, the flames of the fire take a life of their own, choreographing a dance within her irises, her grey-brown eyes changing their color with every pulsation of the candle light. Her figure too is tall, but there lies a gentle intelligence behind her eyes, a knowing discernment. She has no care for the enamel eagle device that marks her as a full Captain of the UNSC Office of Naval Intelligence, Biological Warfare and Special Pathogens division. She closed that chapter of her life long ago, wrote its epilogue and turned to another page.

Finally, the last man at the table.

His features are perhaps the most haunted. As the vacillating candle light brushes by his strong face, they illuminate a removed and lost face. His eyes are distant, his mind somewhere else. He is three hundred pounds of stitched muscle and bone, the most proficient weapon that the UNSC Defense Force has ever wielded in battle, the most devastating and effortless power ever molded by human hands. Actually, after taking into consideration the first woman at the table, the one with the charming raven hair and the shining aquamarine eyes, he is the second most destructive weapon that humanity has ever raised. But that's beside the point, yes?

He is known by many names. The Survivor of New Bremerhaven. The Hero of Manheim. The Defender of Earth. The Hope of Mankind. He has been decorated with countless decorations, campaign ribbons, commendations. He is a Captain of the UNSC Office of Naval Intelligence, Section Three and was the Deputy Chief of Covert Operations in Section Three. He is a hero. He has saved countless lives, humanity's fate countless times. In his gloved hands he has cradled humanity's shimmering, dying, flickering flame and brought forth hope to all of mankind, sprinkled across the stars.

And despite his strength, his renown, his fingers tremble. They shake, quaver.

He closes his eyes, and for an infinity, a universe of possibilities run through his mind.

He opens his eyes. A second has passed.

His fluttering fingers bring an opened black velvet box to the table. Set within is a perfect, astral diamond ring. The table falls silent, as if spellbound by its radiance. The firelight winks in the ring's recesses, making it blossom with a beautiful corona of starlight.

He turns to Lauryn.