A Brief Solitude

Valerie Sulzer stirred, squinting from the sunlight peering through the window and onto her face. She sat up slowly, reaching over to the panel mounted on the wall. She tapped the screen, and the window's tint reduced the sunlight to a more bearable intensity.

Yawning, she turned to look at the still-sleeping form next to her and nudged him. When he didn't move, she shook him, not so gently. "Arthur, you forgot to tint the windows again," she said.

Arthur Onegin groaned and opened his eyes, glaring at her reproachfully. "I was tired last night, okay?" he replied, half-apologetically. "What do you want from me?"

Despite the fact that Valerie was also tired, she couldn't help but grin. "I want you to keep track of things better. Don't forget, Commander, your promotion yesterday means you have to be more responsible, not less."

Arthur sat up too, rubbing his eyes wearily. "I should have known that you out of everyone would somehow use my promotion to give me more crap," he muttered. He blinked, noticing that the window was now at full tint. "So what was the point of waking me up?"

She punched him lightly on the shoulder. "Hey, if I don't get to sleep in, you don't either. Besides, I usually get up at 0700. You've already talked me into getting wasted with you last night, so this is already behind schedule by my standards. Now come on, sleepyhead, let's go for a jog or something."

Arthur groaned again, collapsing back into his pillow. "For once, Valerie, could we not act like we're associated with ONI's spooks, and instead be, you know, actual 19-year old kids, which we are? I'm getting assigned a prowler next week and I'll be shipping off soon. Let's have some fun."

Valerie turned over, so that her face was inches from his. "Is that an order, sir?"

"If it gets you off my case for five minutes," he muttered, but his eyes were twinkling.

She nudged him for the remark but was still grinning. "I can't let you get too lazy around me. I already know all your commanding officers, and they won't be happy with you unless they see you with a stick up your ass."

"Oh, don't worry, I'll change their minds once I start racking up kills for them," Arthur replied nonchalantly. "If there's one thing that the brass likes, it's taking the credit for their subordinates' work." He got up again, this time, reaching for the T-shirt and jeans that he had left lying by the floor. "Well, I guess I'm taking you up on the offer for that jog. If I'm going to be shipped off to be stuck in a uniform for who knows how long, I might as well enjoy dressing like someone who's 19 while I still can."

···

For anyone who bypassed the two young officers jogging along Arcadia's renowned Caledonia Continental Park's trails, they wouldn't have guessed that they were two of ONI's most deadly black-ink operatives. In fact, both Valerie and Arthur were well-trained to blend in well in any environment, be it a civilian district or a dark corridor leading to an assassination target.

And to think a few days ago I was hacking into surveillance systems and watching Val put bullets into Innies' backs, Arthur thought. He waved politely at an elderly couple walking along the trail, who smiled at him and Valerie as they ran past them. They probably looked like two ordinary, carefree teenagers, except they were spending their mornings staying fit instead of spending hours at Skyclubs or on the HoloNet. Be sociable and active when you're on Arcadia, Valerie had told him when she had brought him to her home planet. That's the norm here and you want to make a good impression.

Arthur had no qualms about putting time into exercising, but he still wanted to be himself while on leave. Sure, he got some odd looks when other officers saw his apparently questionable civilian attire, but hell, he didn't need to look good for them.

They stopped their jog an hour later to take a break. Valerie had her foot propped up on a bench, which Arthur was sitting on leisurely with his hands behind his head. She took off the headband she was wearing, letting her hair fall back into her face. "Jesus," she panted. "I still don't see how you can do a 50-klick run in jeans."

He shrugged, stretching out his legs and crossing his feet. "Trust me, you look better in running shorts than I do."

"Hey, keep your eyes away from my shorts while we're in public, you pervert," she said half-seriously. "Besides, if you really cared about how you looked, you wouldn't be wearing that." She inclined her head at his T-shirt.

He frowned, looking down at his T-shirt. "What's wrong with my Linkin Park T-shirt?"

"You would've looked cool if we were in the 21st century," she said pointedly, sitting down next to him. "But that picture...I don't even know what that's supposed to be."

"It's a Hybrid Theory soldier," he explained. "The soldier represents strength. The dragonfly wings gives him freedom, but that freedom is fragile. And the flag he's holding represents unity."

Valerie actually looked quite impressed by this explanation. "Maybe I'm not giving you enough credit, Arthur. Your taste in music is crap, but you sure have a way of seeing things."

Arthur laughed. "Is that the closest I'll get to a compliment from you? I'll take it, I guess."

Her expression was rather thoughtful. "That's why you joined up, isn't it. To keep the fragile freedom that we have from breaking apart."

He nodded. "Strength and unity. The UNSC may be losing the war, but that doesn't mean we should just give up. The Covenant is forcing us into a corner, but we can either retreat with guns blazing to protect the ones behind us, or we can break and run and just let ourselves get shot down one by one."

"That's all we can do, isn't it..." she trailed off. Her eyes drifted to the dog tag he was wearing. It wasn't a UNSC-issue dog tag, and was engraved with the word "брат". It was apparently a gift from his 3-year old brother, Simon, and something that she had always seen Arthur wear around his neck when off-duty.

He turned and looked at Valerie more closely. It had been a long time since he had seen her so amicable. Not that he blamed her; in her line of duty, the only two traits she had room to show were efficiency and determination. He had gotten used to seeing her set off on her missions without breaking a sweat, and then return the same way. Not even some of the more hardened operatives in ONI were so capable of that, and the fact that she could do it so easily when she was still a kid would be unnerving to most.

He realized that he had become so accustomed to her mask of coldness that he had almost seemed to forget that she was still human. If she was trying to give the impression that the colonies she had seen glassed and the masses she had seen slaughtered had no impression on her at all, he would have believed it. But now he was beginning to think that perhaps she wasn't as detached as she let on. Maybe like him, she was fighting the war with a desperation that she would allow no one to see, but just to count the victories, no matter how small, and hope that it made a difference. "Val..." he began, trying to think of something to say. Even if anything he would tell her was probably something she had already figured out and told herself ten times over.

"We're playing with fire, you know," Valerie said quietly. "Anyone in the UNSC who has half an idea of what ONI is capable of would be terrified of us, and for good reason too. That's because ONI is volatile, but they're the only ones who won't hesitate to do what's necessary. At this point, they're going to pay any cost to try and slow down the Covenant, even if they can't stop them."

Arthur raised an eyebrow. "What, dragging our heels? It's not doing much good, I can tell you that. I...I just keep thinking, there's gotta be a better way. Something we overlooked, something that'll give us the edge over all these alien bastards. If we had that, if we could find it, I bet we could turn the tables on them."

"Arthur, would you die to save lives?" she asked suddenly, having thought of something.

"I don't know," he admitted. "You might think it's wrong, but...I think I can save more lives through surviving than sacrificing myself. Maybe I'll let some people die to save others. If I have a plan, maybe I'll put myself first to make sure it succeeds. Maybe I'll even kill the ones that get in the way if it's crucial. That's how ONI taught us to think, isn't it?"

"That they did," she said solemnly. "Sometimes I question it, but..."

"I don't think I should have to put my own life first," he added quickly. "But if we're being honest...I think just one of us would be more useful to the war effort than a hundred civilians. Maybe a thousand civilians, even. How many people did you save on Tribute?"

Valerie thought back to the mission. A Covenant destroyer had accidentally discovered Tribute in March when it made an off-course re-entry with damaged fusion generators, catching everyone there by surprise. She had been in an orbital station at the time and managed to jam the ship's communications, preventing it from broadcasting the colony's location to other ships. She had managed to board the destroyer not long afterwards and sent it hurtling into the Epsilon Eridani star. She hadn't known then if she had succeeded in silencing the aliens' attempts to broadcast to its fleet, but after several months with no news of trouble at Tribute, it was most likely that the mishap had been contained. "That's different, Arthur. It was obvious what I had to do."

"Okay, so I'll never get to play hero like you," he agreed. "But that's because I'd never come back alive from it. And right now, ONI, the UNSC, and humanity needs me alive."

"I hope so," she said, standing up. "You know, once we get back on duty, all these lines that we're drawing...they're just going to be wiped away. We're going to have to decide for ourselves again what the right thing to do is. And like you said, sometimes the right thing to do is to let some people die to save others."

He got to his feet as well. "Yeah. I don't always like my job, but what else can we do?"

She turned to face him, fiddling with her headband. "I'll never have to make that kind of decision, since my job is to just take down the enemy physically. And I won't know what to think if you ever have that choice handed to you and you're forced to make that call. It could destroy you, you know."

Arthur glanced down at the dog tag dangling in front of his chest. He took her hand and clasped her fingers around it, and put his hand over hers. "Don't worry," he said. "I know what the right things to fight for are."