[Mingle Post] Holidays

[passingmod]

Who: Everyone! Open to All
What: Holiday Mingle Log
When: the holiday season
Where: Locations in comments, or add your own.

Tonight, dreams take the form of the winter holidays. Everything is imagined in grand scale, from a winter wonderlandscape to a glorious feast, to gifts under the tree and the inevitable mistletoe. All of everyone's favorite things have made their way into the dreams. And it feels so vivid and real.

(ooc: This is a post to keep threads together for winter holiday antics. Separate posts are also fine, and this one is optional. Feel free to use the location subthreads as prompts, or to add something entirely different. These include hints of the dreams crossing into waking life; those are small and entirely optional as well.)

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[one_one_se7en]

A familiar armor walks in the middle of the blizzard. The appearance is more akin to the first time Ami might have seen John: Having survived the Ark, but at the cost of the lives of two friends. And being left abandoned in space. Before Econtra called him. And before Ami rescued him.

Tired. Exhausted. With battered armor. Having seen monsters he does not want to find their way into these worlds again.

In his right hand, there is a tiny box.

[waterfell]

She straightens her posture. He looks worn, the way she keeps imagining him ever since he said he'd be returning to his world. Battle-weary, if such a thing were possible for him. Her eyes drop to the box, but look back up to him soon enough.

There's another box under the tree, big enough to notice and labeled with his name: John. No number for a test subject, no military rank, but also no family name. It's wrapped in silver and blue. She nods towards it. Though she acts almost as if she's never seen it before, it's labeled as being from her.

"There's something there," she tells him.

[one_one_se7en]

His visor looks at it, with the hint of metallic pebbles that had only barely put dents in it. His armor slowly moves down to revise it, setting the tiny box by his side as he grabs the bigger box.

SPARTAN-117 glances at Ami, before opening the box.

[waterfell]

Inside, there's a sweater. There's nothing so odd about that, really. It's a fairly typical example. No, there's nothing odd about getting a sweater for Christmas, even a hand-knit one.

What's more strange is its size. As John unfolds it, it will quickly become clear that it's large enough to be worn over the Mjolnir armor.

[one_one_se7en]

He notices from a glance it fits him. Only when he is using the armor. The Spartan looks at Ami as he holds the sweater in his hands, wordlessly asking her if this was a prank of hers.

Even then, he still tucks the clothes in the carriage compartments of his armor. It could still be used.

And it was Ami's gift. He remains in silence for a while as he does so, but not removing any distance between himself and her.

[waterfell]

She'd say it wasn't. But the thought of the giant sweater is definitely something she'd come up with.

How strange.

But it's not what she really has, and after that awkward silence, she holds out something else. This, is truly from her to him. It's a small package, neatly wrapped like the other one had been, with a blue ribbon. She holds it out without speaking a word.

[one_one_se7en]

His visor spots the small box, extended by the girl's delicate hand. This one was truly from her, and not a gift given by these dreams. He slowly stands back up, once again towering over the girl... and slowly grabs the box.

Carefully, he opens it. Almost taking care of the wrapping. Careful with the enormous power he wielded for something so delicate.

[waterfell]

Inside, there's a small bag, with the planetary sigil of Mercury adorning the front in silver.

"Don't open the bag," Ami says once it's been revealed. "It's a protective charm." A somewhat superstitious gift, coming from her; but it's her own good wishes she's sending with him, more than any magic.

"A charm against physical harm," she adds lamely.

[one_one_se7en]

His helmet stays locked on the charm for a moment. Ami would be able to see he was still breathing inside of his armor, bu otherwise remains motionless as he holds the bag with the sigil of Mercury.

He remembers Yuuko. His fingers grasp the bag with care.

"You know what I'll face out there."

[waterfell]

Ami looks down at her empty hands, which have clasped themselves together. Only after a moment does she look up, decisively. "That's why I gave it to you."

Because I want you to come back. Because I want you to know that I want you to come back. Yet her voice manages to come out firmly. The nails of one hand dig into the flesh of the other, almost unnoticeable in this position. It leaves little half-moon marks that won't be visible until she unclasps them, and then only to a sharp eye.

[one_one_se7en]

He notices the motions of her hands behind his visor. He says nothing for a second.

"It's not about luck." Everyone made their own luck. That was one of Mendez' lessons that remained with him the longest. "I've gotten ready five years for this."

Trained among the strongest warriors of every universe, served under the guidance of elders that made these nexuses their homes, fought against gods, and triumphed against the abomination that seeked to annihilate their worlds.

He holds the bag near his chest.

"It's not just this, or Cortana, or the A.I."

[waterfell]

She has her own answer. What she trusts isn't magic or luck, either. It's the way John seems to utterly command every situation he steps into, it's his sheer force of will and determination - and strength. Power.

"It's you." She wants to believe he can come back.

[one_one_se7en]

He will not tell her the truth. When he earned his rank, he couldn't admit much of what he felt to his fellow Spartans. He understood the importance of morale, and of showing strength where others could break.

He doesn't want to tell her that he's afraid.

For the first time in years, he feels the weight of an entire universe over his shoulders. Even after having prepared for so long, he's not only facing the kind of warriors he encountered in several worlds. He would abandon the entire life he built. And the person most precious to him.

"Come with me."

[waterfell]

All she has to do is reach out her hand, and say yes. All she has to do is forget pain, and duty; all she has to do is follow her heart.

But she's had years teaching her not to do that, years teaching her that following a heart is following something unreliable, and likely to break. There is no room for it on the battlefield, she's been told. And her life, she's been told, is made for the battlefield. She knows it herself.

It's a cruel irony, that at the moment she hears words she's wanted to hear from anyone, just to hear them, just once, she has to stop her ears to them. There's little sign of it in her posture, yet, as she keeps her back straight and only the tight grip of her hands betrays her.

"I don't intend to abandon my world." The words are tight, not with anger, but with the effort to remind herself and make herself say them.

[one_one_se7en]

The Spartan understands her reasons well. Mendez warned him that the needs of mankind overweighted his own, and had Ami asked John the same, he wouldn't have accepted, either.

Even if he wanted to say yes.

"I can't think of a better person to ask her that."

It's part of the few words he can muster, among many more he is left to think as he rises his helmet to see her. The small unruly teenager he first met in Econtra was now a grown woman with the fate of a world in front of her, that matured and would get to shape her own life.

She had grown so much.

I'll face a lot of strong enemies, and you're the strongest person that I know. You're also the person I'm grown to trust for years, and I can't imagine going out there without even dreaming of you.

"I know you can't." He concedes. "But if I go home... I want to be with you."

Even if it would involve treason to either of their sides.

[waterfell]

Slowly, a prickle of trepidation spreads through her as she starts to fully realize: She may not see him after this, after right now. And at the same time he says he wants to be with her, he is saying goodbye.

She says nothing. She can't let the words in her mind escape her mouth. Instead, she stays with her back and stiff shoulders turned halfway to him, hiding her expression, which a surge of effort keeps neutral.

"Good luck to you, then."

[one_one_se7en]

Behind his visor, John closes his eyes. His helmet seems to drop for a moment, the rest of him motionless, as he gets an old feeling he wished not to suffer again.

He feels as if he was leaving Ami to die aboard a ship.

His feet cross through the snow, closing the distance between himself and the woman. One of his armored hands grab one of Ami's, while the other kindly puts the small box on her palm.

Inside, there is a familiar comb.

"Goodbye, Ami." He nods. "I'm glad I got to meet you."

He feels old words coming back to haunt him as he turns his back on her. Don't look back, Spartan. The worn armor walks towards the storm blazing behind them, rifle at the ready. For moments, it wavers between a howling dark hidden amidst the snow, and a familiar tower.

His silhouette disappears within the blizzard.

still ami; icon for emotion

[waterfell]

Goodbye. She opens the box first, to avoid looking at him. The comb sends a jolt of familiarity through her, a glimpse of memory, and she glances up sharply.

By then, he's already walking away. For a moment, she watches him go with no change in her expression. She remembers fighting together, planning together, sharing together. A word, a well-timed shot, a hand on her shoulder. Slowly, the bland neutrality gives way to something introspective, and then to something painful and raw.

There's something chilling in the dream, a mood that doesn't even depend on the events around her, a sense of everyone leaving, of missing them all at once with a futile desperation, separated by divorce and death and the barriers between worlds.

"I want to go!" she calls out as she breaks into a sudden run, but he is too far ahead. She can't even see him. Unthinkably, there are tears. She runs after him until she falls to her knees from fatigue, but no one hears her as she yells into the ice and snow with useless frustration. "I really wanted to go!"

When she wakes up, the emotion of the dream seems unreal next to the still, quiet darkness of her room; but as she touches them, she realizes her eyelashes are still damp.