Charlie Don't Surf

A SPARTAN-III who's recently deserted, Charlotte-G036's mind wanders as she readjusts herself to her new home on the station of New Ogizima. 
----Charlie has never had much time for idle thought. A life spent fighting does not offer you much time to contemplate things aside from how best to kill your opponent, or how to keep yourself alive. But now that Charlie isn’t on a battlefield anymore, she finds her head intruded by thoughts, most of them deeply unwelcome. She chalks it up to her dwindling supply of smoothers. Or maybe a lack of sleep from the artificial day/night cycle on New Ogizima. Likely a combination of both. Even now her mind wanders as she pushes the eggs on her plate around. New Ogizima Station bustles around her and she watches the people go by. The children of the station flit between the adults, their parents following closely behind. Others hang and swing from the rafters and maintenance ladders, heedless of the adults shouting at them to get down from there. They jeer and mock and throw bolts at their friends. 
Charlie wonders what it would have been like to grow up here. She concludes that New Ogizima isn’t all that different from Satif. Maybe the adults would’ve come down harder on her antics. Maybe she would’ve been more of a brat because of it. Would she have gotten into more fights? Would she have been happier out here, with all these other station urchins? The idea of a conventional childhood doesn’t cross her mind. 
She wonders if she wouldn’t have been and made a SPARTAN if she were born here.
Charlie wonders if she’s ever loved someone as she watches a family walk by, clad in vacsuits like the rest of the spacers. Her mind drifts back to Banyal. Bottom of Gamma Company’s barrel. Only just barely clinging to SPARTAN-hood. Derided by every drill instructor and every other trainee. Instead she pulled them through Camp Currahee on her back, got the shit kicked out of her more times than she can count for them. On the night before their augmentationS, Banyal swore they’d kill anyone who hurt one of them. She supposes she can call that love. Even after all the fights, the harsh words and brawls, Camile chose to stay with Banyal. Maybe he loved them in his own way. Perhaps Charlie loved Maribelle. Perhaps that’s why she found herself next to Mary's infirmary bed so often. Perhaps it was love that made her spill her heart out to the crippled SPARTAN so many times. 
Charlie is watching the fan swirl above her when thoughts of violence invade her brain. Her time in fighting the Covenant is a blur behind her. All roaring apes and snarling lizards. Those don’t keep her awake at night. It’s the memories of putting 5×23mm rounds through human skulls and crushing tracheas with her bare hands that do. Tonight, the crystal clear memory of shooting an Insurrectionist is lodged in her brain. How her freckled face paled in fear as she realized what had happened. How she crumpled to the ground like a bag of garbage. How her blood soaked her ragged clothing with dark crimson. 
How she was a spitting image for Charlie herself. 
Charlie stumbles out of her bed. She just needs some fresh air, she assures herself. Fresh air and a drink.