A Chance

Another hospital bed, another mess of corpses, another couple of scars added to his flesh. Not that it mattered to him, they were just more reminders. Callum leaned back in the white sheets and closed his eyes. Sooner or later a shrink would come in and prod him with questions as they usually did. They’d ask why he’d been so reckless, why he’d been so brutal, why he fought like he wanted to die.
And, as usual, he’d deflect with obvious lies. That he just got carried away, or that he was just doing what they’d trained him to do. The latter jab at ONI’s morality usually didn’t go over well, but he didn’t mind. They’d never understand the truth, they never could. 
In truth he didn’t care all that much that his loss and grief had been exploited as a child, given the state of the war it was necessary. What drove him to the edge was the loss they could never comprehend. Maybe they’d had family die, almost every human being had lost someone to the Covenant, but they hadn’t lost everything as many times as he. They hadn’t had it all ripped away, then given back, then ripped away again, over and over and over.
For a time he wondered if God hated him, but he’d moved past that. God hadn’t killed his families, the Covenant and the Insurrection had had.
The way it ached to move, the pains that randomly shot through him daily, they were all meaningless. He heard the medical staff joke that rage alone kept him fused together, and he wondered if they weren’t far from wrong. It kept him going long after he should’ve simply fallen. It kept him strong enough to shove a blade into the throat of one last Elite, to hack apart the skull of one final brute, to eviscerate on last traitor. No matter if he’d just been shot, stabbed, bludgeoned or otherwise injured, fury drove him to take just one more soul.
He hurt them whenever he could too, sometimes he could’ve simply shot them and been done with it but no, Callum took his time whenever he could. Mandibles, eyes, limbs, anything he could take he did. He wanted them to suffer, he wanted them to hurt how they had.
If he could, Callum would have ensured every single one of the monsters, Unggoy to Sangheili to the farmer who decided his shit taxes were reason enough to commit a massacre, screamed the way Marcella did. To make sure they felt every ounce of pain that Erik had when they’d cut him down piece by piece. To make sure they knew the same fear Jamison did when he realized Callum wouldn’t reach him in time.
Even through closed eyes, a tear rolled down his cheek.
And he made sure they found no honor in it. If a flailing Elite managed nick his arm with an energy dagger while he ripped off a mandible then so be it, he’d take the time to break that arm too. The look of terror in their eyes as they realized they would be denied a warrior's death was well worth any pain. His mother hadn’t received such honor, nor had Abigail when they pinned her to the ground and slowly ran her through. 
So he’d be damned if he let any more of them have it than he had to.
They didn’t deserve it, none of them did. Not for what they did to him and the rest of humanity. They butchered the defenseless and called it war, cut down the weak and claimed it made them mighty, incinerated world’s from high above and called it honor. They disgusted him. He hated them with every fiber of his soul.
But behind all of that there was something more, something Callum wouldn’t admit even to himself.
It wasn’t just that righteous anger that fed his lust for revenge, there was fear.
He saw their faces in his dreams, he saw their broken bodies, the piles of ash where those he’d loved had once stood. He knew they were watching him from somewhere. Callum, somehow, still believed in an afterlife. He had no illusions about where he would go, nothing could save his blackened soul.
But he was terrified, not of the damnation he was sure awaited him but because he could not bear to pass before he had avenged them, all of them. The possibility he might ever have to look in their eyes and see that he’d failed them again, it was too much.
Callum had suffered since he could remember, he had been denied every chance at happiness, God could at least give him the chance to do right by them. And if he wouldn’t, then Callum would do it himself.
Suddenly his train of thought came to a stop as the door to his room slid open. Entering the white room was a pale man in a dark uniform, and a smug look on his face. MAGICIAN. His handler didn’t care in the slightest about his feelings, but he also didn’t care when Callum acted on them. It made them a good team.
“What?” The Spartan questioned flatly, the smug grin on the spook’s face catching him off guard.
“I have a gift for you SOLACE.” The agent smiled, handing the bed bound soldier a datapad. Instantly Callum flicked through the dossier on its screen, images of a hulking Elite Field Marshal, some from various colonies, some on Reach, others from Earth in the halls of SHADOW base. It was him. The one who’d taken the most from him. Teka Doram.
B042’s eyes slowly turned up towards MAGICIAN, the enigmatic operative smiling back at him. “His clan has been causing issues, we’re going to deal with it.” The spook stated matter of factly. Something stirred in him, something wild.
This was the chance. One last chance. Every time shrapnel had split his skin or plasma had singed his bones would be worth it. If he could do this, then maybe they would forgive him when they finally met again.
Maybe he could finally die.
Category:The Weekly