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Eight hours had not been long enough for even the legendary Master Chief to get them off of Zeta Halo.
Eight hours had, however, been long enough for the pilot to fall madly in love with him.
He’d been suffering with it since.
Fernando Esparza knew he was not a brave man, but he liked to hope he was a practical one. He could see this for what it was: six months of terrified isolation breaking like a wave against the unshakable cliff of the Spartan-II. That soulcrushing fear was shattering into a fine mist of desperate, lonely infatuation with the first good turn the universe had bothered to offer him since he took up his miserable exile in a cold, winged box in the Infinity’s debris field.
This explanation was as embarrassing as it was obvious, it had just taken him a while to notice. Esparza was, after all, devoting a much larger amount of brainpower than usual to avoiding being shot today. Even worse, the Master Chief was just an emotionally baffling man to become acquainted with in the first place: terse, stubborn, courageous, heroic, impossible, wonderful, and absolutely infuriating.
The combination of Esparza’s desire to grab his (stupid) new friend by the shoulders and shake any sense at all into him and Esparza understanding rationally what was going on in his own (stupid) head did nothing to make any of this better. In fact, the former had made it sort of worse. Each time the Spartan squared off with another insane plan that should have resulted in his death he returned whole, victorious, and with every certainty Esparza could match his next crazy step. Each time, the pilot had felt his heart climb higher into his throat.
When he’d first met the Chief, he’d found nothing but frustration: this stubborn, impossible bastard dragging him deeper and deeper into danger and lying to him about how it was all going to be okay. It had been easy and uncomplicated to be angry with him, and with the hope he represented and seemed so eager to throw away along with their lives.
But now…
Now, the pilot had proven his weakness and shame. He’d told the disgusting truth to the goddamn savior of humanity, a pinnacle, a symbol for everything Esparza hated himself because he could not be, and received only gentleness in turn for it.
Now, he’d resigned himself to death in the House of Reckoning, only to find that at the darkest hour, he was delivered from it.
Now, he’d finally accepted that assurance had always been real. The Chief had not lied to him. When he said things were going to be okay, it was a promise. He’d seen the Spartan put his life on the line for those words, again and again and again. Even as unworthy as he felt, he was under the Master Chief’s protection.
Esparza could, ever so tentatively, begin to believe there was a future for him again. He’d started to hope, and that was like opening a floodgate. After being alone for so long with only the certainty that he was going to die in isolation and cold, probably starving, in the back of that stolen Pelican, Esparza just wanted to melt down into the warmth of the Spartan’s confidence. He wanted to lean all his weight against the solid bulk of the Master Chief and bask in the feeling of being, even for just a moment, safe. He wanted to find a way to get that man to understand how completely, utterly grateful he was that he’d found him. These were impossible, foolish, stupid wants, and he felt them so deep in his chest it ached.
And right now, most strongly, Esparza just desperately wanted to see the Master Chief again at all.
“Get ahold of yourself, Nando,” he muttered as he set the Pelican down. “They’re alright. They have to be alright.”
The alternative was too much to bear right now. He’d put the Spartan and the Weapon down to go finish this, to be the big damn heroes and save the galaxy from incredible danger once again, and he hadn’t heard from them in hours. The Master Chief’s beacon had vanished. No motion, no voice or video feeds, not even a coded message from the young AI. Nothing.
Esparza had flown in silence, for hours, with nothing to stop his oldest companion slipping into the copilot’s seat. He was alone, once again, with fear. The instrument panel had been no distraction. Checking over the dropship could give him something to do with his hands and eyes, but he knew this process now with almost mechanical completeness. It did nothing to stop the anxiety coiling serpent-tight around Esparza’s heart.
What if he was truly alone again, and just didn’t know it yet?
What if they never came back?
The ship was down, engines settled, and he climbed out. Esparza backed carefully away from Echo-216 to check how well he’d visually hidden her among the rocks and trees. As he circled slowly to check other angles, his mind kicked off for another round of furious wheel-spinning. If they didn’t come back, he was alone. There were other UNSC personnel here, but he, Fernando Esparza, would be alone with them. With those men and women he still couldn’t face, and with the danger in the Auditorium that he knew he could do nothing about.
If the Master Chief did not come back…
Esparza’s nails dug into the palm of his clenched fist as he, satisfied with his cover, retreated once more under a sheltering wing and along the flank of the little ship. He couldn’t keep doing this to himself. Not all night, not as the temperatures dipped low and the ring spun him slowly upward into its shadowed curve. He’d spent too many days that blurred together without mercy in the timeless void of the debris field, too many hours contemplating hopelessness in the cold light reflected off the broken ring and the glittering wreckage. He couldn’t let himself return there. It would kill him.
“They need you,” he said as he sealed the bay. “They are going to need you, and you have to be ready. You idiot.”
The harshness felt right. He was not as forgiving a man as the Master Chief. He was a fool with a stupid and faithless heart, once given as a promise to someone and meant to honor that promise even beyond death. Here it was now, clinging like a man drowning to a near-stranger. Esparza could accept this truth. He wasn’t a hero, and he wasn’t even a good man.
He put one arm against the inside of Echo-216’s hull and collapsed slowly into it, his forehead coming to rest in the bend of his elbow. Esparza closed his eyes and drew in a long, shuddering breath. He struggled to let it out evenly, fighting past the blockage in his throat, ignoring the familiar sensation of the tears trailing down into his beard.
He rested like that for several moments, holding on with desperate strength. Esparza knew himself, knew with incredible certainty what he was and especially what he was not. But he didn’t have to be good, or a hero, or to love himself even a little bit for the other two to need him.
They mattered. That Spartan especially mattered, not just to Esparza but to millions of other people in desperate need of hope. The pilot couldn’t hold on for himself, but he had to hold on for him.
“You’d better come back, you crazy son of a bitch,” Esparza whispered into the metal. For a moment, just one, he let himself pretend it was the Spartan’s armor, that he could feel that immeasurably solid, dependable strength shoring him up. It was so, so stupid, but it made him feel better.
The pilot straightened again, wiped the wetness from his face, and set to preparing himself to wait. He was alone again with his ghosts, and he would be for as many hours as it took.