Chapter Text
Research shows that in times of conflict, fewer people see in colour.
This has never been more true than during the span of the War with the Covenant.
Felix has never seen in colour.
He’s never expected to.
Never considered it important to.
When billions face death every day, dragged into the conflict, ravaged by alien forces, stuck on colonies unfortunate enough to be targeted for invasion, conquered, or eradicated entirely, it’s so hard to devote what precious little time one has left to searching for the elusive one-of-some-billion for the sake of what seems to be a near-unattainable ideal of true love.
Who has time to wait and seek that ‘special someone’ when you’re being shot at and every day could be your last?
No, time was better spent learning to fight, to shoot, to survive, better spent doing what was needed to ensure humanity had another day, better spent keeping yourself alive enough to experience what little joy could be gleaned from a life of war and struggle. It didn’t matter that you experienced it in hues of grey or vivid colour, because what was important was that you lived to experience life at all.
If anything, colour would simply be another distraction in a world where distractions could mean the the end of your fleeting life.
One doesn’t need colour.
His parents never needed it. The army doesn’t need it. And the casualties who happened to be able to be able to see in it didn’t need it when they were pumped full of plasma and vaporized when the Covenant ended their lives.
Colour isn’t necessary to live, and it won’t help one stave off the inevitable encroaching reach of death.
That hasn’t changed for Felix since he stopped being a soldier and started being a mercenary.
The war’s over now, sure.
But old habits and ways of thinking die hard.
The thing about soulmates is that everyone wants to find theirs.
Even in war.
Even when a million other things are far more pressing, when luxuries of some intangible ‘sense of completion and belonging’ are rarely found and far from important.
People still hope.
Somehow the thought of having one, the silly romantic ideal of finding one, runs eternal in the thoughts, and troops talk, and seek out contact, and, heaven forbid, ask directly to those they’re attracted to, people they suspect might be. “Excuse me,” they say, “But I think maybe,” followed by requests for a handshake, a kiss, a night together.
And towards the few people who already have met their others, who fight alongside them, or write lovesick messages back to some other colony far away, there is always a buzz of a running undercurrent of envious idolatry, as others ask and ask and long to learn what is it like? To meet someone who completes you? To see the world fully in colour? How does it feel?
Always, in the barracks, during downtime, in the showers, on patrol, the topic is brought up again and again and again.
‘Have you met yours?’ and ‘I heard so and so has one back home’ and ‘what will you do if you meet yours?’
It’s easy, Felix learns, to navigate it, which non-answers will appease curiosity, which little white lies will be accepted, how to steer conversation to more palatable topics.
And requests for contact, a kiss, a round of sex - easy enough to indulge in, something fun enough to divulge joy from.
But it’s tiresome, all the same.
Sometimes combat is the best part of the day - the adrenaline, exertion, the chaos of war, the exhilaration of a successful kill, a successful op, the victory merely in surviving. No one in their unit can see in colour - it’s better that way, more tactically sound; nobody has time in life-or-death combat to deal with confusion if someone accidentally calls out a visual cue using colour to describe it - and Felix likes it that way best.
Battle is the best part, because there’s no room to think about the topic, no time for anyone to bring it up, only opportunity to do what he does best.
Few people share Felix’s thoughts on the matter.
Though several do share his reluctance to discuss it.
Locus is one of them.
From the day he met him, to Locus, it’s always been a non-issue.
To be fair, Locus has always been withdrawn, reluctant to converse, caught up in the whirlwind of war, concerned, so much so, about doing the correct thing to make a difference in the war, and then later to do what must be done as he is ordered.
He avoids the topic, his answers to the ever present questions curt, empty, inviting no further questions, or responding only to change the subject to matters ‘more concerning’. He’s never actually said if he cares for it - if he has a soulmate, or wants one, or if the notion of soulmates is of any importance to him or not - manages always to be ambiguous with his brevity, so Felix doesn’t know, if Locus hopes, one day to find his own.
But he also never asks.
And Locus is content never to bring it up.
It’s not the reason Felix has sought his company, during the war, and beyond it, accompanying him into the dirty business of mercenary work, settling unsettled business, ending unfinished conflicts, and chasing down bounties and questionable jobs for cash.
But he’d be lying if he said it weren’t a reason he stays.
“Why are we doing this again?” Felix asks, offhand, from his position, crouched behind cover, as they’re fired on by their targets across the scrap yard of the condemned property in the outskirts of the latest colony city they’re working in.
Their latest job isn’t a glamorous one, though the jobs rarely are. This one is messier than most - as they tend to be when corporations want particularly annoying militant protesters eliminated - but the money is good, and it’s far from a difficult job, considering.
Late in the job now, just fifteen (well, less now) heavily armed, desperate ex-commandos hiding out in an abandoned property in the country, with enough convenient cover of scrap metal and junk and crumbling stone walls to be annoying, firing down on them from a slightly elevated position because this place used to be a dump and there’s always a hill for the other side to use. No big deal.
Fighting on uneven ground littered with chunks of rock and steel and shit - that always sucks, but it’s no worse than what they dealt with in the war.
At least they managed to flush the gang out of the decrepit little shed they’d been using as a hideout, it always sucks to try to bust into a somewhat fortified structure with walls when it’s just the two of them.
“Because you said yes and signed the contract,” Locus responds, shortly, taking advantage of a lull in the shooting to snipe one, then another of the increasingly desperate targets across the way, before sub machine gunfire starts up again and Locus is forced to duck back down to avoid being shot in the head.
There aren’t that many of them left, after the carnage by their ramshackle shed and the trail of bodies over the scrap as he and Locus had chased them from one side of the property to the other.
“Tsk, you’re no fun,” Felix says, with a tilt of his head, though he hadn’t expected Locus to humour him, “And get your facts straight,” he says, with snark, settling his rifle over the top of his cover and eyeing up a line of sight, “we said yes to this job. You signed the contract first.”
“Focus, Felix.”
Felix fires once, leaning back as one of their targets jerks back, head blown back by the bullet, toppling over into the dust. “Boom,” Felix says, with a smug little grin as he ducks back down under cover, “Head shot.”
Just because he’s holding a conversation doesn’t mean his attention is elsewhere.
Locus remains unimpressed, giving only a “Hm,” to acknowledge what just occurred.
Locus is rarely impressed, but he doesn’t again voice his reservations about Felix’s need to talk while they work.
“So tell me again,” Felix prompts, watching Locus as he reloads his rifle while they wait for another window to shoot, “what did these guys do to deserve…” Felix takes a hand off his gun to twirl his finger in an absent loop as he searches for the appropriate word, “…us.”
“Does it matter?” Locus retorts, moving to another side of his crumbling cover wall to line up another shot.
“Sometimes I get curious,” Felix shrugs.
He’s not curious, not really. It’s fairly obvious why they were hired. Their clients rarely move in mysterious ways, as it were.
Honestly, he’s a little bored. A job a straightforward as this tends to lack a certain thrill, and talking to Locus at least, somehow makes the job that tiny bit more interesting.
“You know our client, Felix,” Locus murmurs, making two distinct hand motions to signal Felix to create a distraction. Which he does, by grabbing a sizable rock and chucking it over his wall of cover away from Locus. “These kinds of jobs are always for the same reasons as they always are,” Locus continues, absently, as their targets start shooting, ostensibly in the direction of the distraction, likely far too amped up to be thinking too rationally about what to aim at, before he fires, and the gunfire suddenly stops, then the shouting starts again. “Money,” Locus concludes, “Power.”
Felix looks over the wall.
No movement. They’re not done, by the target count, even assuming Locus’ shots were kill shots. Likely the other side regrouping behind cover.
“But to chase them out to the middle of nowhere?” Felix presses, absently ejecting his magazine to check his ammo before reloading it, “Like, this is remote.”
He can’t see Locus’ face through the inscrutable dome of his helmet, but the steady angle of his head tells him enough about Locus’ facial expression. “No it’s not,” Locus says, deadpan, as he swaps weapons, the sniper rifle clicking into place on the magnetic holster on his back.
He’s right. They’re not that far out from the city. If Felix squints, he can make out one or two towers of the few city skyscrapers in the distance.
“Still, you know, it’s time consuming,” Felix complains, wiggling his fingers here and there, “Fly all the way here, get out, blow up some shit, move to another location, shoot some other shit, call the pelican back, get on, fly back to the city–,” he huffs, settling his gun back in his hands, “Takes a long-ass time, is all I’m saying.”
“I don’t determine what goes into the jobs, Felix,” Locus says, simply, readying himself to stand and making three hand motions to inform Felix they’re going to press forward.
Felix shifts his weight, ready to spring over cover at Locus’ next order or when he next moves, “No,” he agrees, “You just say yes to them.”
“Would you rather we stick to the simple jobs?” Locus asks, turning his head to face him, and giving a sarcastic tilt of his head, communicating just how pointless he finds the whole conversation, despite his low, steady tone.
“Ha,” Felix scoffs with a shake of his head, “No way.”
“I thought not,” Locus confirms, then turns to face their targets’ position again, “Then stop complaining,” he orders, all business now, “The faster we finish, the faster we can return, the faster we get paid. Isn’t that what you look forward to?”
The question is mocking in its delivery.
Felix can’t help the upward quirk of his mouth, “Oh,” he sighs, only mostly sarcastic, “You know me so well.”
“Well enough to know money’s only the half of it,” Locus responds, blunt, matter of fact, then stands and rounds the battered little barricade he used as cover for the past ten minutes in a fluid motion, stalking forwards to advance on the last of their targets.
Felix laughs, and is only mildly surprised to find it’s a genuine one. “Oh, Locus,” he sings as he leaps over his own makeshift piece of cover to follow, “I could work with you for the rest of my life.”
It’s only after he’s said it - after they’ve moved forwards several feet, alert as they move up the slight incline to converge on the last of their targets behind their failing shield of protection - that Felix realizes that he meant what he said.
He really wouldn’t mind working, living, being alongside Locus with their comfortable, un-pressured, black and white and grey working partnership, for the rest of his life, no matter how short it is.
The thought is only slightly disconcerting in how easy it is to accept it.
Felix glances over at his partner, just a moment as he considers that thought.
Briefly distracted, he barely has a cue before Locus yells his name - “Felix!”, a sound of warning, urgency - before his partner lunges at him and shoves him down and back, knocking the rifle out of his hands with his wild movement and shoving him into the dirt behind a battered mound of something that is barely passable as cover.
Felix barely musters angry confusion before the explosion occurs nearby, tearing through a half-shattered wall, washing heat and shrapnel and stone over them, scrap and dirt flying over and past them, bouncing off the exposed angles of his armour. The forces pushes them back, knocking Locus back and Felix over, rattling the earth and briefly impairing his hearing.
He moves instinctively, in the aftermath, as soon as he can reorient himself, yanking out his pistol as he rolls over, shaking his head in a futile effort to ease the ringing in his ears, then pushes himself back to his feet, picking out their last three targets through the dust and smoke as they leave cover to see if he and Locus were taken out. He narrows his eyes, pushing aside the incessant distracting ringing in his head, raises his arm and fires three times in rapid succession, then once more when the last man doesn’t drop immediately and fires back. The man misses. Wildly. Then he topples over.
Felix keeps his arm up until the ringing stops, breathing quietly in and out as he watches the bodies in the dust for movement, gaze darting back and forth for signs of life, trying to pick out what caused the blast in the rubble. He can’t pick out anything among the scattered rocks and charred metal, with the ringing in his head, it’s all a blur of black and grey.
He didn’t even see anything coming, not even a glimpse of motion in the corner of his vision.
What had Locus seen that tipped him off about the explosion before it happened?
“Locus,” he calls, cautiously, pistol up, pointing it at any vaguely human-shaped mass in the scrap.
Locus doesn’t answer. There’s a brief burst of static on the radio, then the background hum of it, settled, again.
There’s no movement behind him either.
“Locus?” Felix asks, again, turning to get a visual on his partner.
At first it’s hard to see, the rocks and dirt and Locus’ damnable dark armour blurring together into a mass of grey shapes and shadows, but the HUD compensates for lack of contrast and as soon as the pounding in his head subsides slightly, he can see the distinct dark markings painted on Locus’ armour, and the shift of movement as he struggles to move from where he lies.
He doesn’t quite succeed.
“Gh,” Locus grunts, propping himself on one arm, then ultimately collapsing back onto his side.
“Oh shit–” Felix curses, once it’s apparent that of the two of them, only one of them escaped unscathed from the unlucky blast, “Locus,” he says, rushing over, darting over the uneven ground to skid to a stop by his body.
It takes some effort to roll Locus over, and Felix hesitates once, when Locus takes a sharp intake of breath in pain when Felix shifts him, hand pressing against his side, but he manages, and Locus eventually rolls onto his back groaning in pain, hand pressing instinctively up against his left side.
For good reason.
Felix’s HUD beeps immediately, markers popping up immediately to distinguish unnatural stains of grey as blood, and quite a lot of it.
The blast wasn’t kind, and Locus, lacking the benefit of that mound of dirt that spared Felix most of the damage, bore the brunt of the force, and was exposed to the flying shrapnel, rock, and rubble as it tore through the crumbling concrete wall the bomb was hidden behind.
Locus’ armour is scored with marks, hit with flying debris, the heat of the explosive marking his armour, the force tearing through some parts of the exposed undersuit, no doubt bruising ribs, muscle, hopefully not organs, knocking one of the shoulder guards off its cradle.
And driving a particularly ugly, sharp piece of rebar through his left side just under his ribs.
“Shit,” Felix curses, hands moving instinctively to keep pressure to the wound around the twist of metal, fumbling for a med pack on Locus’ person after he gets one hand well enough on it and Locus’ hand follows his own to do the same, though not well enough to stem the blood flow entirely, “Fuck.”
It takes entirely too long to find one, but as soon as he has one, Felix yanks the pouch off him with one hand, the other moving to take a hold of Locus’ helmet, triggering the release so he can ease it off his head so he can see his face, to monitor his consciousness first hand.
As soon as he gets it off, Locus’ eyes dart immediately to his through his visor, “The targets–” he says, and Felix tries his utmost not to roll his eyes at Locus’ single-minded thought process when it comes to work while he’s lying injured.
“Dead,” he states, in assurance, so Locus has at least one thing less to worry about, instead of biting out the sarcastic quip he instinctively wants to say, “I got them.”
“All?” Locus asks, as Felix works on opening the pack to get out the medical gear.
“Yeah,” Felix replies, dumping out the contents, snapping his other hand out to snatch at a biofoam cylinder before it clatters off a rock and rolls away, “I think so,” he says, then curses, the cylinder is ruptured, foam already leaking out.
“Should… make sure–”
Felix makes a frustrated noise, tossing the useless cylinder aside, gesturing violently, “Jesus Christ, Locus!” he exclaims, “Really?”
He’s not sure if he’s more exasperated that Locus is still so dead set on protocol or if he’s insulted that Locus thinks he might have failed to kill any one of their targets.
“…are you…?” Locus asks, acquiescing that perhaps now is not the time to press the issue of the job.
“I’m okay,” Felix responds, automatically, fiddling with the injector, fumbling through Locus’ pack to find the other cylinder, hands moving automatically, “You…” he starts to say, then pauses, remembering what happened - the shout, the shove, precious seconds of Locus’ time wasted covering his lapse of attention rather than attending to himself - “I’m fine,” Felix concludes, lamely, unable and unwilling to say more.
“Good,” Locus says, and though his voice is a little flat, he sounds, somehow, relieved.
Felix doesn’t know what to make of it.
So he doesn’t try to puzzle it out.
“You’re a fucking idiot,” he snaps, instead, looking up and straight at his partner, biofoam momentarily forgotten in his frustration.
“You weren’t watching–”
“Shut up,” Felix snaps, “You’re–” he fumbles for words, “Don’t–” can’t put together a sentence, changes the subject, “Where the fuck is–?” he continues, with increasing distress, then curses again when he finds the other cylinder, in the depths of the pack leaking biofoam all over the inside. Useless.
“Felix, calm down,” Locus says, infuriatingly level-headed, despite his injured state.
“How are you calm right now?,” Felix snaps, “Your whole left side is… fucking…” Felix glances over the bleeding wound, waving aggressively at blood staining Locus’ wounded side, bleeding sluggishly around the shrapnel in his side, slowly and steadily staining his armour, the dirt, the earth with harsh, urgent colour, “You’re bleeding all over the fucking–” Felix cuts himself off, doubles back to stare at the wound, “the fucking…” he struggles to continue, his mind caught up, stumbling over words as he processes what exactly he’s seeing, ”What the fuck…?!”
“…Felix…?” Locus says, but Felix doesn’t hear him, everything secondary, forgotten in the wake of what he’s seeing.
Colour.
That’s colour.
Locus’ blood is painting the earth in colour - urgent and bright and blinding - vibrant and impossible to ignore, a single hue that Felix has never seen, doesn’t know the name of, and yet instinctively knows, feels, understands naturally that, yes, that is the colour blood would be, a tint that somehow represents the life it shows is in danger.
Felix turns quickly, gaze darting to Locus’ face, down his armour, then away again, to pick out shades of the earth - but everything else is still the same.
Everything but the blood is still black and white and grey.
Felix blinks, once, twice, then a third time, holding his eyes shut for three seconds, just to gather his mind, chase away any hallucinations. But when he opens them again, it’s still there, highlighting Locus’ wounded side with pigment, bright perhaps already, but even brighter so, nearly luminescent through the HUD’s contrast filter to compensate for colour blindness.
His heart pounds in his chest, pulse beating through his head.
God it’s everywhere, down Locus’ side and smeared over his torso and when Felix looks down on his hands, it’s there, on the pads of his fingers, smeared on his palms, dark and yet no less vibrant on the black of his gloves.
He doesn’t understand.
His hands are shaking.
Why are his hands shaking?
“Felix,” Locus rasps, and Felix gives a visible start, catching his breath, gaze darting away from the stains of colour on his hands, the flow of blood a vibrant trickle and smear down Locus’ side, staining the dirt and rubble. He stares instead, at Locus’ face, trying to find something else to look at, something else to keep his gaze.
It’s hard. Everything else is shades of grey. None of it can keep his gaze from sliding, unconsciously, helplessly, to the colour assaulting his eyes.
And it is colour. It has to be.
Why is he seeing colour?
“Felix,” Locus repeats, sterner, firmer, despite his compromised position, reaching out to grab his shaking hand by the wrist, “Focus,” he orders, firmly, gritting his teeth as he hisses out the ‘s’.
Felix jerks at the touch, turns his head to stare into his injured partner’s eyes.
“I…” he stammers, “You…”
Locus’ expression is beleaguered, but steady. His gaze is firm, unwavering, despite his injury, his pain, the shuddering breaths he’s taking..
Does he not see it? Isn’t he supposed to?
Because this is colour, and no one ever sees it alone.
Isn’t that how it goes?
Felix meets his gaze, resists the urge to look away. Surely Locus has to be seeing this too. But there’s no indication. No confusion in his eyes.
There’s colour there, too, Felix notices, finally. Different. A cooler hue, flecks of it dusting the grey of his irises. He doesn’t know which colour this is either, but it’s calming somehow. He focuses on that instead of the rush of the other hue, the confused tangle of uncertainty that wonders if he’s the only one of them that can see, feels the breath escaping him in a quiet rush as he finds resolve, calm.
Enough calm to focus on what’s happening, what’s just happened.
What he needs to focus on.
There was an explosion, he recounts, in his mind, focusing on Locus’ eyes, not the rush of blood staining his armour, the rubble, the earth, taking deeper breaths to ground himself.
The targets have been taken out. No gunshots since the last four he fired before he checked on Locus. No sounds to indicate the others on the other side are still alive. Felix still isn’t sure what caused it.
Locus has been injured. The blast caught him as he– Felix’s thoughts hiccup, reorganize, continue in images, memories rather than words. A shout, the sense of being unbalanced, the punch of the force knocking them over, the lurch, the heat and shake of an explosion too close for comfort.
The memory of being protected, shielded, by his larger, worrying, idiot partner.
What was he thinking, throwing himself in the way like some fucking overprotective martyr?
Felix settles his hands on Locus’ armour, keeps his eyes stubbornly away from the injury he can still see so clearly, leaking the blood in full technicolour in his mind’s eye. Locus’ armour caught the brunt of it, but there’s the ugly twist of rebar through his side, shrapnel propelled with enough force, the edges of it sharp enough, the blast close enough to drive it with enough forth through the air to dent the armour, shred through some of the undersuit, drive itself into his side while the blast damaged his armour, burned and scraped the skin under the protective gear bloody and raw, the force likely enough to bruise muscle and bone.
My partner is bleeding out. Felix realizes, the gravity sinking in far too late after the knowledge of what’s happened, and he tears his eyes away from Locus’ colour-flecked gaze to search out his own med-pack instead.
He doesn’t have time for this.
Locus doesn’t have time for this.
He yanks his own medical supply out and tries to focus on assembling the biofoam injector, shoving the canister into its difficult slot, trying not to be distracted by the calls to attention to the blood leaking over Locus’ armour, staining the floor, smearing on his palms - tracks of colour everywhere he touches.
He leaves prints of colour on the canister as he fumbles with it, smears of it along the depressor as he shifts his grip.
He can’t concentrate.
The contrast is hurting his eyes.
“This is Felix,” he says into his radio, tearing his gaze away from the wound in its mess of colour, snapping the canister in place as he stares, determinedly at a pile of rocks and scrap metal some few feet away, “We need immediate evac and medical attention. I have a man down.”
It probably takes maybe five seconds for the response from the pilot of their pelican to respond.
Somehow it feels like five minutes instead.
“Copy that,” she says, “What are your coordinates?”
Felix glances through the info on his HUD, relaying their location as Locus breathes and bleeds beside him.
He can multitask. He should multitask.
Why isn’t he multitasking?
Felix jerks back into motion, shifting to bring himself closer to Locus, so he can reach the wound and the piece of metal causing it.
“Is your location secure?” the pilot asks, as Felix picks through the mess of blood with his eyes, finding the widest part of the wound, where it would be best to deploy the biofoam, work on first line treatment, determine if other bleeding parts are superficial or deep and need more attention.
“We’re done, mission accomplished,” Felix says, curt, “Just get your fucking pelican here so we leave this dump and get the medical attention we need.”
“Roger that,” the pilot responds, nonplussed at his tone or his language, “I don’t have a medical team on hand to come to your position. Will he be stable enough to transport to the city?”
Felix tightens his grip on the injector, “Yeah,” he says. It won’t be pretty - in fact it’ll probably suck for Locus - but with this kind of injury, if they can get the wound sealed, at least, he’ll be fine to get proper medical help after they fly back to civilization.
That is, assuming no organs were damaged.
Felix disregards the thought as soon as he has it.
The armour should have taken the brunt of the hit, even with the particularly unlucky piece of rebar, it shouldn’t have pierced in too far to cause heavy damage to something vital like his kidney. Or his spleen.
Shouldn’t.
Locus has survived worse.
“ETA ten minutes,” the pilot says, mechanically, then signs off, having finished her communication.
Felix doesn’t respond. There’s nothing else to say.
How deep in did the bar go? he wonders, hand hovering absently over it, unsure of what he could do to find out.
Couldn’t have been that deep. It’s hard to say just by eyeballing it.
“Don’t–” Locus says, and that word is enough, somehow, to drag Felix’s attention back to the forefront, to Locus’ face, away from the colour assaulting his eyes, the metal dug into the wound, the vibrant hue itching painfully in his brain.
He pauses, mind catching up to his instinctive actions, running through protocols for first line care in case of injury in combat.
Locus grimaces, “Don’t pull it out.”
Felix stares at him, uncomprehending, “What,” he says, then glances over at Locus’ wound, gaze darting over the blood painting colour over Locus’ side quickly to find the metal twist of rebar, then back to Locus’ face, mustering a mildly insulted look, pushing through the uncertainty dominating his mind, “I work with knives, Locus, I’m not a fucking idiot.”
Stab wounds 101: don’t pull it out.
Who the fuck does Locus think he’s talking to? He didn’t lose that much blood, did he?
Locus manages a brief upturn of the corner of his mouth, though it quickly morphs into another grimace of pain, “You look like you needed a reminder.”
Not that much blood lost then, though his voice is weaker than it should be.
Felix doesn’t like the sound of it.
“Hold still and shut up,” he orders, leaning over him and readying the biofoam injector. He closes his eyes briefly, knowing Locus can’t see his face, his expression, before he takes a breath and forcefully brings his gaze back to face the bloody mess of Locus’ side.
The blood is darker now.
And yet the colour somehow remains blinding.
Felix braces his hand on Locus’ torso to keep him still, then jams the nozzle up beside the metal in the wound and presses down to inject the biofoam.
Locus isn’t prone to making sudden noises - doesn’t shout or gasp loudly or whimper - but he does jerk in pain, hands balling into fists as he grits his teeth. Felix winces in sympathy - the initial injection of the foam is always, always a nasty surprise before the analgesic kicks in.
After that he falls back, grunting in discomfort as the pain subsides.
Felix ejects the canister, tossing it aside, turning to watch Locus’ face, monitor signs of consciousness as his radio crackles with an ETA of three minutes.
A brief turn of his head to face east confirms an approaching shape in the sky.
“Hey,” Felix says, leaning over Locus’ face to look him in the eye through the visor of his helmet.
In the corner of his vision, he can still see it. The dark pool of colour, a stark and urgent reminder of just how much blood Locus has lost, in part because of the distraction of the addition to his sight.
He doesn’t want to think too hard about why that, and only that, is no longer grey or black or white.
Locus stares back up at him. His eyes aren’t fully open, but he’s awake, cognizant.
There’s nothing in his gaze that shows he sees the same thing - colour, the blinding hue of blood, or other things that might have gained vibrancy or saturation or tincture; that something has changed in his vision. Nothing like how Felix knows showed on his own face at the moment he blinked and blood was no longer grey, expression and confusion hidden only by the grace of his helmet and his dark visor.
There’s nothing in Locus’ eyes that’s any different. Nothing save for the flecks of cooler hues dusting his irises, tracking Felix in his vision as he moves.
“…Stay awake, asshole,” Felix orders, unable to think of anything to say, unwilling to voice the multitude of questions beginning to form in the back of his whirring mind. It’s not the time.
Locus doesn’t promise anything, doesn’t say anything, really, in response, but he does manage to make a soft sound like a ‘hmph’, and he reaches out, hand bumping gently against Felix’s arm in a motion like assurance he’ll try.
Felix takes it as a good sign.
Locus never tries anything in half measures.
He should be fine.
Still, Felix waits until there’s an ETA of 1 minute, watching Locus lie there and blink and breathe and grimace at the sky, until he’s sure Locus absolutely won’t die, before the pelican arrives at least, before he gets up, reloading his pistol as he stalks over to the last position of their stubborn, now incapacitated targets.
Of the three final marks, two are dead, shots clean, if slightly off target.
The last one is still breathing, teeth gritted, breath laboured, lying flat on his back, unable to move, a hole through his chest, blood painting the earth in a mess of muddy, brilliant colour.
All blood is the same colour, it seems.
“Fff–” the man struggles to say, between shuddering breaths, “F-fu–”
Felix doesn’t wait to hear his final scathing curse. Simply raises his pistol and fires once into his head, and a second time for good measure.
He stands and stares, just a moment more, to consider the spatterings of blood and flesh and colour, over the grey shades of rock and dirt and metal and trash.
Then the pelican arrives, engines screaming as it banks to land, and Felix turns away from the carnage to return to his injured partner’s side.
Red.
He remembers.
The medic for their squad in the war had been half a matched pair. Not technically a combatant, so no strict adherence to the ‘no colour sight’ rule of the squad. Couldn’t be picky with the medics, in a war.
Maybe that made him a better medic. Maybe it hadn’t.
Certainly hadn’t made him any luckier. The ability to see in full colour hadn’t made a difference when the Covenant tore him apart.
“Blood is red,” Felix had overheard him once, before it all went to shit, as he changed the bandages on an injured private in the medbay, indulging the questions of another curious young private watching nearby - a naïve young romantic who still thought they’d have a chance to one day see the spectrum.
“It’s a bright, vibrant colour,” he’d said, trying to explain, conscious that his audience is still colour blind, “Warm colour, eye-catching. Colour of life, it is.” Then he’d laughed, an ugly sound, “You can really tell it is, when people bleed. Like the life pouring out of them unless you can stop it.”
Felix had left then. Hadn’t been interested in another man waxing poetic over something very few people would ever see. More interested on what the next meal was, weapons maintenance, the next mission on the horizon.
He shakes his head, focuses on breathing, rests his head against the rattling wall of the pelican, glancing over at Locus’ still form secured to the opposite side, armour still stained with blooming, bleeding colour all down his side, his front, though his wounds are now sealed. well enough, the flow stemmed by biofoam and slowly failing first line medical supply.
Felix looks away, back down at his hands. Smears of colour, still, clinging stubbornly to the rubber, the plaster of his gloves.
Stains of life - Locus’ stubborn yet fleeting one - all over his palms, up and down his fingers. A bloom of red among a sea of greys and blacks and white in his vision.
He didn’t understand then.
He does now.