We've got the right to live, fight to use it
Marcus listened in silence, the weight of Deimos’s answer settling slowly into his chest like cold water seeping through wool. There was no clean solution in anything the Sword had said, no clear right choice that guaranteed survival, no path that didn’t leave something behind. Every option sounded like a gamble with something irreplaceable. His gaze dropped again to the black sand at his feet, the toe of his boot nudging idly at a shard of ice half-buried in the grit as he tried to picture it. Sitting in the dark with no sun, the world outside swallowed by something unseen, and then a voice coming through the door. Not just any voice, but one you knew. One you trusted.
The thought made something twist sharply in his stomach. Marcus had faced dangerous things before, creatures in the wild, the brutal honesty of Halo’s wilderness where survival meant meeting a threat head-on or getting away fast enough to live. Those moments had clarity to them. He could see what you were fighting. He could measure the danger in teeth amd claws. And he had always almost had his father.
But what Deimos described was different in a way that felt far worse.
"I don’t think I’d know what to do." Marcus admitted quietly, his voice lacking the easy steadiness he usually carried, and a hsudder ran down the length of his spine. He lifted his gaze toward the dark water, though he wasn’t really seeing the bay anymore as he tried to imagine the choice. "If you heard someone you cared about out there… you either open the door and risk letting something in that could kill everyone inside, or you don’t, and you might be leaving them out there to die." He wasn't telling the Sword anything he didn't already know, but processing it all through his young mind. "That's...terrifying."
The thought made something twist sharply in his stomach. Marcus had faced dangerous things before, creatures in the wild, the brutal honesty of Halo’s wilderness where survival meant meeting a threat head-on or getting away fast enough to live. Those moments had clarity to them. He could see what you were fighting. He could measure the danger in teeth amd claws. And he had always almost had his father.
But what Deimos described was different in a way that felt far worse.
"I don’t think I’d know what to do." Marcus admitted quietly, his voice lacking the easy steadiness he usually carried, and a hsudder ran down the length of his spine. He lifted his gaze toward the dark water, though he wasn’t really seeing the bay anymore as he tried to imagine the choice. "If you heard someone you cared about out there… you either open the door and risk letting something in that could kill everyone inside, or you don’t, and you might be leaving them out there to die." He wasn't telling the Sword anything he didn't already know, but processing it all through his young mind. "That's...terrifying."
Marcus
Got everything but you can just choose it
