Author's Note: Well, here's a story I thought up now that I'm finally on winter break. This fic will most likely be short, though don't hold me to it. Rating is T for language, violence, blood, and gore and may go up in the future. I DO NOT OWN HALO/2/3 and I'm writing this fic based off the Halo universe. Hope you enjoy, and since you're already reading it, please review. Thanks!

Present Day. 1112 Hours, November 3, 2550. City of Archane, Planet Koda X.

Most of the time, if he closed his eyes, he could see it.

Three years of separation tended to dull the memory when it came to faces, but he concentrated hard, blocking out the sounds around him. And finally, it arrived. A smile spread across his chapped lips as he sank down into the grass and interlocked his fingers behind his head.

His wife’s face was nothing short of spectacularly beautiful, in his opinion. Her reddish-brown hair fell down neatly past her shoulders, and her warm brown eyes revealed all the compassion in the world. Of course, she wasn’t nearly as fragile as she appeared to be. She had been witness to many years of fighting, and as a combat medic, no less. Those inviting and often downright seductive eyes had seen horrors unbefitting of any human being, let alone his own wife. But, he thought, that was life during the Covenant War. An endless mess of good people witnessing terrible events.

As his mood began to sour, so too did the image of his wife. In his mind’s eye, she was no longer flashing that brilliant smile of hers as she sat beside him. His lovely daydream suddenly turned into an awful nightmare as he imagined what she must be going through now: her hair disheveled and messy, her lips cracked and bleeding, her eyes swollen and bruised. He was beginning to feel real, physical pain in his chest when a voice brought him back to reality.

“Sarge? Are you ok?”

The sergeant opened his eyes and, propping himself up on an elbow, looked up to face the speaker. He stared for a moment before he realized that he hadn’t heard the question. “Huh?”

“I asked if you were all right, Sarge. But judging by that dumb look on your face, I’m pretty sure the answer is no.”

The sergeant sat up and gave the other military policeman a hard look. “Watch your mouth, Corporal. I still rank you, got it?”

The other MP leaned down till he was close to the sergeant’s face. “Rank or not, I’m your best buddy, Marshall. That gives me the authority to tell it like it is.”

Both men stared at each other’s serious faces before breaking out into grins.

“Jackass,” Marshall remarked.

“Shithead,” the corporal shot back. The pair sobered after a moment, and the corporal asked, “No, but seriously, you ok?”

Sergeant Marshall sighed as he stood, holding his submachine gun in both hands. “I’m worried, Drew. I’m really scared for her.”

The corporal nodded and glanced down at his combat boots. His buddy only addressed him by his first name when they were off-duty…or when something gravely serious was going on. And seeing as they were both presently on a mission, the case was definitely the latter.

The silence lingered between the two friends. Truth was, even though the corporal had a reputation for having the biggest mouth around, he had no idea what to say to Marshall. Sure, he could say any number of comforting and generic phrases, but that wasn’t going to change how the sergeant was feeling. He wished that there was some way he could magically have Marshall’s wife reappear, but there wasn’t.

Noticing that the rest of the squad was walking back towards them, the corporal took a step towards Sergeant Marshall. He placed a hand on his buddy’s shoulder and whispered, “Don’t worry, Isaiah. We’ll find her. And when we do, we’ll get every last bastard who so much as looked at her the wrong way.”

Marshall didn’t say anything for a long time. The corporal stepped back, hooking his thumb under his sniper rifle’s shoulder strap, and raised his hand against the harsh rays of the sun. Turning to face the squad of MPs making their way towards him, he shouted, “Hey, are you slowpokes military cops or my grandmother’s knitting group? Let’s move, Marines!”

The military police troops started running as if someone had lit a fire beneath them. With the MPs getting closer and closer as they sprinted up the slope, the corporal turned back to his friend.

“I promised my wife I’d never let anything happen to her, Harley,” Sergeant Marshall finally replied. He looked down at the ground, sorting his thoughts. When he found that he couldn’t, he ran a hand over his bright red hair and said sadly, “But these days, all I ever think about is how I let her down.”