Maine was born on a desert planet with towering sand dunes and violent dust storms that lasted for weeks at a time. The first fifteen years of his life weren't easy, and shit only got harder on the day the Covenant swept into his system with their city-sized ships to burn his planet until the mountains of golden sand turned to shiny black glass. His home was an absolute wreck even before the Covenant came, hardly worth saving, but that didn't stop the UNSC from evacuating as many people as it had ships to carry them.
The UNSC didn't have to do shit, and it did.
She didn't have to do shit, either, and she did, despite his tumultuous, fist-swinging entrance. Even for a man like Maine, it's hard not to respect the level of brass it takes to approach him when he's at his ugliest, snarling and bruised and ready to lash out at the first person who looks at him wrong. He presses the scarf to the side of his face when she gestures to her eye, mentally filing a reminder to return it to to her later, once he's cleaned the blood from the fabric.
The soldiers sort through the small crowd behind them, checking each person for weapons and speaking in sharp English that occasionally lapses into quieter Russian. He can hear as they move further away, heavy boots crunching over snow and rock, and it's only then that he takes a moment to look around.
He has a mountain at his back, and a line of trees in front of him. There are no weapons just conveniently lying around within arm's reach, but there's a particularly sharp broken branch jutting from the ground by his knee, the same branch that put a gash in his thigh minutes earlier. No, that's stupid, fuck the branch. He doesn't need a makeshift shank to kill some people. He looks over his shoulder. Ten soldiers? Fifteen? Twenty? It's hard to tell in the dark. Now that he's slightly more focused, he's sure he could take out at least a quarter of them before they bring them down again.
Also stupid, for a multitude of reasons. Not worth it. Get your shit together, asshole.
Maine ties the scarf around his thigh and drags himself to wobbling feet. Lakshmi is graced with one squinting, speculative stare before he leans in toward her, offering her an arm to help pull her up.
no subject
The UNSC didn't have to do shit, and it did.
She didn't have to do shit, either, and she did, despite his tumultuous, fist-swinging entrance. Even for a man like Maine, it's hard not to respect the level of brass it takes to approach him when he's at his ugliest, snarling and bruised and ready to lash out at the first person who looks at him wrong. He presses the scarf to the side of his face when she gestures to her eye, mentally filing a reminder to return it to to her later, once he's cleaned the blood from the fabric.
The soldiers sort through the small crowd behind them, checking each person for weapons and speaking in sharp English that occasionally lapses into quieter Russian. He can hear as they move further away, heavy boots crunching over snow and rock, and it's only then that he takes a moment to look around.
He has a mountain at his back, and a line of trees in front of him. There are no weapons just conveniently lying around within arm's reach, but there's a particularly sharp broken branch jutting from the ground by his knee, the same branch that put a gash in his thigh minutes earlier. No, that's stupid, fuck the branch. He doesn't need a makeshift shank to kill some people. He looks over his shoulder. Ten soldiers? Fifteen? Twenty? It's hard to tell in the dark. Now that he's slightly more focused, he's sure he could take out at least a quarter of them before they bring them down again.
Also stupid, for a multitude of reasons. Not worth it. Get your shit together, asshole.
Maine ties the scarf around his thigh and drags himself to wobbling feet. Lakshmi is graced with one squinting, speculative stare before he leans in toward her, offering her an arm to help pull her up.