visage (Halo: Reach)

Spartans fear. A lifetime of focus on killing and avoiding being killed does not make one fearless. But masks, masks do not fear - masks inspire it. The golden visor is a baleful stare, and anyone it turns to finds themselves cowed, even if they do not show it.

(Six fears that one day her mask will become like Emile's, and the jagged skull-maw will rip open and snarl, and the animal inside of her that fears and hates and lusts will show its true face.)

And so when her time of dying comes, she takes it off, throws it in the dust, remembering how Jorge did the same before he went. She is not an animal, not a machine, not a monster. The monsters will see her face and know she is human. She is pale and thin and tired but she is alive for perhaps the first and last time and she no longer needs to inspire fear in the hearts of others. It is simply time to stop being.

(And yet even as the energy dagger finds her heart, she sees fear in their eyes.)