John-117/Relationships

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This article details John-117's relationships with his friends and other characters.

Blue Team

John with Blue Team; Linda-058, Kelly-087 and Frederic-104.

"The thing about John is that he only really knew three ways to react to people. If you were his superior officer, he obeyed you. If you were in his squad, he would die for you. But if you were a threat, then God help you."

— Samuel-034 about John's behavior.

John does not open easily to strangers, and has notably shown an aversion to taking his helmet off in the presence of others unless necessary. Friendships are made for life, however—once given, his trust is forever. Like most Spartan-IIs, he thinks of Doctor Catherine Halsey as a nearly mother-like figure, and holds a deep personal respect for his trainer and mentor SCPO Franklin Mendez. His fellow Spartan-IIs, Cortana, Dr. Halsey, and SCPO Mendez, being the only family he really ever had, assume a larger-than-life importance for John-117.

John formed close friendships with the other Spartans he grew up with since his childhood, most notably Samuel-034 and Kelly-087, his first friends within the group. While still feeling the loss of comrades deeply, he has grown more accustomed to combat than most soldiers. Nevertheless, he was deeply affected by the deaths of each of the Spartans, particularly Sam. He was also saddened by Linda-058's apparent death aboard Gamma Station and was greatly relieved after Dr. Halsey successfully resuscitated her. However, having accepted the responsibility of command for the Spartan-IIs, he has come to maintain a certain professional distance to his comrades and mostly keeps his feelings to himself to maintain his authority.

Kelly-087

"Exhausted as I am, the steadiness in Chief's voice focuses me. Steels me like nothing else. Because I know he's already three steps ahead."

— Kelly-087

Kelly and John.

Kelly is one of John's closest friends and the longest one to have worked as part of a team with him. After decades spent together, he knows her well enough to know when she is worried without even needing to see her face; just a tiny slump of her shoulders is enough. Kelly is known to routinely make sarcastic jokes at John's expense, often teasing him about his looks, his intelligence, his awkwardness, his overprotectiveness, and his penchant for "hogging all the fun" during combat engagements. John usually relies on Kelly to articulate sentiments he struggles to convey himself. Kelly is a recurring subject of John's dreams.

John's relationship with Kelly began with him stealing crackers from her while she wasn't looking during their first day as trainees in the Spartan-II program. Later that day, the two were put on a team with Samuel-034 based on three lines the children were instructed to form. Kelly was clearly unhappy to be grouped with John. She introduced herself after Sam did so first, but John said nothing to either and believed that she would slow down their team. As such, he raced ahead of his teammates during their first attempt at "Ring the Bell" and though he finished first, Sam and Kelly got stuck in a line as everyone bunched up at the end and were the last two to cross the finish line. This elicited a glare from Kelly, but John could only shrug. After learning that his team lost despite his early finish, however, John became furious with her and Sam, thinking of ways to get even with them for messing up his victory. He avoided both in the classroom the next day, but when the time came to play Ring the Bell once more Sam threatened to push him off of a raised platform if he didn't help them, with Kelly adding that she would jump on top of him. John agreed to work together as long as they didn't slow him down, and when Kelly pointed out that she was very fast he told her she could sprint ahead and hold a spot for them at a basket which would carry them to the bell. When she took off, John was struck that he had never seen anyone move like her, thinking her similar to wolves he'd seen footage of, her feet seeming to barely touch the ground. And though their team only came in third this time, they worked together to make that happen and decided to be friends once they were finished. Around one year and ten months later, John, Kelly, and Sam were still a unit and he had come to think of the two of them, along with the seventy-two other trainees, as his family. During an exercise in Reach's Highland Mountains in July of 2519 Kelly was the first to speak up when John asked for a rabbit, meaning someone fast who could be chased after to lure enemies to a location. Right before she could do just that as part of the plan John had concocted, he offered to be the rabbit instead, which earned him a slug on the shoulder for giving the impression that he doubted her. John, nursing his shoulder, took the suggestion back. A short time later, he didn't even ask when he needed someone to be the rabbit again; he just told Kelly the role was hers.

Kelly and John.

Following the series of surgeries which augmented their fourteen-year-old bodies in 2525, Kelly took the longest to recover of the members of Blue Team. There had been a point where John had even worried she might not survive. When she did pull through, John was glad to see that her face had retained its rough, angular beauty and her body its long slender frame. He was forced to admit to himself that she scared him a little now, for though she had been fast before, now nobody could touch her if she didn't allow it. En route to their first real mission as Spartans John dreamed that he saw Kelly, her face bloodied and bruised, and that she asked him where he had been when they needed him. When John was shot in the side during that operation, Kelly was the one to peel back his suit to inspect the damage, biting her lip upon confirming that the bullet was still inside and causing lots of internal bleeding. She then proceeded to administer biofoam to the wound, cautioning that it might sting a little, and help him back to his feet. As they were returning from the mission with Kelly piloting a stolen Pelican, John's grunting and wincing in pain made Kelly ask how the foam was holding up and if something else was bothering him. To that, John squeezed her shoulder and claimed nothing was wrong. Later that year, the Spartans suffered their first loss from combat when Sam was forced to stay behind on a doomed Covenant ship due to an armor breach that wouldn't allow him to make the transition to the vacuum of space. John had to grab Kelly's arm as they said goodbye to Sam, urging her to not look back. When the ship exploded behind them, Kelly clung to John and he consoled her. Months later, Kelly suffered a compound rib fracture during a boarding operation, which made John's gut clench. He immediately ordered Frederic-104 to move her out of the gravity lift which had injured her. Kelly protested that she didn't need a babysitter and that John was being overprotective (which John could tell meant being a jerk) but he countered by saying he didn't need an argument. In March of 2526 John was attempting to reason with a large group of captured insurrectionists and one of them, a woman, attempted to distract him by calling him flattering names and suggesting that he lose his armor so she could get a better look at him. This elicited a choice statement from Kelly in which she made sure John knew her flirting wasn't real. In 2544 Blue Team was sent to rescue Doctor Catherine Halsey from a Covenant fleet. As the Spartans moved through the fleet's flagship its shipmaster elected to dismantle the carrier into sections to halt their advance. This led to Kelly, who had outpaced John and found herself between two large portions of the ship, grabbed his hand and swung him about, using the momentum to send him flying all the way to the next section. This caused John to shout her name then, but upon landing within the ship once more, he paused to face the direction he had come and this time whisper it, plainly worried about her.

During the Covenant's attack on Reach in 2552, Kelly offered to lead a mission to board Gamma Station. Though John appreciated the gesture, he refused to even assign her to the operation because he knew it would be ten times as dangerous as the concomitant terrestrial mission the rest of the present Spartans would be embarking on. John led the mission to the orbital station himself but a part of him still longed to join the ground action and he couldn't help watching the Pelican that held Kelly and the others as it descended to Reach. When Captain Keyes later informed John that the Pillar of Autumn had lost contact with its Spartans on