Zaeed sat on the couch, watching Shepard fall asleep. He didn't mean to lord over her like a guardian, but he couldn't bring himself to leave.
He didn't trust her in this state, didn't even know what to expect of her. True, he was slightly buzzed himself, but he had only seen her drunk once before, when she had to sneak down into the cargo bay to steal his goddamn whiskey. From that experience and the time they had spent drinking together tonight, he assumed she rarely drank at all. He turned his head to the mini bar near the couch he was sitting at. No wonder why she stole my whiskey; everything she has up here is shit. At least I gave her the damn whiskey this time, rather than her fucking stealing it.He turned back to Shepard as she turned over. She moaned in agony, her hand going to her forehead before settling down into her pillows.
This isn't fucking right.
The woman before him, drunk and depressed, with tears forming in the corners of her tightly-shut eyes, was not the Shepard he knew.
Rowan Shepard was a strong leader, always level-headed and kind-hearted, trying her best to find a balance between doing what she had to and doing what was right. She walked a fine line on that account, considering the mission she was on and the fact that she was working with a group whose tactics were known to be questionable at best. Lately, she seemed to be fighting the fight to continue toeing that line rather hard. Still, she had seemed to be managing at keeping all of that in balance.
Until she had run into that damned Alenko kid.
The moment they set eyes on each other, he knew that they'd been fucking before the original Normandy went down. Kaidan had pulled Shepard into a hug that was almost uncomfortably long, and her voice had been thick with relief and joy at the sight of him.
Alenko had responded to her joy by taking one of the most badass women he had ever met, and with a few stubborn, stuck-up, holier-than-fucking-thou words, turned her into a drunken mess.
That fucking kid was the most delusional and self-centered person he had come across in a long time. He understood why the kid was fucking pissed, but he didn't even let Shepard try to speak. He seemed to want some sort of explanation, some answers, closure, but he hadn't let Shepard get a word in edgewise. He just plowed through his childish rant and left.
He looked back over to Shepard, who was scratching the tip of her nose in her sleep. He never thought he would see her like this.
She needs to toughen up, and forget about that goddamn piece of shit.
Looking at her, he finally began to understand why he was being so protective of her. The both of them had been through hell and back, through impossible odds. Given, getting spaced and being pieced back together was an entirely different story from being shot in the head point-blank and living to tell the tale, but the essence of their pasts were the same.
They'd both been royally fucked, and rather than sitting down and taking it, they got back up on their feet, got stronger, and went after the motherfuckers that did it to them.
That, however, was where they differed.
Zaeed killed for money, plain and simple. He didn't care to know the why or the who, he just needed to know where to point his gun. Shepard was trying to hold on to who she was before she had died, and she was finding it increasingly difficult. Coming back from the fucking dead had been understandably hard on her, and it was finally taking it's toll.
Yes, that was the difference. Where Zaeed had embraced what was before him, Shepard was trying to stay in the past.
The problem was, she was failing at it. There was no shame in that; everyone grows bitter at something in their goddamn lives. The goal is to face it, own it, learn from it, and move the fuck on. Shepard was stuck in the past. Stuck on what she had lost rather than everything that she had before her to gain.
Stuck to that goddamn Alenko kid.
He refused to let that happen. He had promised to help her get her revenge, and he would. If she was going to really get rid of the Collectors and the Reapers, she had to let go of all of the shit in her past. She had to learn to fucking look forwardfor once.
He saw her shiver slightly, her arms and head curling into her body. He stood slowly, grabbing her white sheets and pulling them up over her shoulders as gently as he could manage.
He resolved to keep a closer eye on her from now on. Zaeed was never one for babysitting people, especially concerning situations that he had nothing to fucking do with, but Shepard had gone against her very nature to help him get his revenge, because she felt he deserved it.
He would do the same for her, for that very same reason. She deserved her revenge, her own happiness. She deserved freedom from that fucking Alenko kid, and he would do his damnedest to help her get there.