Author's Note: I originally posted this work in April 2012 as a response to a prompt at the ME Kinkmeme. I got ~20,000 words up for it, before my muse wandered off for other pastures and it sadly has sat unfinished in anon status ever since.

I decided for this N7 day, that I would begin the long process of dusting it off, polishing it up, claiming it as my own, and (hopefully) finishing the damn thing. At present, I am planning to post an update to this at least once a week. (Nine chapters and counting, folks! All in need of a thorough editing, so please be patient with me.)

Title borrowed from the song of the same name by Rise Against. Hope you enjoy!

Chapter 1

Saren doesn't like children. They're messy. Demanding.

Helpless.

It's the latter quality that he has the most issues with. It seems counterintuitive, birthing young that clutch at their parents for more than a decade before they are truly self-sufficient.

And by that point, everyone is too emotionally attached to let go. So they cling to each other for years in a co-dependant mess.

How the hell so many species evolved that method of child-rearing, he has no idea. He thinks the flightless tyrexes on Palaven have a better idea: their young are born fully mobile and able to hunt unassisted, and the parents just walk away.

It's a much better practice, as far as Saren's concerned.

His opinions on this topic have never mattered much, of course, and with his line of work he never expected it to be an issue. With no plans to take a mate and produce a mass of squabbling babes, it seemed an unnecessary concern.

Which does absolutely nothing to temper his frustration at the situation he is currently in: transporting the most disagreeable passenger in history to the nearest refugee facility. Which is, of course, located an obscene distance away.

"Stop that."

"No."

"Human, I'm not going to tell you again. Stop. Touching. That. Those buttons are not a toy. And if you don't leave them alone, I'll be forced to lock you in your sleeping pod, and you wouldn't want that, would you?"

"I don't care! I wanna go home. Take me home. NOW." The child stomps her feet. Tiny over-digited hands balled into fists, she gives him a look that says he is not worth her time unless he gives her what she wants. And if he was anyone else, she'd probably get it.

Considering she is all of five Galactic standard years old, that is no small feat.

As is, he is who he is, and he is not about to give into the demands of a terroristic human child - no matter how much calmer the trip would be if he did. What kind of a Spectre would that make him?

He double checks the navigational settings on his cruiser before turning to the human child. She hasn't moved an inch. Still standing there by the console, stiff-backed and angry. Idly, he can't help but compare her to a turian child of similar age, and while she may come up wanting in many, many areas, he does have to give her credit for daring to stare at him with a look of defiance that most grown turians wouldn't be brave enough to give.

He'd say it was impressive, if he was willing to admit to such things.

"Listen, human-"

She stomps her foot again. "Stop calling me that!"

He blinks at her, taken aback. "Why? It's what you are."

"I have a name you know."

"Really? I must have missed it with all of the whining you've been doing."

She wrinkles her nose at him, her miniature features looking pinched. "I am not whining!" She stomps her foot again, crossing her arms over her chest. That look of defiance transforming to one less easily identified by him. Her lower lip jutting out beneath the upper one, and eyes wide circles. "I just want to go home."

"That's not an option."

"Why not?"

"Because your family made the unfortunate decision to settle in the Traverse, and now you no longer have a home to go to. We're headed to a refugee center, they'll figure out how to get you some place...appropriate."

For several, perfect minutes, there is total silence. The child doesn't stomp her foot, or touch anything she shouldn't. There's no screaming or crying. There's nothing at all. Nothing aside from the weight of her stare on the back of his head as he pilots the small spacecraft.

It's the first reprieve he's gotten since leaving Mindoir with his unwanted baggage in tow. When he'd first arrived at the ruined colony, he hadn't been certain what to expect. He'd been furious to be sent at all, truth be told. His...lack of love for humans was not a secret, and a large part of him couldn't help but think that the upstart little pyjaks got what they deserved, settling a planet so close to the Terminus.

And the added insult of being assigned as clean up, while another 'more seasoned Spectre' (he scoffs at the memory of the asari Councilor's patronizing tone) was tasked with shaking down the batarian slavers responsible, grated on his ego. He may only have been a Spectre for a year, but everyone already knows that he is one of the best. The fact that the Council still assigns him such...childish tasks is frustrating.

For now, he simply has no choice but to grin and bear it.

Of course, at no point did he think that meant collecting the lone survivor from the colony, this angry slip of a thing in tattered clothing and dried mud and animal refuse - who he'd only found by sheer luck, locked away in a feed stall - and transporting her to safety.

"My family's all dead, aren't they?"

Saren's startled less by the question, and more by the monotone way with which she asks it. There's no crying or shaking, no evidence at all of an emotional response. It makes the child seem infinitely older than Saren knows her to be.

If nothing else, he has to admit that she's made of tougher stuff than most children her age. Human, turian, or otherwise.

"Yes, human, they are."

Her lower lip wobbles just for a second, and he can see the shine of tears in her eyes, but she doesn't let them fall.

Tougher stuff.

"Jane. My name is Jane."

~~~\/~~~

"I'm sorry, Spectre. But we simply don't have the room or the facilities to care for her."

"You're an orphanage. For refugees. She..." He gestures to the silent child standing by his side, head held up and glare fixed on this new opponent the same way it had previously been fixed on him. "Is an orphaned refugee. It would seem that your supply meets her demand."

"She's also a human. And this is a turian facility."

Saren levels an unamused glare at the woman; pointedly not looking at the seal of the turian hierarchy emblazoned on the wall behind her head. "I had noticed that."

"Then it should also be obvious that, at a minimum, she would require levo-rations to survive, and we do not have the funds allocated to provide those at this time. Not to mention the specialized medical care she will need, amongst other basic requirements. There is simply no way we can take her in."

"I'm a Spectre, the Council will-"

"The Council will agree with my assessment of the situation, and we both know it. They are not in the habit of bothering with displaced children, let alone just one lone human. They have more important things to deal with as I recall."

With his chance to unload his cargo dwindling before his eyes, Saren feels as angry and frustrated as the child by his side. "Well I can't keep her any longer!"

"I'm afraid that's not my problem."

"She's a child. What do you expect me to do with her?"

"You're a Spectre. Figure it out." The way the woman says 'Spectre' is the way most people say 'vorcha.' With a whole lot of venom and just a hint of disgust. It annoys him at the same time that it makes him feel somewhat smug.

The woman behind the counter dismisses him with a flick of her mandibles, and turns back to her terminal. Saren considers it a success when he doesn't proceed to kill her using one of the seven different options he catalogued immediately after walking into the room. Voice and features tightly controlled, he turns on his heel to head for the door.

It is only once he is over the threshold that he realizes the child has not followed him. He fixes her with an annoyed glare, and swats his thigh, like he's calling a disobedient varren to his side. "Come, child. The sooner we leave here, the sooner we can find you a place to stay."

The human's eyes flicker back up to the woman who dismissed them, then back to Saren, her hands bunching the fabric of her still tattered (but thankfully cleaner, after he managed to dunk her fully clothed in a public bath - to her very vocal protest) shirt. After several moments that thin out Saren's patience almost to the point of snapping, she nods her head once and trots over to him. He makes no effort to shorten his strides as he marches back to his ship, but rather than falling behind, the child speeds her footfalls until she is practically running in order to keep up.

She doesn't complain.

In fact, she doesn't speak until they have cleared port security and are waiting for his ship's decon to complete. "Why am I going back on your ship? I thought you said this would be my new home."

He growls, long and deep. She doesn't so much as flinch. "There was no room for you here. We'll have to try somewhere else."

"Why?"

His estimation of her intelligence drops several degrees. He slows his speech to a crawl so she'll better be able to understand. "Because. There. Is. No. Room. For. You. Here."

"No. Not that. You said that already. Why take me with you? You don't like me."

"I don't like anyone. But that doesn't matter. Whether we like each other or not, for now, you're my responsibility. "

She sucks in a breath, her hands flexing and releasing her shirt over and over. "I'm almost six. I can take care of myself." He gives her credit for trying, her voice doesn't even shake when she says it, though her whole body trembles. "Maybe you could find another farm for me? My Mama says that farms can always use another pair of hands. And Daddy was teaching me how to work the machines. I'm a quick learner. He even took me hunting a couple of times!"

"Did he now? Did you ever kill anything?"

She nibbles on her lip and looks away, hands playing with her shirt once again. After a protracted minute, she nods.

Before he can inquire further, the decon finishes and the door's to the ship open to admit them.

~~~\/~~~

"Argh!" Saren jabs a finger at the console, severing the communication between his ship and the third - no the fourth - facility that he has contacted to take possession of the human child - Jane she keeps insisting that he call her - all of which have given him the same answer: No.

He drops his head into his palm, massaging the space above his eyes. The throb of a headache hasn't been far off since this whole debacle started. He isn't pleasant at the best of times, but throw a migraine into the mix and he gets downright nasty.

Not the best mental state to be in when enclosed in a small metal tube with a thin-skinned and very breakable human child.

At least she hasn't been much trouble since the first couple of days. Not after he explained why she couldn't go home and that he was trying to find her a new one. Before that she'd been angry and irritating. Now her emotions seem to fluctuate between tired and resigned.

He hasn't seen her cry once, which is something that his limited experience with humans has taught him they do as easily as they lie. Especially when they're grieving. He's not sure if that means that the girl is broken, or if she's just got better control of her emotions than most of her adult counterparts. In fact, she's been positively turian in her stoicism.

Regardless, he's counting himself lucky that he hasn't had to deal with any further emotional outbursts or crying fits.

"Did another one turn you down?"

"Yes."

"I'm sorry."

He drops his hand from his head and turns to look at her, at how she's sitting there on the seat just watching him. Looking...concerned? He's not sure. Human faces are too flexible and their voices too shallow for him to really be able to read their emotions with any sort of ease, but the long days he has spent in her company are beginning to mitigate that.

"You have nothing to apologize for." Except for complicating my life a hundred fold. "You didn't chose to be here, and you aren't responsible for the fact that no facilities in this sector - or any nearby ones it seems - are set up to deal with humans." He heaves an aggravated sigh. "As much as I detest the idea of going there, I can see no alternative but to return you to Earth."

Her eyes go wide and she leans forward on her seat. Looking...pleased? He still can't quite tell. "I've never been to Earth." Pleased, definitely.

"I wouldn't get so excited if I were you. My understanding is that it's nothing like your little farm world. This one is all paved over and covered in city-states."

She bites her lip, thinking this over, and nods - seeming to have come to a decision. "I've never been to a city before either."

"Lot of firsts for you." He starts to input the coordinates into his console. The trip to Earth is a long one, and they'll need to stop off at a spaceport along the way to get more levo-rations if he wants to deliver her alive to her home system.

"Like going into space. And meeting you. I've never met a, ummm..." She scrunches up her nose and eyes, squinting at him. "What are you again?"

The question is innocent enough, but he can't help but sneer. The ignorance of the child sets him on edge. What? Did her parents not tell her bedside tales of all the 'horrible things' his people had done to hers? He doesn't believe it for a second. More likely she just hasn't put two and two together yet. "Turian," he growls.

She rolls her eyes at him, huffing. His slow boiling rage settles down to a simmer. "No. Not that. I know what a turian is. You must think I'm really dumb, huh?"

"You are a child."

And, ah-ha! There is that temper of hers, he'd almost missed it. Almost. She slides from the chair and stomps her foot. Balls her hands into fists and levels that glare of hers at him. "I'm almost six!"

"So you've said. I fail to see what that has to do with anything."

"It means I'm not a baby, and I know things. Like what turians are. And asari. And krogan. And..." She stops mid-sentence, swallowing. Her lower lip wobbles for a moment, but she bites it, like she's trying to make it stop. Her voice is much smaller when she speaks again. "And batarians... " She sniffles and her eyes look glassy, but he still doesn't see any tears. "Mama used to have me help with deliveries, so I've met all kinds of people before. Including turians."

Now he's just genuinely confused, because apparently she not only knows what turians are, but she's met them before, and doesn't seem to hold any ill-will against them. It tilts his view of her and her now dead family in an unexpected direction. "If you've met turians before, why did you ask what I am?"

"I meant what are you - like a Captain, or an Officer. Like that. I know that you're something, because you keep bringing it up to people before they turn you down."

Ahh. That. "I'm a Spectre."

"That! That's it! I've never met a Spectre before."

"Be glad."

She squints at him again, head angled like she's sizing him up. "Why?"

"Because if a Spectre's around, it usually means something has gone wrong."

She's quiet for several minutes, and he thinks that maybe she's just grown tired of the conversation. He's fine to let it drop. The less he engages her in conversation the better. But, apparently, she was just getting her head on straight about what she wanted to say. The fact that she does that, is...not impressive, but close. She thinks before acting, and that's a quality to be admired in anyone, turian, human, adult, or child.

"Like what happened with my family."

"Yes, child. Like that."

"Things...bad things happened to them. Because of those batarians...that's why they're all dead."

"Yes."

"But...but then you came. Because of what they did. And you saved me."

It's strange, hearing her simplify it all down to it's base parts, and state it all out loud. Of course, she has no idea what the slavers were really doing. The kind of experiments they were trying to run. How they tortured the people from her colony.

Or how he only found her by random chance, in a last ditch search for survivors. How he almost hadn't gone back to check the noise, certain it was just some dying livestock and still too pissed at the Council for sending him there to give a damn. "In effect, yes."

"So you show up when things are bad, but you help. That seems like a good thing to me."

"That is one way to look at it, I suppose."

They lapse back into silence, with him navigating the ship and her climbing back into her chair. The seat elevated too high off the decking for her feet to reach the floor. When she speaks this time it is with a fair amount of confidence. Like she's come to some decision, and he should be happy she is sharing her wisdom with him. "I don't like batarians...but, I think I like you."

Saren has no idea what to say to that. He shoots a quick glance at her, finds that she's not smiling, but...something close. After a moment. He clears his throat. "It's late. You should go back to your bunk and get some rest. I'll wake you at the next port."

She doesn't argue, just slides from the seat once more, landing with a light thud on the metal deck. "Okay. G'night."

"Good night."

Jane.