Again: Happy Birthday :)
Jack sits upright, her heart pounding, a sheen of sweat coating her body. The sheets are tangled around her bare calves, and the cool air prickles her skin as the dream fades and she comes slowly back to herself. She is used to nightmares. She doesn't remember having many as a child – being awake was nightmare enough – but they have plagued her since she left Teltin. The first time. She doesn't give half a mind to them anymore, just accepts that she will wake, and that it might take some time for her to fall back asleep.
As her breathing slows, and her heartbeat returns to normal the room falls into silence. It is the silence of an empty house, a silence of creaking trees and the hum of central air. It is the silence of the deepest night. The sort of silence that most people never hear. It is a silence to be slept through.
She settles back onto the pillows, letting a hand trace along the raised, jagged scars that cross her sides and stomach. She pictures the tattoos she has had done around them. They hide the scars, and accent them. She knows them as intimately as she knows her scars. Her hand moves lazily, sleepily, across her stomach, down her side, the outside of her thigh, up the inside, back up across her stomach. She traces the tattoos, the smooth skin a harsh contrast to the scars she has just left. It soothes her, calms her mind. Her fingers return to the scars, the skin here has less feeling, but more memory. As her fingers dance she thinks about how she got each scar. The tests and the games. The fights. The drugs.
She is mostly asleep when the silence changes. She knows the change to the silence. Knows the way the air shifts, the way it seems to thin and thicken. She knows this silence. Remembers it. Remembers the way she had grown accustomed to it, the way she had sometimes looked forward to it. The way she had, more than once, misinterpreted it. The silence brings a smile to her lips. She thinks of meeting the silence, of reaching for it, or perhaps breaking it, but doesn't want to give up the game. It is a game she has played with the silence since that first time the air shifted around her.
She lets her hands continue to move, careful now not to so much as shift the sheets, to not let her breathing break the tightness in the air.
The rules have changed, as she has changed, but some things always stay the same.
The engines rumbled against Jack's back. The tiny cot she lay on reverberated with the vibrations. It lent a soundtrack to the information before her. She grinned, thinking of the way that Cerberus bitch had growled when Shepard had given her the order to hand over the files. Cerberus would pay. Maybe not right now; Shepard had hooked her on this damn mission, and as much as she hated admitting she liked anyone, she had a grudging respect for the annoying do-good-er girl scout. The words in front of her blurred; she'd been reading for hours and it was starting to wear on her. She closed her eyes, letting her mind wander, letting daydreams of what she would do to Cerberus play out in her mind. There were lots of explosions, and maybe she'd set that bitch Lawson up to fight the Illusive Man. That would be a match to remember.
Something shifted in the room.
She hadn't survived as long as she had by being complacent. She pushed the data pads away, and snapped up onto her feet. The dim light was more than enough for her to see by, her eyes long ago adjusting to the dark, hidden places she preferred on the ship. She crouched low, her biotics buzzing, but she didn't allow herself to reach for them. The blue glow would give her away. That had been lesson six: Stay hidden, stay safe.
But there was no one there. She slowed her breathing, listening. There was a silence, but it wasn't a silence she knew. She crept slowly toward the stairs, eyes darting quickly into every hidden crevice. It felt like someone was watching her, but she couldn't see anyone. She peered up through the stairs, but there was no one there either.
She climbed up into engineering. Tali was working at her normal console and Gabby was talking with her about some coupling or whatever but the pig Donnelly was nowhere to be seen. She growled. Of course, that jackass had been spying on her.
She stomped back down the stairs, ignoring Tali's questioning call.
"Donnelly, you fucker! Get your sorry ass out here, and face me like the man you claim to be!" she yelled, to no response. She made it back down to her cot, but the silence had changed again. It was the silence she knew. The silence of the vibrations of the engine.
Fucker had gotten away.
She listens intently, waiting for a break in the stillness of the air. She has learned how it breaks. If there is one thing she knows about this silence, it is that it doesn't like to stay still. It moves, it flows; it cascades around her. Fills her. If she plays along, eventually it will give, and she can grab it. Hold it against the cold night, and demand that it shatter.
There had been a time when she had found a perverse joy in the breaking. Of finding the cause, and forcing it to sound. She'd needed to break it, once. Needed to discover its cause and fight back against it. She hadn't known what to do when she had. Had done what she always did. There had been joy in that too. It was different though. Breaking the silence is cathartic.
She lets a hand trail down between her breasts, moving slowly, quietly. Listening intently. Her hand stops, playing absently with her navel when she thinks she hears the first hitch in the thick air. The silence returns, though, and her hand continues its slow decent. The blankets were still tangled around her feet, but she can't kick them away without giving up that she knows the silence watches.
She has yet to lose, but once. She has no plans to make it twice.
Instead, she brings her knees up, legs crossed at the ankle, the blankets coming with them. She lets her knees drop, exposing herself to the silence. Her hand slips between her thighs, and she runs a fingertip along the crease of her thigh. She keeps the smirk from her face, keeps her breathing calm. She's been playing this game for a long time; she knows the rules, and she is more than willing to play by them.
There is little arousal, though. The dream has left her shaken, and even the silence isn't enough to wipe it completely from her mind so quickly. So she toys, and she plays, and she teases. The silence refuses to shift.
She lets her eyes drift shut again, letting her mind slip back. Letting it fall into the first memories she has that aren't of pain. There is pain after, but for the first time in her life there are moments that don't hurt. Moments where the little girl she had never had a chance to be can slip out. The Normandy had changed her. She can't put a finger exactly on when, or where, or how it had happened. It had been slow and sneaky, like the silence. She lets her fingers slide between her folds, biting back the soft moan that threatens as she thinks about that moment.
The moment when she discovered the silence.
She stomped down the stairs, slamming a hand into the bulkhead with a scream. She kept her biotics in check, having no desire to find herself spaced, and was left with nothing but a stinging in her knuckles. It just pissed her off even more. When the place had gone up, when the ground had shook and the shuttle had rocked she had expected to feel better. She had expected that it would finally be over. Instead, she'd simply felt hollow. What was there to work towards now?
The destruction of Cerberus?
Later, but for the moment the fuckers were paying her.
The humiliation of Lawson?
Maybe, but Shepard had just broken that up.
There was nothing. She was nothing. Just the empty shell of a broken child.
Shepard had forced her to go talk to Chambers. Talking had led to other things, which if rumors were true, was a fairly common practice with the yeoman. But it hadn't helped. She'd left satisfied, certainly, but she hadn't discovered any deep reason for why she felt the way she did. She'd kept moving for so long just to prove she could. She'd gone back, and survived. But it hadn't left her feeling any more like a person.
She kicked a stack of crates, only mildly disappointed when they didn't tumble over. She wanted to break something.
She moved into the little area where she slept, and stopped dead. The silence was back.
It came and went, though in recent weeks it had become more frequent. She hated and looked forward to it, in equal measure. The feel of eyes on her skin, the feeling that someone was there. The feeling that she wasn't alone.
"Donnelly, I swear, if this is you, I will gut you like the spineless fish you are!" she bellowed. Though she knew it wasn't Donnelly. The last few times she'd felt the silence, both Gabby and Ken had been in the maintenance shafts – she had heard them talking beside her head minutes earlier. Until she knew the source though, blaming the annoying Scotsman. Irishman. Whatever the hell he was. Was easiest.
There was no answer, but she hadn't expected one. There was never an answer to her shouts.
Muttering curses under her breath, she stalked over to her cot. Only to be pulled up short a second time.
She hated the feeling of shock and wonder that washed over her, hated when people got the jump on her. It was happening more often than she'd like to admit, of late, and the desire to break shit returned.
And she'd start with the doll that was propped lovingly on her pillow.
Her fingers dance lazily, but purposefully, the predatory grin she's been fighting finally breaking free when she feels the shift in the air. It doesn't always work - the silence is picky - but when it finally does, the silence breaks fast.
The air moves around her, though there is no sound to accompany it. She grins, her hand sliding lower, her lips slick as she sinks her middle finger inside herself. She waits, breathless, for the silence to move.
It doesn't.
She picked up the doll, torn between throwing it away and holding it close. She remembered it, distantly. A little girl, no more than four, and the men in coats with their drugs and their tests and their mind games. And a woman. A beautiful woman with long red hair, and bright blue eyes, and a sweet smile. And at four, Subject Zero was not yet broken, and she had smiled back and had been given the doll in return. It had been taken from her, she remembered, just before she'd escaped. She'd kept it in the drawer of the desk in her room. She'd been much too old at that point to sleep with it. Too bitter to remember the red-haired woman with anything but contempt. But she'd kept the doll. One, small, tangible object to prove that she was still a child, somewhere. But she'd come back, and it was gone.
And now it was here. The eye that she'd popped loose in a fit had been replaced. The clothes had been mended. The doll was filthy from long years of exposure, but it was whole.
More whole than its owner.
"What th-" she started, pulling the doll close to her. The child she had been brought close to the surface by the day's events. And her doll. And then the silence shifted. She clutched the doll in her fist, spinning on a heel.
Sitting on top of the stack of crates she had kicked on entering sat Kasumi. The little thief had been shaken by Pragia, even Jack had been able to that. She was holding a small white contraption, her eyes hidden by a holographic visor. And she was crying. Not the racking sobs Jack always figured people, other than her, had when they cried. Kasumi's face was impassive, but two lines of tears streaked down her face, which was still hidden by her cowl.
Though the room still seems empty except for her, something grabs her wrist. Stills her hand.
"You had a nightmare," the silence says, softly.
Jack glared at the intruder. Cataloged her presence, the silence, connected the dots that had for so long eluded her. Wondered, in a distant way, why the little thief had been watching her. Wondered what purpose it could serve. Wondered why she'd brought the doll.
"Shepard let me keep it," Kasumi said, lifting the box slightly then setting it beside her, the visor flickering once before disappearing, "I could get lost in the memories, if I wasn't careful."
"You have a point?" Jack asked tossing the doll onto the bed in what she hoped looked like a careless manner, even as she glanced over her shoulder to make sure it hadn't fallen.
"Letting go isn't easy. It's so much easier to fall into the past, the good and the bad. It was a good thing you did, back there. What they did... I don't know how you...you were...they...you...you were just children!"
"Yeah, well, it's not like it's any of your fucking business."
"You'd do well to be polite, honey," Kasumi said, smirking past her tears, her whole attitude shifting in a moment. A defense mechanism perhaps, or just a quirk of the small woman. "I didn't have to give you the doll. The biotic amplifier in its body is probably worth more than a small colony. I bet Shepard would love to have it. I hear we're on our way to see that information broker girlfriend of hers. That'd make a wonderful present for any asari."
Jack clenched her fists, barely resisting the urge to grab the doll and hold her close. At least she knew why they'd let her keep it, when they hadn't let her keep anything else. An amplifier. They'd probably taken the doll to put it in something a teenager was more likely to keep on her person. Or maybe they were just planning to put it in her own stomach. Subconsciously, Jack reached down, traced over the scars on her side. What was one more scar, when they had already given her so many?
"That's hardly unusual," Jack replies, attempting to free her hand. The silence chuckles, but doesn't let Jack move.
"Why the hell are you down here anyway?" Jack snapped, tossing herself onto the cot, careful not to land on the doll. She glared at the thief, crossing her arms over her chest.
"I wanted to see how you liked my present. And Jacob was ignoring me. Oh, that man is lovely, isn't he?"
Jack curled her lip. It wasn't that she didn't find Jacob attractive; there was just something about him that didn't sit quite right. And that didn't even take into account his being Cerberus. Screwing Jacob would be like screwing Lawson, only with less satisfaction for having defiled Cerberus' golden girl. She hadn't sunk quite that low. Let Kasumi have her games with him. "If you say so. Now get out."
Kasumi slid easily to the floor, her cowl falling as she landed. Her hair flared out as it was freed; long and black, it seemed to shine even in the dim light. It fell in waves over her shoulders, and, no longer tucked up in the hood, framed her face. Jack smiled predatorily. Strange what something so simple as a falling hood could cause. Maybe Kasumi would prove a better distraction than Chambers.
"You're tense. Relax."
"I just had a fucking nightmare, as you so graciously pointed out. And you stopped my attempt to relax," she adds, nodding down at her hand, which is still held against her sex, but unable to move.
"I thought that little show was for my benefit?"
Jack moved with the lithe grace of a jungle cat, stretching out from the cot, and capturing Kasumi against the crates in a single, easy movement. She stretched, pressing herself against the thief, one hand clamping Kasumi's wrists, the other pressed against the top of the stack of crates.
She debated holding her there with her biotics. It would be so simple to lash her down; to the floor, the cot, up against the wall. Shepard would never forgive her though.
She wasn't sure she'd forgive herself.
"You're full of yourself," Jack mutters, attempting to lift her hips up into her hand. She fails, and sags back against the mattress.
"You do set yourself up for the most horrible puns," comes the answer, accompanied by a warm chuckle. A moment later Jack's hand is replaced by another. This is smaller, but just as familiar. And it knows her just as well. First one, and then a second, finger enter her. They move slowly, teasingly, and are joined by a soft laugh with every stroke.
It was better to let her think she could escape. Jack was much less likely to notice her struggling if she wasn't holding her herself. She'd let her go, if she asked. But she'd see how far she could push it before she did.
"Fuck, Kasumi," Jack growls, writhing on the bed. The thief materializes beside her, the tattoo bifurcating her lip pulled wide in a Cheshire cat grin.
"Don't worry, we'll get to that," she says, stretching herself out over the former convict.
She ran her hand along the front of the crates, then up Kasumi's side. The smaller woman was shaking, and for a fleeting moment Jack considered stopping. The first word out of her mouth. That's when she'd stop.
She slid her hand up, fingers searching, finding, cupping a breast through the layers of fabric Kasumi wore. She felt the woman press back against her, and grinned.
"Well hurry...hurry the fuck up. Stop...stop fucking teasing me."
"All in good time."
"Fuck."
"Such a poet."
She leaned forward, intent on the curve of her neck. It was longer than she'd expected, the way the cowl lay over her shoulders. The skin was light, tender, and Jack knew it would bruise easily.
Before she got the chance to find out how easily, though, she found herself pinned to the floor. She didn't even remember the thief moving.
"What the hell?" she sputtered.
"I could ask you the same. Didn't anyone ever teach you the proper thing to do is take a girl to dinner first?"
"Screw you," Jack growled, trying to buck Kasumi off her. The woman didn't budge.
"Not today," she said, leaning low over Jack's back and pressing her weight down slightly.
"This is kind of hot, actually," Jack leered. And it was. Kasumi was nearly a head shorter than she was, and certainly didn't look strong enough to overpower her even if she had been distracted. There were few grown men that could overpower Jack, even discounting her biotics. She was not a large woman, but she hid a strength people only underestimated once. Kasumi hid more, it seemed. She was more than a little aroused at how easily the thief had bested her. Of course, she need only bring out her biotics, and the tables would be turned again, but she'd let Kasumi have this victory.
"Just get me off, already!" Jack groans, reaching up and pushing Kasumi's cowl down. She runs her fingers through her hair, and then pulls the thief close, kissing her forcefully.
Kasumi answers with a happy purr. Her hand speeds up, her thumb falling into a well-known rhythm. Jack bites back a scream, arching her back. If she hadn't known her so well, hadn't been on the receiving end of the almost violent ministrations of her lover's hand more than once before, she wouldn't have believed the tiny woman capable of such things.
"You have the manners of a dog, Subject Zero," Kasumi said, leaning lower and planting an open-mouthed kiss on her jaw. "You should do something about that."
Before Jack could speak, the weight was gone from her back, and the sound of the door opening and then sliding closed could be heard above her head.
Conscious thought becomes difficult. There is only Kasumi. And the silence.
The round was lost; Jack promised she wouldn't lose again.
Jack clings desperately at Kasumi's shoulders, no longer able to control her body. She shudders, her orgasm ripping through her. Her body arches, her breathing stops, returns in a gasp. A moan. A scream. Kasumi kisses her again, catching the scream, sharing it. Her hand slows, draws her out, wears her thin, until Jack isn't sure she can take anymore. She reaches down, stills Kasumi's hand, and brings the woman to lie beside her.
Kasumi didn't come back, but the silence did. Jack played at not knowing who was there when the air around her changed. She could play dumb when she had to.
It wasn't until after the cluster-fuck that had been the Collector ship that she came back, and revealed herself. Jack woke, to find the thief tucked in the cot beside her. She was fast asleep, her hair cascading across Jack's chest as she used the taller woman's shoulder for a pillow. She didn't consider it a loss that she didn't yell and send the woman away. Nor that they did not have sex that night. Or the following ones.
The sex came almost incidentally. A natural progression, something neither were even thinking about, or at least, Jack wasn't thinking about. It was sporadic, and passionate, and strange. And when they all went their separate ways, and she'd ended up on Grissom, doing her best to prevent what had happened to her from happening again, she'd found herself missing the tiny Japanese kleptomaniac. Her tiny Japanese kleptomaniac.
"What the hell are you doing here?" Jack whispers, nuzzling Kasumi's ear. The words come out in a breath, rushed and broken. The thief hums happily and shrugs out of her clothes.
"I missed you. Still can't get out of the system. You can only steal the same painting so many times from different people before it gets boring."
"You should try blowing shit up. Works for me."
"As subtle as a Reaper," Kasumi laughs, pressing her lips gently to Jack's.
She came to visit on Grissom. Showing up in the middle of the night, gone before first bell in the morning. Jack sometimes wondered if they were dreams, or would have, if not for the presents hidden in the smallest places of her room. A romance novel, probably older than that bitch Justicar, tucked behind her sock drawer, a priceless turian etched crystal, hidden under her mattress, a picture of a baby girl, held by a woman with Jack's eyes. From L & S was scribbled in a corner of that one, Jack figured that was probably Shepard and her blue asari toy. It had been displayed, proudly, on the dresser. Jack had tucked it away between the pages of the novel. The doll sat beside the book, clutching a glass rose. A memento, a memory. A warning.
And then Cerberus had arrived, followed closely by Shepard. They had gone and kicked the Reapers back into the black hole they'd come from. The explosions hadn't been nearly as satisfying as Jack had hoped. Being on the ground had serious disadvantages.
She'd met Kasumi afterward, briefly. She hadn't told her where she was staying. She knew it didn't matter. She'd find her anyway.
"But more fun," Jack answers, rolling Kasumi onto her back.
"We'll have to see about that."
They fall into silence. The silence of lovers, which isn't a quiet silence, but a comforting one. The silence of separation, which is a lonely silence. The silence of reunion, which is sorrowful and bittersweet and all encompassing. They fall into the silence of each other. And if Kasumi is gone in the morning, then that isn't unusual. And if she isn't, that isn't unusual either. And if Jack finds herself wondering what it is like to be normal, to have the house and the kids and the white picket fence, that isn't quite natural, but it has been happening more often lately, not that she will ever admit to it.
In the silence, though, whether they are together or not, they are content.