Characters: James V./Shepard (F)
Chapter Rating: M (language)

Prompt: Alphabet Dialogue (each line of dialogue starts with the next letter of the alphabet)
Summary: Shepard and Vega discuss the Crucible (ME3)

Friendship/Angst

Vega paced back and forth in the cargo hold, restless. Normandy was on its way back to the Citadel for the usual. The crew was going to squeeze in some shore leave while Shepard ran more of her savior-of-the-galaxy shit. Minor repairs had to be made to the ship, and they needed to restock their dextro supplies after having all those quarians on board.

Vega was glad the quarians got their homeworld back, don't get him wrong, but thinking about that whole mess just made him homesick.

And angry.

He couldn't believe they started a war in the middle of another fucking war!

The Normandy was barely out of the Perseus Veil, and they had the entire width of the galaxy still to travel. Which meant he had a lot of time to think. And therefore be homesick. And angry.

So he was pacing.

He didn't know how many circuits he had completed before he decided he could pace better with some alcohol in his goddamned system.

Which is how Vega found himself in the elevator, toeing its closed doors as he waited for it to stop at the Crew Deck. He glanced at his omnitool as the doors hissed open; it was pretty late. Early. Whatever. It wasn't time for anyone but the night shift to be walking around the ship, and they weren't nearly as chatty as the day crew. Which was good, he thought as he stepped out of the elevator and rounded the corner, because he wasn't going to make very good company right now.

He stopped mid-step when he saw Shepard's small form folded over the table in the mess hall. He spun on his heel to retreat, groaning. He really didn't feel like chatting, and chatting with Shepard somehow always got real personal. He couldn't count the times she'd asked him a perfectly innocent question and he'd responded with his deep-set insecurities and his insight on human nature and all his fucked-up family shit. Besides, she was clearly exhausted. She had collapsed on top of a heap of datapads, for Christ's sake.

Vega had only managed a few steps before he turned around again. Fuck. It wasn't her fault he turned into an emotional teenage girl whenever she tried to have an intelligent conversation with him. He should at least get her to her room, he thought, guiltily, instead of leaving her crumpled over a table like that.

He stopped, turning his back on her again.

Babysitting his commander wasn't really his job—at least, not anymore, anyway.

He spun around once more, his indecisiveness making him dizzy. It was one small thing he could do for the woman trying desperately to protect billions of people, he told himself. God, he felt even guiltier when he thought about it like that. What kind of an asshole ignores the galaxy's biggest gun just because they're feeling a little pissy about some house-guests who've already left?

Shepard's a big girl. She doesn't need your fucking help.

Maybe he could just grab the tequila and pretend he never saw any of this?

She may be a big girl, but she's got some big fucking problems, you know.

For just a second, deep in his gut, resentment burned brightly. He hated her for preventing him from returning to Earth, for not having the contacts to find out if his tío was okay. She had been such a role model for him his whole career, and she couldn't even save her own fucking planet!

Vega could feel the shame on his face when that second passed.

Come on, Vega. She raised you better than that.

The thought of his abuela's disappointment finally made his mind up for him. He cleared his throat loudly as he approached her side of the table.

"¿Qué pasa?" he asked, forcing some cheer into his voice.

He thought he had been loud enough to wake her up, but damn, she hadn't even twitched. The woman slept like a log. He supposed she'd have to, though, to get past that god-awful sound that was Garrus snoring. He reached out a hand to grab her shoulder.

x - X - x

She snapped her head up when he shook her, gasping in a huge breath.

"Relax, Lola, it's just me."

A baritone voice and a firm grip on her shoulder drew Shepard out of the vestiges of her nightmare. She found Vega's tanned, blurry face towering over her. She stared at him for a moment, then two, unsure of where she was. The details of the room behind him slowly slid into focus, and she remembered that she was on the Normandy. The second one—third one? The one with the kitchen but without the janitor-cum-mess sergeant.

She closed her eyes and rubbed her knuckles into them. What the hell had she been doing on the Normandy-with-a-kitchen?

She was almost certain Saren was dead. That had been months ago, right? Or, years ago, she supposed. She felt a giggle escape her throat before she could strangle it. Fuck! If she survived this war, she was going to make some therapist rich.

She ground her knuckles into her eyes a few moments more before the memory came crawling through the fog of her thoughts to the front of her mind: she had been examining war data. Assets. Liabilities. Casualties.

The Crucible.

Oh yeah. The war. Always the war.

She opened her eyes and looked up at her field lieutenant. His warm eyes held concern.

Fuck. She must look like shit if Vega had worry on his face. Shepard began to say something lighthearted and witty to offset his anxiety, but when she tried to speak she found her tongue was too dry to form words. She nodded instead, coughing a few times to clear the sleep from her throat, and surreptitiously wiped the back of a hand over her chin to check for drool. She rolled her neck and stretched out her back as Vega walked around to the opposite side of the table. A small part of her mind, the part that was always counting the exits and was aware at all times of how many people were behind her, was analyzing his steps. They were just a little too heavy to describe the sound his boot heels made as a "click."

She dropped her chin into her hand, eyes tracking his progress.

"So…what're you working on?" Vega asked, lowering himself into a seat. He motioned with his chin to the small pile of datapads she had collected in front of her.

Shepard sighed, pushing a datapad at him with her free hand.

"The key to our ultimate victory," she said, her voice raised to a pseudo-mysterious tone. She widened her eyes and wiggled the fingers of her free hand for added effect. Vega snorted out a laugh. Shepard scrubbed her face with her hands, her elbows resting on the mess table.

"'Ultimate victory?'" he echoed, wiggling his fingers in imitation. She shot him a narrow-eyed look between her fingers. He pretended not to see it, reaching over to drag the datapad closer so he could inspect it. He closed one eye and craned his neck to the side. "Very impressive," he said finally, with the tone of someone trying to find something polite to say into the awkward pause of a conversation between strangers. Shepard huffed out a noncommittal breath, and dropped her arms to rest on the table. Vega craned his neck the other way, to see if that made it any easier to decode.

Apparently it didn't. "What the hell is it?" he finally asked.

"Xenotechnology at its finest, from everything I'm told," Shepard replied, shrugging. Vega frowned faintly, squinting at the small print on the datapad's holo-screen.

Shepard regarded the Lieutenant as he struggled over the data. Frankly, she thought, she had no idea what the hell it was, either. Liara seemed convinced that it was a Prothean super-weapon of some kind, but she didn't have any concrete answers when Shepard pushed. About the Protheans, sure, but not about the Crucible. No one seemed to have any answers about it, and that wasn't the answer the Council was looking for when they pressed her about it, either.

She wasn't exactly well-versed in weapons of mass destruction.

Well, besides mass relays, anyways...

Shepard ran a hand through her hair, glimpses of orange scars on her scalp shining briefly before her hair settled back into place. She propped a temple on her fist.

She considered the datapad Vega was scrutinizing. Liara and EDI had hazarded a few guesses as to the Crucible's effect, at least. There was no mechanism in the Crucible plans for a projectile, they said. It was likely that it emitted something—a wave, a beam, something—that would theoretically be harmful to the Reapers. An electrical discharge wouldn't have a very large area of effect, but could hypothetically be amplified—the schematics certainly suggested that the Crucible was a massive device. However, it was unlikely that energy dispersed in that manner, even if intensified, would reach the entire Milky Way, and, even if it could, it would be an imprecise utilization.

An overload the size of a galaxy, imprecise? No way.

It was also possible, they said, that it was an EMP. However, such a pulse was limited in much the same way that a strictly electrical burst would be. Even if it could be limited to hostile electronics, it was doubtful that such an attack would permanently disable them.

It could have an apocalypse effect, Shepard supposed. The Prothean concept of total war put the turians' to shame, and God how she knew how desperate strategies became when wars dragged out. Everyone goes out with a bang. Even if you die, you win as long as the Reapers lose.

She had felt silly and paranoid when she asked, but EDI had conceded that it was possible that the Crucible used Reaper-specific code for targeting. Which, she extrapolated, would demolish anything that used strings of Reaper code.

Like the Normandy, thanks to that damned Reaper IFF. And EDI. And now, the entire geth consensus. Just like that, she could kill an entire people. And she would, she knew.

If it would end the fucking Reapers, there was no genocide Shepard wouldn't commit.

EDI had promised to alert the geth about her concerns, and had assured her that she herself would be more than willing to die to ensure that the Reapers were defeated. It hadn't made Shepard feel any better, hearing that, but she pretended it had for EDI's sake.

She would never be able to look Joker in the eye again if she had to add EDI's name to that fucking martyr board. She already hated herself for putting up Legion's.

EDI had dedicated her spare programs to brainstorming the possible outcomes of the Crucible. Knowing that the geth and EDI were working on contingency planning alleviated some of the worry, but…

But she can still hear Legion's voice, murky and far-away. It echoes strangely, overlapping with the Reapers' war cry. "This is not justice," he tells her. It sounds like it's coming from behind her, but when she turns around, she loses sight of the little boy, and it seems like she spends hours trying to find him again, running lost through a burning forest and a crowd of shambling ghosts.

She remembers talking to the Rachni Queen, on Noveria. "Songs the color of oily shadows." That's what it feels like. Like being... trapped... in a sour yellow note. No sky. No horizon. Just... voices. Shapes. Unnamable feelings that press in on her until she can't breathe.

She can't help but wonder if Legion is one of those greasy forms, drifting through her like—

"You okay?"

x - X - x

Vega had asked softly, but it still startled Shepard out of her revere.

He was looking at her, worry on his broad face. She met his gaze tentatively before her eyes skittered away. She opened her mouth to say something. Probably that she was fine, thought Vega, which was bullshit. If anyone wasn't fine, it was Shepard.

But she closed her mouth, chewing on the inside of her cheek. She picked at a spot on the table.

"Zaal'Koris used to be the one we hated dealing with," Shepard said. She glanced at him, wincing when she realized she had lost him. "At Tali's trial, he was such an ass," she tried to clarify. "Blabbering on and on about how the geth were the children of the quarians and the two species deserved to live in peace."

Shepard tucked her hands under her thighs. She stared off toward the prow. She spoke quietly, but Vega didn't have any trouble hearing her. The night crew didn't have many duties on the crew deck, and the small army of engineers on board kept the Normandy running as close to silent as ships got.

"Couldn't convince him that going to war wasn't genocide because the geth were just stupid machines," she continued. "Doesn't that make me a bit of hypocrite, now?"

"Everyone knew the geth were the bad guys, Lola," Vega tried. Christ, he felt like he was two steps behind. Her gaze was still fixed towards Normandy's front end. "Finding out later that most of them are actually friendly doesn't change the fact that they sided with the Reapers before."

She laughed, but it wasn't cheerful. "Gee, thanks, Vega."

"How are you supposed to know everything, Commander?"

Shepard was quite for so long that he thought she hadn't heard him. When she finally answered, her voice was terrifyingly small.

"It's just... what the hell business do I have being in charge of this war?"

"Jesus, Shepard—" he began. But what the hell was he supposed to say? The entire fucking galaxy had pinned its hopes on her. He knew she was good, but she was still human. Every single living thing was depending on her, and he didn't know any magic words that would make that all better. He ended up just staring at her, silently. Stupidly.

He knew it. He knew it! He couldn't manage one fucking conversation with her without it turning all deep and soul-searching. God. Dammit!

The silence grew heavy while he struggled to come up with some response. Part of him continued on its tirade of where good-for-nothing Commanders could shove their feelings. Part of him raged at that first part, because how many times had he been the one airing his doubts to her? Another part of him was trying to be calm, letting him know that he really needed to say something—soon—because not saying anythingwas not making this situation any better.

The last part of him was scared. He'd seen her low. He'd seen her real low, after Anderson stripped her rank, and after that fucking interrogation. He'd seen her too exhausted and apathetic to continue arguing with some upstart Alliance marine about how, yeah, she was pretty damn sure that the galaxy was in bad shape, because she fucking died trying to fix it. But he hadn't ever seen her uncertain. She had always known that yes, the Reapers were the bad guys, and yes, something needed to be done about them. She had always known that she was one who was going to do it.

Seeing her doubt herself made that part of him wonder if everyone was fooling themselves, thinking this was a war that could be won.

Shepard swallowed hard into the silence. She began to pick up her datapads with not-quite-steady hands, avoiding his scrutiny as she stood.

"Killing Reapers is what you do best," he said, finally, wincing. As soon as his lips stopped moving, he knew that it was the wrong thing to tell her.

Shepard dropped her armful of datapads, sending them clattering to the bench and the floor. She grabbed two fistfuls of her hair, squeezing her eyes shut.

"Likely as not, there're thousands of Reapers, Vega, and I've killed three of them!" Shepard shouted, her voice cracking into the range of hysteria. "Might as well have been none, considering how many people I've managed to not save!"

He stood up all at once, slamming his hands on the table. The motion and the noise finally drew her attention back to him. He stared her in the eye, daring her to look away.

"No one on this ship has any doubts about you, Commander," he told her, his voice leaving no room for uncertainty. They eyed each other for a few loaded moments, the air in the mess hall practically crackling with the sudden, unexpected tension. He was pretty sure belligerence wasn't the right approach, but it was the one he had awkwardly stumbled onto. He'd beat reassurance into her thick damn skull if he had to.

They stayed that way for what seemed hours to Vega, with him looming over her and Shepard poised to run. Her eyes darted back and forth between his, and he could see the aperture of her artificial irises adjusting focus. Then, finally—finally!—she sighed, bracing one trembling hand on her hip while her other hand rubbed her forehead shakily. Vega felt himself relax, and he let out a breath he hadn't known he was holding.

At least she hadn't cried. He didn't know what the hell he would have done if she'd cried. Made an ass out of himself, most likely.

"Okay," she said simply. Her voice was tired. The fight had gone out of it, but at least it hadn't gone back to the small one full of insecurities.

Vega considered it a victory. He gave her a hard look, waiting for a moment to see if she had any more outbursts that were going to erupt. Then he nodded, coming around to her side of the table to throw an arm around her shoulders and give her an affectionate little shake. It was crossing a line he hadn't ever crossed with a CO before, and he doubted he could get away with it any other time. He could joke about her tits all day, but neither of them were... huggy... people. Still, he didn't think Shepard would mind so much right now.

She gave him a worn-out smile with a tiny corner of her mouth. "Piss off," she said, without much heat. She ducked out from under his arm and gave him a half-hearted shove.

Vega ambled over to the cupboard under the sink. He was still restless (fucking Quarians), and now he was tense too, having spoken so earnestly with the Commander. He fished around for the low-grade bottle of tequila he and Cortez had hidden at the back. Cortez didn't like it, but he could go fuck himself. Booze was booze, in Vega's opinion, and if Cortez wasn't going to cough up some credits to set them up with the good stuff, then he could find someone else to drink with. Like Sparks. He was sure someone on this frigate could figure out a way to get the quarian drunk. It was filled with engineers, after all. And marines.

Both were a notoriously industrious people when it came to alcohol.

By the time he made his way back to the table, tequila and two glasses in hand, Shepard was gathering up all of her fallen datapads from the floor. He offered her a glass.

Shepard hesitated. She looked down at the pile of datapads, then at the bottle James held, then at James. He could see her debating, telling herself that she would really need to get more work done before she called it a night. Probably reports to write. She always had fucking reports to write. She was probably intending to work herself stupid so she could sleep tonight, Vega thought.

He shook the bottle of tequila at her, raising his eyebrows. Why work herself stupid when she could drink herself stupid instead? the gesture asked her seductively.

She rolled her eyes, and her face cracked into a reluctant grin. She swiped the tequila out of his hand and took a long pull, straight from the bottle. Vega laughed as she tried to recover from the burn of the low-grade booze. He sat back down, reaching across the table to reclaim the alcohol while she coughed wetly.

"Quinientos says you can't match me," he said, before tipping the bottle back.

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

Quinientos: five hundred

In case anyone is curious, I started writing at "X" and worked forwards and backwards from there. "P" was the hardest to write.