There they stood: an intergalatic mock-up of the Dirty Dozen, smoking craters in armor, unshowered, eyes drawn with fatigue, still smelling of bitter, dried blood, the sharp acerbic sting of Medi-gel, and the burning ozone of expended clips. They quieted immediately, all eyes on the woman who strode into the room, stripped off her helmet and tucked it beneath her arm.
"I'm impressed. I'm amazed," she started, projecting her voice to carry through the empty hangar, face a mask of firm impassiveness, eyes deceptively bright with adrenaline, and something much deeper and fiercer; pride. She bore a deep gash across one cheek from the corner of her mouth to one ear that hadn't been patched yet, her hair lay in sweat-soaked curlicues, unwashed.
"I don't care what planet, what race, what organization you call your home. I don't care where you came from or who put you there. Today, you—all of you—put your fear aside and acted anyway, and acted greatly."
Jack, grinding teeth against a nasty-looking lump on her side that probably contained broken ribs, leaned over sideways and was supported by Tali, who offered her shoulder and a reassuring arm.
"We knew not all of us would be coming back, so I asked you to give them hell. You tore in there like demons, kicked down doors, lit fires, blew it up and left the place in fucking shambles. They were target practice. We were told over and over this was a suicide mission—but what they didn't tell us was that it was that the suicide was for the Collectors to try to stand against us. THAT is what I'm talking about, ladies and gentlemen. THAT is why you're the best, and that is why I wanted you, and you specifically."
Grunt turned and punched Garrus excitedly in the shoulder. Garrus smirked, and nudged him companionably, acknowledging his first-time rush of triumph.
"We didn't lose a single person. You acted as a unit. A well-oiled machine, a single entity with one intent in mind—to take that place down. And we did. I am incredibly proud of each and every single one of you, and I am humbled to call you my squad. That's all I wanted to say."
"We are pretty good," Garrus agreed, loudly. "Handsome, too."
"A god-damned intergalatic sucker punch, is what we are," Jack agreed, "Fuck them and fuck their cocksucker Reaper buddies. They're next."
"Agreed," Thane added, hands folded behind his back.
"Handed them their bug asses! CRUNCH!" Grunt roared, triumphant, and the group laughed; a few clapped, and companionable chatter rose up again, at a notably excitable pitch. Joker, hunched on the edge of a shallow container, hopped carefully from his perch and limped over.
"I'm all for celebrations, but what now, Commander?" He asked, handing over a small data pad. Shepard gave it a cursory glance. "The Illusive Man can't be too happy that you blew up his new toy."
"Cerberus gave me a great gift on loan, and I repaid them on their terms. My term of service is up." Shepard replied, crossing her arms. She was a tall woman, maybe 5'10", taller than Joker was on his best day. "If any of you decides to stay with them, there's no bad blood. You're free now, and that includes free to re-assess your loyalties."
"Hm... yes," Garrus said, tapping his mandible idly. "Human loyalists, history of terrorist activity, noted for blackmail and espionage. Where do I sign up?"
Joker shook his head. "Ah, come on. My loyalties are with you, Commander—provided we don't have to brace for complete and total annihilation again. Well, for at least a week."
"Alright, enough of this self-congratulatory crap," Shepard said, trying not to smile, and waved her hand. "I want everyone to shower up, get some rest, and meet me in the mess at nineteen hundred. I want a drink and I'll be damned if I'm celebrating alone after what you sons of bitches put me through to get here."
The armor was dependable, sturdy, and had saved Shepard's life many times over. But it was hot—no part of it breathed, and it wasn't uncommon for her to snap and peel parts of it off to reveal that it had bruised her in interesting patterns while clamping down to keep outside forces out. Right now, she was solely concerned with getting out of it to give her poor calloused feet a rest, and wash off the sweat in her hair and under her arms. Her footfalls against the metal grating of the floor rang down the hallway—Good acoustics, she thought and caught herself chuckling in slap-happy fatigue. She placed a hand against the cherry red holographic lock on her door, entered her personal code, and then stood back as it obediently slid open.
There was a figure standing before her aquarium, either staring into the water or simply watching the fish, silhouetted against the calm blues of her cabin, hands folded behind its back.
Shepard was careful to continue completely inside the room, close the door and lock it, before tousling her hair with her fingers. "I'll never understand how you get here so fast," she said, "or how you learned my code."
"One has to have his secrets," Thane replied, and Shepard was half convinced he was being serious, before he glanced at her with a small smile. "Are you well?"
"Well, but sweaty. Tired." Shepard tossed him her helmet, and he caught it easily, set it down on her desk. "How was the speech?" She asked, pausing to contemplate before finding the seam of her gauntlet with her fingertips, pulling, and snapping it open. She worked on the buckles and joints holding her exo-suit's arm plating together, dismantling the jaw of the braces with nimble, practiced speed.
"Compelling, as usual. Are you are hurt?" He said, turning to place a hand against her jaw and gently tilt her face to get a better view of the slash on her cheek.
"Maybe, but Chakwas is still recovering." Shepard mused, and tilted her face back down. "Too late for medi-gel... it's already started knitting, thanks to the suit. Is it bad?"
"Your eye was missed by inches. The blood makes it look more severe than it seems to be."
There was a beat of comfortable silence. The calm sounds of the aquarium bubbling in her ear, the rough, hot texture of his hands on her skin lulled her into temporary complacency; against her better judgment, her body went on autopilot, closing her eyes and leaning her face against his touch, with a relaxed sigh.
"I should shower," she said, and to her own ears her voice was dreamlike, far away. "I'm falling asleep standing up..."
He moved in and placed a firm, chaste kiss against her uninjured cheek. "Then rest. We will speak later."
"You should stay with me," she added, attempting optimistic lightness, and didn't like the neediness that resulted in its place.
Thane looked at her. "I'm not sure that's wise, siha."
She knew that even if she'd asked him to stay, he most likely wouldn't; military ships with rules against fraternization were hotbeds of gossip on their own. A place like Cerberus, where people could in fact be fucking and it not be against any sort of official statute—all you had to do was be seen in the same place more than once and the rumor mill would start up in earnest. He'd insisted on skulking, avoiding meeting in the same place twice in a row to preserve her reputation, to say nothing of the respect of her squad; Shepard knew that if they knew she'd been romancing one of her subordinates, accusation of favoritism would soon start flying. Perhaps jealousy of other stripes.
In any event, it was best avoided until it couldn't be, and Thane knew this. He avoided putting her in a precarious position of being discovered. It was better this way—plus, she would be lying if she said the secrecy didn't excite her. He was an undoubtedly dangerous man, and seeing him in secret piqued silly parts of her suppressed romantic nature that hadn't been allowed free reign since she was an adolescent. It was their little secret, and well, the forbidden made even the most boring, vanilla relationship seem sexier.
"Goodnight," he added, flexing his fingers under her jaw in a gentle, affectionate caress, and turned on his heel to depart for her door. Jane reached out abruptly, grabbing one of his hands. He turned to look at her, openly quizzical, and stopped in his tracks.
"Thane--I'm glad that... I'm glad that you're... I'm just happy that the worst didn't happen. Thank you for coming back." She swallowed. "To me."
After it was out, it occurred to her that there were multiple wrong ways one could take this statement of gratitude, if one was inclined to do so. He had a way of making her doubt her own words, his direct nature cutting through her diplomatic bull and getting straight to the point, good or bad. Thane simply gave her fingers an appreciative squeeze, and released them.
"I came to tell you the same," he replied. "Rest well, siha."
The ambient light in her chambers turned his skin from a green to almost a seafoam color, reflected thoughtfully in the dark spheres of his eyes. He looked almost supernatural against this backdrop of ambient light and metal lattice gridwork, as if this was an environment in which Drell would naturally roost.
She watched him depart into the bright hallway, a swooping, almost slithering figure cutting through the clinically bright deck light, smaller than would be expected from his fearsome reputation, but solid and straightbacked. The door closed with a whoosh behind him and she stood here, listening for conversation outside her door. Nobody should be up here but her, and apparently nobody had been, or at least hadn't said anything to Thane on his way out. Simply his light footsteps, the shunting of the elevator door, and its appreciable ding as it descended the floors. Good. She let out a breath she didn't know she'd been holding.
Jane stripped and showered as quickly as she could, cleaned her wound (it was bad, about a quarter of an inch deep, straight through the fatty tissue and into the muscle, and Thane was right. It had landed maybe three inches below her eye, which made her nauseous upon realization of how close that one stray bolt had come to ending her life again). She didn't bother to dress before crawling beneath her sheets and immediately becoming pinned in place under the weight of her exhausted body, which she could have sworn, by now, weighed as much as the trunk of a great redwood tree.
"EDI," she slurred, slapping the bright azure-blue button on her bedside table. "Wake-up call for--"
"Mr. Krios has set your wake-up call for seventeen-thirty, Commander," EDI replied, "your non-urgent messages have been held."
Jane laid there on her bare stomach, puzzling this in her exhausted stupor, then smiled a little. "Thanks, EDI."
"Of course, Shepard. Logging you out."
Sleep came, heavy and thick, dreamless and colorless hours passing in what seemed like the blink of an eye.
Tali hiccuped.
The table erupted in a thunder of frustrated grimaces, sighs, and one particularly excited table-punch. Tali apologized, tittering, and hiccuped again, clamping her hands over the blinking vocal magnifier on her mask.
"I don't wanna hear it, you pussies," Grunt rumbled, laughing in his chest. "Another shot, come on! Tag it, Jacob!!"
"Girl, you're gonna kill us," Jacob protested, amused, half-drunkenly serving up ten more shots. "I thought you could hold your liquor? Come on." He handed Tali the first small, silver shot glass, and she squeaked a tiny 'thank you' in his direction between giggles.
Distributed, the shot "glasses" were clinked together, and down the hatch the shots went—Garrus slammed his cup rim-down on the table and shook his head, Jack stared at hers with a breed of hostile dislike before drinking back its contents, and Thane quietly tossed back his share, grimacing against its acrid aftertaste before stacking his cup on top of Garrus'. Kelly lay with her head on her arms, asleep after the first three, while Shepard and Chakwas cheered again, happily disposing of the multi-amino whiskey with a spate of excited girlish laughter. Samara's alcohol was swallowed patiently, deliberately, and she was so quiet that most forgot her presence under the flailing punches and yelling. Joker looked like he might be sick. Jacob looked bored, head leaned on a hand, pushing up one half of his face in a comical bunch.
"Whose idea was this?" Garrus laughed, indicating Tali, inadvertently crowding into Thane's space with his long arms. "We'd better have a DD, or this night may get ugly. I mean... uglier than ME. And that's... bad."
"No way anyfuckin'thing could get uglier than you, Dinobot," Jack replied, serving herself another shot from the bottle, impatiently.
"Hmm... is that really how you feel, Jack?" Garrus prodded teasingly, leaning his long arm across the table to swipe her shot and disposing of it in one smooth motion. "I think our little psychopath doth protest too much."
Jack shot him a look. "I'm not into fucking birds, but that's just personal preference, dick lover. Now give me back my glass."
"Heh. Can't I change your mind? I may be the raptor here, but I bet you you'd be the one singing when I got done with you." He tossed the glass back to bounce with a series of "tings" along the table and roll in a half-moon in front of her.
The group erupted into a chorus of "ooooh"s, hands clasped over mouths, and Garrus was a recipient of a rowdy, supportive push on both shoulders. Tali patted Jack's shoulder; Jack shrugged it off fiercely.
"BOTH OF YOU! BOTH OF YOU... shut up right now." Joker protested, swallowing a sudden, heaving burst of dinner trying to return back up his esophagus. He turned to the side, blocked by Grunt's huge form, and pushed on him futilely. "Move it, Thing, I gotta go hop on the porcelain bus."
Grunt stared back down at him, and laughed a bitter, territorial laugh that was half grimace and half threat.
"I'm serious man, don't make me puke on you. I've got too much to live for."
"Grunt, let him out," Shepard said, drunkenly waving her hand in a gesture that more said "no thank you" than anything else. "I'm not cleaning up any puke tonight, and I'd rather Joker's head stay where it is for the time being."
Tali hiccuped. Another rolling groan and a few laughs erupted, and Jacob sighed, long-suffering, before dishing up ten more shots.
"I'm sorry!" She insisted, breaking into another round of girlish, slaphappy giggling. "Heehee... keela, I am sloshed."
Shepard broke from her jubilant reverie with Chakwas to take a look around the bar. Artless and probably the cheapest drinking establishment there was on the Citadel, Hangnail had the esteemed reputation of being the only watering hole in the Zakera Ward, and if that didn't earn your trust, it had a maze of maintenance "alleyways" behind its back exit that led to a number of warehouses. These alleys were famous for hosting drug deals, shootings, and at least a monthly airlocking. Shepard paid that no mind, for now—she wasn't here to clean up, she was here to drink, maybe to fight, and to possibly get thrown out. She was a Marine; this was the naturally-occurring order of things when alcohol was introduced to one's system, no matter how level-headed the Marine in question was in sobriety.
The establishment was one big gunmetal pillar with plain polished-metal tables strewn throughout. No dancers, no fancy lighting, but the music was decent and the barkeep usually didn't alert C-Sec unless the display windows got broken. Smokey, and sleepy, despite its penchant for attracting rowdy military types who were keen on being the only rowdy military types in attendance, it was a decent drink if you were with friends, or people who would otherwise walk you back to your transit.
"I need some air," Shepard said, teetering to her feet. "You guys are too much at one time. I'll be back." Chakwas extended a hand and the two exchanged a quasi-drunken high five as Shepard shuffled by, clearing her hair from her eyes on the way out the door leading to the maintenance alleys at the back of the establishment. Samara warned to be careful; Shepard said she would.
"Will she be alright out there?" Kelly asked, then yawned, kitten like.
"If she's not, we're all fucked," Grunt said, shoving in next to her, almost twice her size, all teeth, staring eyes and rough skin plates; he looked like a textbook example of a predator ready to gobble up its prey, but Kelly didn't withdraw. "Whatever takes Shepard out would bring the damn galaxy down on its ass. Drink more." He shoved a shot glass at her, neglecting to note that it wasn't filled. Tali plucked up the bottle, and missed the glass by a good inch on attempting to fill it. Garrus leaned over, all gangly arms and shoulders, grabbed the neck, and guided it to the correct spot, messily tipping it back up after overpouring.
"Drink up, champ," Jack added, dryly, "you missed at least five."
Tali nodded, then hiccuped.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
The musty smoke-and-bodies smell of the Hangnail immediately dispersed with the hydraulic hiss of the automated doors, and a cool puff of air blew on the fine sheen of sweat forming on Jane's forehead. The "alleys" were a maze of interlocking corridors flocked in white plasteel panelling, cast in grey and sometimes black shadow from the dim industrial lighting scattered every thirty meters or so. The air was hardly fresh, but it smelled clean—cleaner than the bar, anyway. Shepard walked for a few moments, breathing deep, and sat down to give her tilt-a-whirl balance-threatening buzz time to wear off. From inside the Hangnail in the distance, she could hear Jacob yelling something, Chakwas yelling something in reply, then uproarious laughter. She shook her head. Let them decompress; they definitely deserved it, to say nothing of needing it.
I can't believe we actually beat them, she thought, angling back to her feet, not completely sober but not quite so dizzy. She took an experimental step, then another, and then began tottering back the way she came, bootheels suddenly feeling higher than their humble two and a half inches. The Reapers are still out there, sure, but they're incredibly weakened. My team... my people actually took out the Geth, and now the Collectors. I don't think there's anything in the 'verse that could stop us now, save our own overconfi--
As she passed the mouth of a dark-grey alley, something lashed out. Too slow to respond because of her inebriated state and immersion in her own thoughts, her hand was snagged, and she stumbled sidelong, knocked off balance, expecting a kick or an elbow to her exposed ribs below her extended arm. She however received nothing aside from a firm hand resting on her waist, after releasing her fingers; another hand joined her other side, to still her balance. She blinked and stumbled upright, ready to dart back to give herself enough room to lash out and punch, or maybe throw a knee, when she recognized her captor and her close-quarters combat muscle tension, instantly ready to swing and elbow or lock a joint, released.
Thane.
Jane blew out a relieved sigh, and placed her hands on the sides of his face, leaning forward to kiss him soundly on the mouth. He returned the kiss, moving towards her, and bumped her back gently against the wall. "I told them I would check on Joker." He explained, unprompted, and kissed the tip of her nose, before returning to her mouth. She denied him this, pulling away.
"Did you?"
"Yes." His eyes locked on hers; he smelled faintly of alcohol, predictably. "It helps he's occupied the men's restroom for the last twenty minutes."
"This whole secrecy thing is for the birds," Shepard sighed; her arms went over his shoulders, wrapping around his neck. Thane reached down and grabbed the underside of one of her thighs with his hand, lifting it to hook her leg around his waist. She pulled him to her and kissed him, hungry, the heat of his body and the strong yet plying pressure of his mouth rousing a steady, throbbing heat in her lower stomach. The immediate pressure against her hip suggested that the intent of this meeting was perhaps a precursor to something more than sweet gestures stolen in her quarters later, or perhaps a hot few minutes to tide one over until an appropriate window of time in the next week or two. She moved against him, the alcohol fueling her relative abandon, and his hands slid down her back to her rear end, grabbed her, and assisted in drawing her hips against his, keeping them both in time. He made a low, sighing noise in his throat, and drew his teeth across her bottom lip as she pulled away by a fraction of an inch, the breath taken from the both of them, coming only in soft, ragged gasps.
"Aggressive is a good look on you," she said, coy, playfully wriggling beneath him. Colors were beginning to distort, lines became sharper, perspective began to thin. It always happened when she kissed him; Drell emitted a neurotoxin, a natural defense that only seemed like a methanphetamine trip to humans, but it kicked in quickly. "Maybe we should drink together more often..."
He smiled a little, and shook his head, expression foggy and lust-bleary. "M--"
Down the alleyway, a piercing, shrill scream broke over his words, and they both snapped their attention to the source of the sound, momentary passion immediately forgotten, at least mentally. Predatory, sharp, like hawks focusing on the squeak of a mouse scampering across a field, they both disengaged, narrowing eyes and straining ears to pick up any additional sound. Immediately, Thane's hands dropped to his sides and he pulled back, and Shepard turned, bending her knees and starting forward. She held up a hand which clenched into a fist to tell him to stay where he was. Thane stayed, watching, hand hovering near his rectangular pistol holster, dangling from his hip. Shepard walked forward, cautiously, ears perked for any other noises—gunfire, fighting, scuffles. She shook her head, blinking her eyes hard against the swimming aftereffects of the neurotoxin, not severe enough to reduce her to a babbling heap, but thinning the solidity of her surroundings enough to make her intensely annoyed at her romantic timing.
There was silence, and then ragged breathing, a female voice. Young—late teens. Panicked.
"No, please! I have money. I'll give it all to you, just let me--"
A thud. A gasping scream. Shepard held up two fingers and motioned sharply, twice, to the side. With a flap of leather coattails and light thumping of footfalls, Thane was gone, into the shadows he'd emerged from earlier. Shepard continued forward, drawing her Predator; she kneeled low, weapon pointed forward, and silently rounded the corner.
Three figures—a turian, a batarian, and a human. Former, both male, latter female. The turian had his hand buried in the woman's hair, pinning her against the wall. She screamed again, and he drew back, slamming his fist into her jaw, a gout of dark blood and displaced teeth pouring from her injured mouth onto her shirt, her feet, the ground. She started sobbing. He slapped her, hard, and then covered her mouth.
"Money... cute." The batarian chuckled. "You do realize what part of the Citadel you're in, right? We don't appreciate Squishes, especially not screamy Squish bitches who bring down the value of our lovely neighborhood."
Squish? Shepard thought, unable to place the colloquialism.
The woman was making noises now, half between a scream and a sob, and Shepard could recognize what she was saying even through her broken jaw and her muffled voice—Please don't kill me.
The batarian simply made a disgusted, dismissive noise, and began to unbuckle his belt.
She had seen enough.
Shepard squeezed off a shot, blasting a hole in the paneling to the turian's immediate right. It worked; both of them took their focus off of the woman, to Shepard, and off of the darkness behind them.
"What the fuck do you think you're doing?" Shepard called, mustering all the command her voice could propel in her current state, but the amount of alcohol in her system and her hormones, firing off in unfulfilled, disappointed anger, made this a task of almost Herculean proportions. Her nerves were on edge from a number of different stimuli, and if this was what it looked like, some indiscriminate violence was going to be done before the night was over.
The woman snapped her head to the side, eyes pleading, rimmed with tears, blood dripping onto her shirt between the turian's fingers. She started screaming what sounded like "help", and Shepard locked eyes with her, then put her attention back onto her assailants.
"Get the hell out of here, bitch," the batarian replied, with a detached, sneering tone. "This is a personal dispute. Or you're next, after this one."
"Nobody's next, because nobody is getting hurt today in the first place," Shepard responded, striding towards them purposefully, gun trained on the batarian's forehead. "Drop the hostage and leave or this is going to get very ugly, very fast."
As if on cue, the darkness behind the turian started to gleam a dark, jeweled green; low to the ground, creeping like a spider, Thane approached from the larger man's far side, and grabbed his spindly wrists, yanking him in a semi-circle and twisting them hard. A dry snapping rung out in the throbbing quiet as both sets of bones were easily, swiftly broken. The woman, dropped to the ground, clutched her stomach and doubled over, sobbing. Thane, still holding the ends of the turian's broken arms, leaned back and delivered a hard kick to his midsection, knocking him into the batarian, who had started to draw a pistol. Both tumbled forward to the ground. The batarian's gun misfired, sending a shot into the air. Shepard brought her heel down on the pistol's butt, pinning his hand beneath it and crushing the heatsink in one fell swoop. She kicked it away, holstered her own gun, then leaned and grabbed him by his collar, dragging him out from under the fallen turian, who was howling with pain, cradling his broken wrists to his chest. Thane pressed his foot down on the turian's throat, bringing his howling to a stuttering, garbled stop, but his gasping breaths continued.
"You have five seconds to tell me exactly what's so personal as to necessitate rape, you piece of shit," she snarled, hauling him forward and slamming him into the wall again. "Or my friend here is going to break more than your wrists. Talk."
The Batarian tried to push Shepard back, overpower her, but her knee found his lower stomach with a loud, dull thud, and he doubled over. She picked him up, leaning into him, and slammed him into the wall again.
"Don't try anything like that again," Shepard warned, voice grave. "I pass tougher things than you in my stool. This is your last chance."
He swallowed, groaning, lips spit-shiny and grinned at her, a row of sharp daggerlike teeth reflecting the dim light from overhead.
"Squishes... all the same," he laughed, then coughed, phlegmy, and looked at her with a breed of open hostility that made her spine run cold. "Thinking you own the whole galaxy. Trying to run us over, take everything we've built and make it yours. You're in the wrong part of town at the wrong time. Bitch."
Shepard scrabbled for purchase, trying to put this, any of it, into perspective. "What did you call me?"
"Squish," Thane interjected quietly, while restraining the thrashing turian with his foot. "Racist terminology for humans. No exo-suits, natural armor, or metal plating." Then, with disdain, "Puerile."
"...you attacked this woman because she's a human?" Shepard balked, feeling her knuckles draining of blood, her grip was so hard. She shook him, his head bobbed stupidly. "Hate crimes? Really? This is because of the fucking council, isn't it?! Over politics?" This is how you repay ME, a human, for saving all of you? Racist epithets and sexual assault? She thought, but did not say, and immediately dismissed it—making this personal wouldn't help anything.
The batarian snorted deep and spit a wad of mucus into her face. "FUCK your council, you dizzy Squish bitch. We didn't need you for thousands of years and we don't need you n--"
His sentence was cut short by Thane landing a notably ungraceful, incredibly aggressive punch dead-center on his jaw, audibly shattering the bone underneath layers of rubbery tendon, and crumpling him over, unconscious, in one clean hit.
Shepard took a shocked step back, suddenly suspending dead weight, and allowed the batarian's lifeless body to fall to the hard ground. She wiped the gummy spit from her cheek with a sleeve of her shirt and looked at Thane with a species of surprise that wasn't altogether pleasant.
It didn't go unnoticed. Thane's expression was pinched and angry, an emotion she wasn't used to seeing on him—it didn't suit him. "Perhaps that was unnecessary," he said, finally, and shook his hand to dull the pain in his knuckles. "My... apologies, Shepard."
"The least that he deserves," she finally negotiated with herself.
The turian, from below them, his voice now free, took a shocked swallow. "S... Shepard? Commander Shepard?? I--" He scrambled to his feet, which took longer that it normally may have, considering the loss of his hands, the trips, and the falling off balance that entailed. Her full title invoked, Jane met his eyes with a hard glare. "Hey man, this was all his idea. I didn't want to take her back here, he's got info on me and—you gotta believe me." The craven fear in his voice was palpable—he started to back away. "I don't want no trouble from you, man, this is all a misunderstanding."
Shepard waved her hand in front of his face, her skin glowing bright gold, the frame of a jointed gauntlet projecting from seemingly nowhere. The hologram disappeared, and the turian looked at her, desperately confused.
"There. Now I have your clan markings. If I so much as hear about a turian from your clan harming a hair on the head of any 'Squishes' from here on out, I'm coming after you. And believe me, I have a way of getting what I want. Now MOVE."
The turian, sensing his salvation, turned and sprinted from the scene, leaving his batarian counterpart behind. Shepard approached the human woman, lying fetal on the cold, hard ground, still sobbing, and Thane followed suit. Shepard crouched, looking at the woman's jaw. Not broken, but it was damn close.
"Thane, go get Chakwas," Shepard said, turning to him. Thane nodded, turned on a heel, and was off. Shepard turned back to the form on the ground, and placed a hand on her shoulder. "You're safe now. Can you sit up?"
After a moment, she nodded, eyes squeezed shut. She took a breath and then propped herself up on a hand, her glossy black hair a fussed raven's nest of what it probably was before the attack. She pulled down her skirt, which had been disturbed by being thrown on the ground and luckily not by her captors, with an expression of morbid, tortured humiliation. She was gasping for breath.
"I thought..." she gasped, and sniffed deep, wiped her bloody mouth with the side of her hand. "I thought they were going to... oh, God..." The woman covered her face with both hands, and began to sob again in earnest.
"You're okay now. I'm here. Nobody's going to hurt you—we have a doctor coming, okay?"
The woman nodded from behind her hands.
"What's your name?" Shepard asked, gently. It took a solid thirty seconds for a reply, but one came, nevertheless.
"...A... Angela."
"Okay, Angela. I know you probably don't want to right now, but I'd like to eventually take you to one of my friends in C-Sec--"
"No," Angela said suddenly, eyes as wide as dinner plates, shaking her head exaggeratedly. "NO, I can't. I can't—they'll come back. They know if you talk to C-Sec. They'll hurt us... they'll hurt me."
Shepard squinted, tilted her head. "Listen, Angela, nobody's going to hurt you. I'll make sure of that. Who is 'they'?"
"I'm a human. They'll hurt me if I go to C-Sec," she repeated, pleading, "please don't make me go."
So they were targeting you because you're a human, Shepard thought, how bad have things gotten while I've been away? I had no idea about any of this...
Shepard opened her mouth to speak again, but a train of hurried footfalls clicking down the corridor quieted her questions. She unholstered her pistol, and held a hand out to Angela, put it on her shoulder. Around the corner jogged Chakwas, medical kit in tow, followed by Thane, and finally Garrus. The smallest of the three jogged over, stepping over the batarian's unconscious form, to Angela, where she kneeled and began to inspect her facial injuries.
"What a damn mess," Garrus mumbled, taking in the scene with an angry, clicking twitch of his mandibles. "Hey Sleeping Beauty, your hundred years are up," he rasped, giving the Batarian a swift, thumping kick in the ribs. The man on the ground awoke, gasping, and cursed loud enough to echo down the hall, clutching his side. Garrus leaned and grabbed his arm, hauling him easily to a standing position.
"There were two. I've got the turian's retinal scans on my omni-tool," Shepard offered, "I'll link them over, just tell me when."
Garrus looked at Shepard, then at the batarian. "Well, well, well. Unlucky day for you and your scum of a buddy, huh? I'm sure Bailey will love to see your smiling face. March, idiot." He gave the Batarian a solid shove, sending him stumbling, and the two were out of sight, down the corridor.
Thane leaned over to collect a small, off-white object from the floor. He presented it silently to Chakwas; one of Angela's teeth.
"Angela—you told me that they would hurt you if you implicated them or took them to C-Sec," Shepard continued, "and that they attacked you because you were a human?"
Angela nodded, and sniffled. She had thick, dark eyebrows, and deep brown eyes, an extremely expressive face. "P-please tell your friend not to name me. We've already had enough trouble as it is."
Chakwas paused. "Your family?"
Angela shook her head. "Humans. Its... its been bad. Real bad, if you're a squish. I'm trying to make money to move out of this fucking place. I figured today would be my day to get 'locked... but I guess not."
"How long has this been going on?" Shepard asked, disbelieving.
"Months... but the racism and the weird looks have been going on for years. Worse than normal. Ever since the Council was put in power... all humans, you know, up on the Presidium. It didn't used to be that way." She sniffed again. "They say it's some human supremacy movement, the police, and then the Council. The violence is a kinda new thing, though. Recent." Her face was suddenly a portrait of resentment, of pain. "They take it out on us. It's not our fault. We didn't do it. We didn't put them in there."
A solid, creeping chill gripped Shepard's spine, and traveled south. Bailey had told her that anti-human sentiment had gotten bad, and she'd assumed he meant politics, even defended the system that served as its catalyst; why hadn't he mentioned anything like this? Why hadn't he put a face, faces, on the problem?
"Can I go?" Angela asked, shaky. "T-this is my fault, anyway. I shouldn't have been walking around down here after work. I can go to the doctor later." She got to her feet, gingerly straightening her hair with her fingers, and Chakwas leaned back on her haunches.
"I would like for you to stay, Angela," she said, comfortingly. "We can help you, and you may have internal bleeding."
There was a beat of nervy, helpless silence, and Angela sniffed again, wiping the remaining blood from her face and looking at it. "N... no you can't. Thank you, whoever you are. I just need to get some sleep. I can take care of this tomorrow. I'm just tired. Thank you."
She brushed by Thane, who made no move to stop her, and quickly turned the corner, jogging out of sight, wiping her eyes.
The three stood, quietly.
"The anti-human sentiment is worse than it appears on the surface," Thane observed, "it has transgressed politics."
"This can't go on," Shepard said, firmly. "Not in our galaxy. We need to find out who these people are, who they're working for, and stop them."
Chakwas thought, and softly added, "And if they're not working for anyone, Shepard?"
What if this really is the natural progression of your actions? What if these people are acting alone—what if there is no central, easy fix?
Shepard swallowed, hard, the brackets around her mouth—put there by age, deepened by stress—darkening as her lips pressed into a line.
"...I don't know."