She's the girl that is good at secretly loving people with all her heart…but she's not good at letting them love her.
"Damn it, Shepard!" I sprint desperately across the warehouse expanse, a trail of biotic attacks, explosions, and gunfire chasing me. Scraping my knees as I slide into cover, I look down at the struggling Shepard. A chunk of shrapnel from a frag grenade has penetrated the armor in his thigh and already a thick trail of blood is oozing across the ground.
He props himself against the crate and tugs at the intruding metal from his leg with a grunt. "Let me," I say, shoving his hands out of the way as I begin to pull his armor plates off and dress the wound.
"Jack," Shepard says with a smug grin, "Is this an act of…compassion? From you?"
Fuck it, he's on to me. "Don't flatter yourself," I hiss, ripping the shrapnel from his leg with more force than necessary. I grin inwardly as his precious little smirked morphs into a grimace.
"I don't know," he argues calmly. "You made a dangerous risk running over here like you did."
Damn this man and his goddamn intuition! "Shut the hell up before I kill you myself."
Despite the battle raging around us – despite the cries of our enemies and our allies, despite the dizzying flash of blasters and the ear-splitting explosions that leave your head ringing – I manage to zone out everything except this man in front of me. My focus is now trained on him, on his heaving chest and scarred, sweaty face that somehow makes me weak at the knees. Why does he have this effect on me?
"Thank you, Jack," Shepard whispers as I apply the last bit of Medi-gel to his wound.
"This had nothing to do with you," I growl. It had everything to do with you.
"What?"
"Listen buddy, I'm only helping you because we'll lose this battle if you can't fight." I'm only helping because I want to, because I want to touch you and help you and keep you safe; because something about you makes me want to fight off a Krogan army just to save you.
I can't let him know that I care; caring is weakness, and Jack has to be strong.
"Jack," Shepard says after the battle is over, his assault rifle hanging from his side as he half-limps towards me. "You were hit." He motions to my arm where a patch of skin is stained with crimson. "I'll get some Medi-gel-"
"Just a graze," I reply, pulling away. "I can take care of it myself."
I can't let him see my weakness.
She's the girl that's good at being there for the ones she cares about – she'll catch them when they fall, pick them up if they hit the ground, hold them together when they're about to break – but she won't let them be there for her.