Sometimes, in the middle of the Normandy's nightcycle as the ship races time and light to another life or death errand, James dreams of going home.

Tonight there are scorched craters in the sand where he used to play, and the little house on the beach is nothing more than matchsticks that once dreamed of being a structure. Debris is scattered in a wide field, maybe from a Reaper strike, maybe from Alliance fire as they tried to hold off the neverending waves of enemy forces.

In his dreams, James wanders through the scraps of his childhood, idly kicking aside bits of wood and fabric and melted electronics. He's never sure what he's looking for. Photos? Pop never kept any. Pop?

Well... the Reapers never left corpses.

Just as well. It wasn't like he ever wanted to see that asshole's face again.

He's still standing in the wreck of his old porch when the hair on the back of his neck prickles. Shambling steps. He knows that sound, hears it in his nightmares, the ones he doesn't need to admit that he has because they all have them.

The husk is on a slow approach, coming across the beach. The sun is setting behind it, making it harder for James to see any detail. He doesn't need more than a thought before his sidearm is in his hand, charged and ready. A second thought, not even, and he brings the Carnifex to bear on the husk.

Fading, orange light gleams on the stray, incongruously blond bits of hair that still cling in a few long hanks to the husk's pallid scalp. The glowing eyes gleam a murderous blue.

James Vega, veteran of Fehl Prime and Vancouver and a hundred battles no one's bothered to name yet, freezes.

"Pop?"

It's a dream, he knows it's a dream, a damned dream, but fuck if the husk doesn't smell real - mummified flesh and dusty, hot electronics and something uniquely oily and foul, like low tide in a garbage dump. It sounds the same, it moves the same and it opens its tongueless mouth to moan...

Except that it doesn't.

The fucker talks.

"Miss me, boy?"

It's ten feet away, he's let it get that close ; James can't believe he let it get that close. He knows what a husk can do in melee and he's just got this fucking Carnifex and no damn armor.

"I said... miss me, boy?"

His father's voice booms out of the husk's lipless mouth, as clear as it was the day James left. It makes him want to wither, to crumble, but James Vega is a soldier now, a survivor. He's not a child anymore.

Blink.

The Carnifex steadies.

Blink.

Safety off.

Blink.

Pull the trigger.

The Carnifex whines. No heat sinks.

Fuck.

"Useless. Just like you." The husk laughs in his face, all rotten breath and dust, and clings to him. "Never be strong enough, boy. You'll never be strong enough to stand up to me."

Snarling, cursing his lack of armor and any weapon besides himself, James drives his free fist into the thing's face, rocking its head back to an unnatural angle.

"Don't you raise your hand to me, boy!" The husk balloons, warping itself into something huge and dark and twisted. The only things James can see clearly are the murderous eyes and the lank blond hair as it blocks out the fading sun. "You need another lesson, Jimmy? Just like her?"

The first blow knocks James back. The second lays him out. The third comes straight for his face, knuckles glowing with blue cybernetics and painted with his blood, just like old times, and he knows that this will be the beating he'd always been half-waiting for. The last one.


James Vega wakes. He's not screaming. He's not. He. Is. Not.

He scrubs a shaking hand across his face, feeling scars and stubble and cold sweat. It takes him a long time, longer than he wants to think about, to get his breath under control again. To stop shuddering.

But he does, because he is a fucking marine, and if he knows nothing else, he knows that.

As soon as he can, as quietly as he can, James slips out of his bunk. Nothing he can do about the hiss of the door hydraulics opening, but if anyone else wakes to see him leave, they don't say anything.

James doesn't look back as he catfoots his way out the door and to the elevator. He's not scheduled for a combat drop tomorrow, and that's a good thing, because he won't be sleeping anymore tonight. Tonight it's going to be him and his weights and his punching bag until he can't stand, until he's bleeding and every muscle is screaming.

Maybe then he'll sleep, and not dream, and then wake up, go on duty, then train again. And again. And again.

Until he's strong enough.