Mass Effect is the property of Bioware.
A/N: I can't believe I'm doing this, holy hell.
Okay, so. At the conclusion of Rock Steady, a couple people inquired about the possibility of sequel material. This is...not a sequel, per se—I want to wait until Mass Effect 3, in the interest of having some actual canon to go off. However, it is sort of a...sidestory...type...thing taking place after Rock Steady. Basically a small chunk of plot resolving some loose ends from the main story (ha ha, I say "small" and yet you and I both know I'm going to get started and before long it'll be as long as RS was. God damn it).
When Kasumi was released as DLC, I was already about halfway done with the story proper, and it wasn't exactly possible to retroactively throw her in the Normandy's crew; as such, she ended up holding an outside role for a few chapters, more of a guest star thing. I really like the character, though, hence the premise of this story (seriously, if it were possible to have three slots under the "character" tab, Kasumi would have the third). Expect it to be about the same rate of updates, as I'm working on my PhD now, so there's going to be a lot of stuff that takes priority, haha.
I'm going to shut up now and stop boring you with my rambling; as a final note, you may wish to read Rock Steady before this, if you haven't already. (It's not essential, but it will help.) Thank you, and enjoy.
"...and I kind of need to be hiding until it blows over, soooo...can I stay with you two for a while?"
When you were on your own in the Terminus, you tended to figure out how to read people and situations very quickly if you wanted to survive. You figured out when people were outright lying to you and when they weren't quite telling the whole truth, maybe massaging it just a little to make themselves look better for you. Generally, the time when you wanted to exercise this ability was when they were asking for favors, because it was then that they'd really be out to make you feel comfortable about them. After spending enough time exercising this ability, you'd develop sort of a sixth sense for truth-stretching, an innate bullshit detector. You could tell when people were making offers that were not nearly as innocuous as they sounded.
Right now, Subject Zero, mass murderer, world class biotic, and all-around badass, was one hundred percent convinced that this was one of those offers.
"Here?" she asked, actually taken aback for a moment. "Um. Abso-fuckin'-lutely n—"
"Of course you can." The interruption came from Thane Krios, assassin extraordinaire and her current housemate and...er...well, it was complicated. Occasionally Jack tried to come up with a word for exactly what the drell was to her; she generally stumbled over a variety of terms with disturbingly far-reaching implications ('paramour', 'lover', 'boyfriend', etc), but at this particular moment she was quite willing to settle on 'ball and chain', given how he was reacting. "You've been perfectly agreeable in our past dealings; I don't see any reason not to help you for a few days while you're down on your luck."
"Krios." That was the 'you are going down a road that will end in tears and biotically-enhanced punches to the mouth' tone of voice.
Thane was about as affected by her attempt at intimidation as a thresher maw under small-arms fire, of course; he was an unflappably ice-cold operator when he needed to be (something Jack found pretty damned hot, but it made it difficult to win arguments with him, and for someone who liked winning as much as Jack did, it was maddening). "Why don't you come into the kitchen? I'll make tea for the three of us."
He was addressing the third column of their conversation, who was currently perched on the sofa, on the other side of his Nos Astra apartment's living room: Kasumi Goto, master thief and one-time collaborator of the pair. Apparently in need of a place to stay, she had more or less ambushed both of them as they entered the apartment and (after a few guns were hastily drawn) explained her purpose in being there and made her request.
"Thanks," she exclaimed, both gratitude and relief evident in her voice. "Tea would be nice, after the last couple days..." A small, hopeful smile formed under her black hood as she followed Thane out of the room.
As far as people went, Jack didn't find Kasumi particularly offensive. (Admittedly, part of this was due to having only been around her for an hour or two, total.) She was...annoyingly cheerful at times, and she almost constantly spoke in a playful, sing-song 'I know something you don't know' kind of way, certainly. With that said, she'd done Thane a good turn by helping him get into Elias Kelham's penthouse, so that was a point in her favor. Plus she was really laid-back—smoother than Mannovai shishah smoked through ice water—and easy to work with, which was a plus on its own.
With that said, the problem with having Kasumi stay with them at the moment was, admittedly, a selfish one. After several months of shooting Collectors, mercs, and husks, months of surviving exploding buildings, swarms of ravenous alien bees, and lectures from Miranda Lawson, Jack and Thane had finally gotten a chance to settle down and live out what time they had left together in happy, content peace. And now, literally within ten seconds of them stepping through the apartment's front door, a tiny (seriously, even Jack had a few inches on her), hooded kleptomaniac was right in the midst of it, blowing their 'vacation' all to hell.
The convict sighed. She wanted Thane, and she wanted him bad, like a volus wanted stock exchange reports. And it wasn't like she hadn't tried to delay gratification—they'd agreed that getting through the mission took priority over any kind of entanglements, all the better to focus totally on each other later. (The decision to wait until she was sure it was what she wanted had been a respectful gesture on the drell's part, of a sort Jack was totally unaccustomed to. If anything, it drew her to him more: people still treated each other this well? She wouldn't have believed it if she hadn't seen it.) With that said, the mission was over, and as much as she tried not to consider how Thane was living on borrowed time, Jack was determined to savor every moment of what they had left, and it was going to be very difficult to do that with Kasumi bouncing around the apartment constantly.
"I...well, I guess I let my emotions get in the way of my professionalism," the thief was saying as Jack entered the kitchen. "I didn't really plan, I just...I went to the party, and I tried to find a way into the vault, but the security was too good. I wasn't thinking straight; I should've cased the place first, done the research before I tried to play with that kind of high stakes, but..." Kasumi seemed uncharacteristically sober; she didn't look at Thane as he prepared the tea, but instead rested her face in her hands, staring down at the dinner table's surface. "...Oh, Keiji."
Jack took the opportunity to glance around the room. Thane's kitchen was as characteristically spartan as she had expected, although one decoration did stand out: a holo-painting, next to the window, of a landscape. Specifically, a desert at night, stretching out as far as the eye could see. Slightly left of the center, a massive stone ziggurat rested atop the dunes, its stairs bordering the full moon in the sky. It was a very Thane kind of painting, she mused.
The drell in question returned to the table, politely pulling out a chair for Jack before he sat down and distributed three mugs of tea. "Ms. Goto has acquainted me with the details of her situation," he informed Jack, and paused to take a long sip from his drink, causing his dewlap to ripple and flex with the swallowing motion. "Her business partner has recently been killed in action, and she's interested in recovering his graybox, in the interest of giving him a proper service." Thane set the mug down and steepled his fingers. "Unfortunately, the graybox is currently being held by a Mr. Donovan Hock, which...complicates the issue of retrieval."
The mention of Donovan Hock drew a grimace from the biotic. "Hock? Kind of a big fish you're fuckin' with, Goto; Hock's old money from Earth and he's connected like you wouldn't believe."
"So I've learned," Kasumi answered ruefully. She sipped at the tea, and her face immediately scrunched up (at least the part that was visible under the hood); Jack made a mental note to prepare for extreme bitterness upon drinking from her mug. "And now he knows who I am and what I've done."
Carefully, Jack lifted the mug to her lips and took a sip of the tea, bracing herself for the worst. Ha, it wasn't that bad. To think she'd been concerned about looking awkward in front of—
"That means it'll be twice as difficult for us to get close to him."
She choked on the tea.
Thane blinked with concern as Jack coughed and clutched the table's edge. "Siha, are you all right? Does the tea disagree with you, or—"
"Wha, wait, what do you mean, us?" Jack sputtered through a fit of coughing. It took her a second to calm down, but she didn't really wait to be articulate before glaring at Kasumi. "When did Thane and I volunteer to help you try to shake down a guy with more money than God? Staying here's one thing, Goto, but we're not doing your goddamn dirty work."
Kasumi winced at the vitriol in the biotic's voice, but even if she was going to mount a defense of herself (which didn't seem likely, given how cowed she looked), Thane spoke up first. "Jack, that's enough. It shouldn't take more than a week, at most. I don't see why we can't help Ms. Goto, seeing as how she's dealt fairly with us in the past."
"Damn it, Thane!" She hadn't realized quite how angry she was until she found herself standing, one fist jarring the table with its impact. All three mugs jumped in place, nearly sloshing their contents onto the tabletop. "What the fuck, seriously? This was supposed to be our time. Ours. Last I checked, we didn't spend the last month getting our ass shot off by Collectors just so we could spend our retirement trying to steal a damn graybox."
"I can explain," Kasumi began, but that was apparently not going to fly, as a second later a biotic field had lifted her bodily from her chair with a yelp. The next thing she knew, she was being rapidly towed from the kitchen by a familiar, tattooed arm. "Wha—what are you doing? Let go! At least hear me out!"
Her protestations had done basically nothing to deter Jack, who was in the midst of carrying the thief to the door under one arm (the great thing about biotics was that they made lifting things infinitely easier). "Uh, nope, sorry. We've kinda got some things of our own that we're focusing on at the moment, so if you'd kindly fuck off, that'd be great." She was not going to have her hard-earned free time interrupted; there were only a few months of it available to her, and spending them getting shot at by a legion of private security in the interest of finding a dead man's memories was not on her priority list.
She could hear Thane behind her, his voiced filled with concern. "Siha..." Oh no you don't, Krios, you don't get to be a bleeding fuckin' heart this time. "Try to reconsider before you do someth—"
"Please!" Kasumi begged, clinging to the convict's waist with both arms. Despite the biotic field, she was doing a fairly successful job at encumbering Jack's movements and making herself difficult to drag through the air. "Don't throw me out! I wouldn't have bothered you, but they're looking for me—all of my safehouses are being watched, and...and I don't have anywhere else to go." To Jack's disquiet, she looked to be on the verge of tears—a jarring departure from her normal blasé cheer. "Look, all I need is somewhere to stay for a few days, until I can figure out how to get the graybox back. You don't have to help with the heist, letting me plan here will be fine. Jack, I have to get it, it's all I've got left of him. I'll be out of your way once I get the box, just...please, let me do this first. Please."
Looking down at the thief's pitiful state, Jack was surprised by a flash of insight, and the slow trickle of something she had not experienced in as long as she could remember: empathy.
When she compared their situations, there wasn't much to indicate that she wouldn't be the same way in a few months. Bereaved. Collateral damage from a life cut way too short. Desperately seeking any kind of memory she could hold on to, anything that would remind her of those better days. In light of that, Kasumi's distress was a knife in the heart—and to Jack's begrudging annoyance, she found she understood how the other woman was feeling, and doubted she would react any better than Kasumi had.
"...Fine."
She felt a defeated sigh escape her lips; half a year ago she wouldn't have been nearly soft enough to give in. Releasing the thief, Jack dropped the biotic field and stepped back. "Only until you get the box back, and then you're gone."
Kasumi scrambled back to her feet, a renewed brightness in her eyes. "Thank you!" Unexpectedly, she pulled Jack into what probably qualified for the Galactic Book of Records 'most awkward hug ever' category. "Thank you so much...I promise you won't regret it." Jack, not being used at all to this kind of situation, was uncomfortably shifting in Kasumi's arms when she glanced over the thief's shoulder and saw possibly the most disconcerting look Thane had ever given her. It was...very knowing, for lack of a better word, and she could swear there was a hint of a smirk on his-
-Oh. Oh god.
Was this what being good felt like?
Fuuuuuuuuuck.
"Can't believe I agreed to this."
It was later in the night, and as Kasumi curled up on the couch in the living room, Jack found herself studying her reflection in Thane's bedroom mirror. With her harness draped around her neck, she examined the curves and angles of her naked torso, checking for any new scars she might have picked up from the fiasco in the Collector base. Thankfully, it seemed as if her ink would go unmarred another day.
"It's our duty to leave the galaxy a better place than we found it, siha," Thane admonished, coming back from the closet and settling down on one side of his bed. He, too, was shirtless, to Jack's immense glee, and she unabashedly ogled his sleek, smooth-scaled musculature in the mirror. "Besides, you saw how dismayed she was. That graybox is hers by right; no one deserves to be denied the memories of those they held dear."
"Mm." She tossed the harness aside, crossing the room and climbing onto the side opposite Thane. Getting the riot boots off was a chore as always, but she'd manage shortly. "I got the impression...maybe I'm wrong, but from the way she reacted I'm guessing they were a lot more than partners. A lot of times, you operate with somebody that close to you all the time, you kinda fall in together—hell, sometimes it's even serious." That particular talking point was...not really one she cared to think back on. It would be nice if their final months together weren't constantly dominated by thoughts of loss.
The boots clunked onto the floor (perhaps a bit more loudly than intended, but they were heavy as hell), and Jack took the opportunity to lay back and rest her head on her pillow. "Think I'm right?"
"I do," the assassin conceded. "I have to confess that I was largely motivated to help her because of that." He stretched out, resting his arms under his head, and stared up at the ceiling. "It's a lonely road she's going down, and it would be remiss of me not to do what I can to help her through it, even now."
She didn't need to ask to know Thane was referring to the loss of his wife. He'd said it was his fault, back when they met with Kolyat, but apart from that, Jack didn't really know much about the circumstances surrounding her death, or indeed about the woman herself. It was obvious he took loss better than she did...which admittedly hadn't been a problem for the last few years, up until now.
Against her better judgment, she decided to pry. "Do you...think about her often?"
Thane shifted in place, pursing his lips and apparently thinking of how best to respond. Finally: "Not as much as I once did. Particularly these days, I prefer to think of her less as a symbol of my failure...doing so would be disrespectful to her memory. Rather, I reflect fondly on the time we spent together, but try not to let it rule my life." There was probably a message in there somewhere; Jack nonetheless refrained from thinking or commenting on it. They'd already had the Mortality Discussion, as her mind termed it, several days prior while waiting for that fateful trip through the Omega-4 Relay, and although she'd swallowed the bitter pill of inevitability once, she wasn't particularly eager to repeat the experience this soon.
Her silence must have drawn Thane's concern. "Are you upset with me, siha?"
A sigh escaped Jack, despite her attempts at maintaining a respectable poker face. "Yeah, a little," she admitted, rolling onto her side and resting her head gingerly on Thane's chest. "...Sorry I bitched you out in front of Goto, it's just...well, I guess you know what it is." Shit, his heart was beating so fast. She couldn't tell if this was normal for drell or if, in the advanced stages of Kepral's, Thane's systems were having to work overtime just to keep him going. "If you think we should help her, we can do it. It's your apartment, after all."
"I think we should, yes." His fingertips brushed lightly over her closely-cropped scalp, and she felt, rather than heard, his words, given the way his chest thrummed under her. "It's the right thing to do. Besides, I think it might be good for you to make a friend." There was definitely a hint of amusement in his low, throaty voice.
Jack snickered, despite herself. "Oh, now it's advice on my social life. Fucker."
"Merely calling it as I see it, siha."
"You've got a real mouth on you tonight," she mock-growled, turning her head and sidling up to Thane just enough to press her forehead against his. Their eyes met, an exchange of defiant stares. "Keep running it and I might have to put it to some use."
"Normally, I'd love to," Thane agreed, pilfering a kiss. "Unfortunately, Kasumi's ten feet away from the door."
"...So? She can listen; I don't mind."
"Jack..." He looked amused in spite of his attempts to be severe, which Jack counted as a victory for her. "If she's recently suffered the kind of loss that we both suspect, that would only distress her further. I know it's frustrating, but we should be considerate."
With a huff that was perhaps a touch overdramatic, Jack settled back in at Thane's side, languidly draping an arm over him and leaning her head onto his shoulder. "Mrgh. So what's the plan, then? Ask her if she's got any ideas in the morning?"
Thane shifted, working an arm around her shoulders and back. "That's right. We'll come up with a plan based on whatever information she has, and see where we can go from there."
"Mmm."
A few minutes went by in silence, and then... "Hey. Thane."
"Yes?"
"What we talked about, back before the Collector Base..." Jack swallowed, trying futilely to ease the dryness of her mouth. "I meant it. I'm glad that things turned out like this, even if it doesn't go the way I want all the time."
Thane's hand squeezed hers lightly. "Thank you, siha. I am as well."
She drifted off to sleep in the assassin's arms, and for once, Jack's rest was content and uninterrupted.
