"Shit Shep, I'm surprised this thing hasn't fallen apart. It's more damaged than the Normandy, and that's saying something, ya'know?" Jack said, trying to pick my Longcoat up from where I had left it on the Floor of my cabin to toss it at me. She tried, failed, and dropped the coat unto the floor: Unto her foot. It clunked, just as I knew it would. She cursed, just as I knew she would.

The Longcoat was made out of black leather. No idea which animal, tough. It was riddled with holes, slashes and gashes, pits and dents. Yes, it dented. There's a story to that. I wasn't allowed to wear it over my armour in the alliance, though, but I wore it off duty: Saved my life in any number of Terminus bar brawls. I hadn't given it many of its bullet holes. Those came from father, whoever he was. After my resurrection, I wore it everywhere, over my armour. From the way it was tailored, it was designed to do that, I think. Most of the buttons had been hacked off at some time or other. The pockets (almost all on the inside, some of them holster shaped) were odd shapes due to dents or, again, have slashes through them. As a coat, it sucked. As armour, it kicked arse. I had put it through its paces thoroughly by this point. When I first put it on, it had felt heavy on my shoulders, but not anymore. Its weight, barely noticeable anymore, was a comfort. But it was still goddamn heavy: As Jack had found out to her expense.

After Jack had stopped cursing, she exclaimed "Shit Shep, what the fucks in here? That fancy beam shit you like using?"She had asked this with a flash of surprise that she had hid at first, and then Jack slowly, almost shyly, allowed it to reapply itself. I gave her a heart-felt smile for that. It was so nice to see an emotion that wasn't rage on Jack's face. It had rarely happened before the Omega 4 Relay, but once Jack had realised that she could trust me, that I would never betray her... She had come to me before the 'Suicide Mission' (No losses, thank you very much). I hadn't expected her, to be honest. We had been doing so well... She had started to open up to me. She wasn't tearing down the walls she had built. More like... she had opened the first set of gates. There were several, but it was progress. She was letting me in. Told me about this one guy, Murton, if I remember right, who had stayed behind, covered her escape, rather than abandon her. Told me about his message, about how he wanted to build a life with her, and that he was sorry that he couldn't. To me, that's what made Jack the all-powerful bitch she is now: Survivors guilt. If I told her this, she would call bullshit. I call Bullshit. I know survivors guilt. I know denying it until something makes it all come out. For me, it took Akuze to make me admit to survivors' guilt about Minidor. Jack would say that she just learned that trusting people, getting close to people, was weak. That it got you killed, dying for someone who wouldn't return the favour. Once again, I call bullshit. Having someone you can trust to follow you into hell, watch your back and listen to your secrets... it's the most important thing in the world. And Jack's never had. To Her, Murton was just a guy she worked with. Any sex she had with him was, in her view, just sex: Nothing in it, with no meaning beyond the carnal act. And or someone like that to learn that Murton had loved her, loved Jack, enough to die for her... It tore her apart. So, to cope, she called it weakness, called him weak. So her walls wouldn't come crashing down.

She had been drifting on Murton's shuttle when the Suns found her and took onto the Purgatory. Evading the Batarians that they had taken the weapons from had taken most of the shuttle's fuel. She was unconscious from oxygen starvation when they took her.

She told me of all the times she had been taken advantage of. Mainly in prisons, as they had kept her on drugs to keep her biotics unfocused, unusable. In her weakened state, she could take her whether she wanted it or not, and take her they did. But eventually, she had grown a resistance to the drugs. They had increased the dosages, to the point of permanent damage. Then they switched drugs. She grew a resistance to those too. Then, when drugs wouldn't work, they pumped her cell full of sleeping gas, then, while she was still in her drug induced slumber, they put her in Cyro. Because they had no other way of controlling her. This was about six months into her sentence. By this time, she had offed three people in the showers, and had been raped about once a week.

And then, the talks stopped. I came down to talk to her, and she just brushed me off. Told me she needed time to think. I thought that I had, in a sense, failed, failed to get her to trust me, failed to get her to see my honest intentions. I knew that she didn't need a shrink. Partly because half of the shrinks she had had 'therapy' with were the ones who liked to get to 'know' their patients, and partly because, for some people, shrinks didn't help. Some people can never trust them. I for one, never trusted doctors. All their prodding, their questions, their incessant cries of 'how does it make you feel?' They never take the time to get to know you. So I became good at lying, god enough to give them the answers they wanted. And then they gave me a clean bill of health, and I could get back to doing my job.

I think, Jack, like me, could only ever her heart to people she trusted. And so, she had never opened her heart. But for me, she had! For one glorious night she wasn't Subject Zero, the Crazy psychotic bitch who had murdered and killed and crashed space stations into moons! She was Jack; she was just Jack for me. And Jack just wanted to be hugged and held and the occasional kiss. She could get that from me, and I gave it to her. And so, as she had opened for me, I opened for her.

"That thing has been with me all my life. Only thing I have of my father. No idea of his name. I don't have any pictures. No vids. Nothing that even proves he ever existed, apart from this coat, and my mother's memories of him." I replied, walking over, stroking the coat, pressing down hard enough on the coat to feel its hard innards. "That things' heavy cos' in armoured. Not with metal or ceramic. It's made like old fashioned armour. Overlapping scales of armour: Krogan head plate. My mother said that father took the head plate from every Krogan he killed. She said he told her:

'Turns out, if you stick the knife in just the right way, the whole thing comes right off'.

They mewl like babies after you take it off. Funniest thing in the Galaxy, that." I snorted. "My mother also told me that my father had collected all the head plates himself, and had the thing custom made with the Plate in between both layers of leather

Jack did a double take. "Whoa, whoa, whoa Shep! You're saying this thing's lined with Krogan Head plate? How the fuck did your dad find that many Krogan to kill?" Jack asked, with genuine curiosity and surprise in her voice.

"I know he was a Sun. Quite highly placed and damn good at his job, if he could kill enough Krogan to make this," I replied, stroking my coat. "My mother was his second in command, his lover too. And this wasn't a 'Wham Bam Thank yah Ma'am' sort of thing; this was as committed as you could get in the Suns. You had no idea how long someone was going to last, if they would die, tomorrow or in a year. So they took what they could, when they could. I know they wanted me. They wanted to raise me together. They were saving the creds to retire, to live an idyllic life on some colony world, some big happy family. So, five months in to the pregnancy, my mum left. The plan was for my father to wait until eight months, just to get some more money, enough to completely buy a house on New Canton. But then, my mum told me she received his 'death message'."

"Death message?" Jack asked.

"You know what Murton did on the shuttle? Like that. The Suns didn't exactly send out letters of consolation to next of kin. They didn't really care. So the deal was, if your Omni-tool detected you were dead, you could program it to send out a pre-prepared message too whoever you told it too. So she got his message, out of the blue one day. But he had changed it, about an hour before it had been sent. They did that, you know. It told you when the message had been altered. It had been altered to this.

'If you're getting this, I'm dead. Don't look for me, never tell anyone from the Suns were you are. Don't reply to their messages. And most of fucking all, dear, don't trust Vido! If I die it's his fault! And I'm sorry, but you'll have to hide. Change your name; don't tell the kid my name, nothing about me that will allow her to find me, or make her look for me, or anything about me! Please! If you love me like I like you, do it! Just do it! I'm sorry, there's no time!'

So she hid, changed her last name to Shepard, her first name to Jane, and she named me Laverna: the Roman Goddess of thieves and the underworld. A connection to my Father, and thieves, to make me good at hiding. Superstitious Kraken, she was. And there you have it, Jack. My heart, laid out for you."

"Have to admit Shep, that does explain something about you. On Zorya, I fully expected you to take the pussy route and save the idiot workers. But charged in, forgetting about them completely. Had the cheerleader and fish-face do the goody-goody work while Zaeed and us took that bastard down. I thought you had some sort of grudge, but could never figure out why."

"I'm a lot more complex than most people realise, Jack."

That got us talking: About anything and everything. I told her about the Batarian attack on Minidor. About how, even though only I survived, I had made them pay. They had loaded about half the colony onto shuttles and killed the rest. I had used what my mother taught me, how to move silently, how to kill silently, how to shoot, how to hack and overload and too burn with tech, how to build and use explosives and how to fight, too avoid the patrols, and kill the odd Batarian, here and there. They took notice. They decided they wouldn't leave until they had me in chains. So they could use me as an example. They left twelve men behind to look for me. They felt safe in groups of three or more, as the ones I had killed were always in ones or twos. The small number gave me enough time to scavenge weapons (I'd been using a knife, a pistol and my fists until then), loot ammo form the CDF armouries, grab the Longcoat, and went back to my house. It was the safest place in the colony, now the Safe house had been bombed. On the edge of the colony, few windows, which could be easily shuttered, solid stone construction, balconies made great sniper perches, and a goddamn bunker. With the only working FTL transmitter on the colony. It was compact enough for me to drag it up to the top floor, and finally give a goddamn call for help. That got their attention.

They really wanted me now, dead or alive. They sent down their entire contingent of slavers, all to capture little ol' me. I had sealed all the outer doors, but I didn't lock myself in the bunker. I didn't really know how to open it again. I was scared I'd die in there, dead from starvation of water, air or food. And... Part of me wanted to see the Batarians pay. I didn't hold up much hope for rescue. We knew the timings for alliance patrols. They were at least a week away, and they had no word.

So I grabbed my weapons, went up to the balcony, flicked the safety off... and waited; didn't have to wait long. Cos' they only had one shuttle left, as I'd bombed the other one, they could only attack in groups of about a dozen at first. My house was a long way outside the colony. They could get any closer than an about a mile in a shuttle, and from spot, there wasn't much cover for them.

The first groups never got more than 250m. I had gotten damn good with a sniper rifle hunting with my mum. Then, they started to get smart. They waited until they had two groups on the ground. Then they just charged. Didn't bother with cover. It's damn scary having one hundred and twenty eyes staring at you with malice, ya'know? By the time they hit 250m, there were 14, 15 left. I used an assault rifle then. At 100m, six, five left? First of my homemade bombs. Poof! Up in smoke and fire. Tried that three, four times? Each time getting closer and closer. The last time, one made it to the door, under the balcony. I had run out of bombs by this point. I didn't want to move, could aim at him, didn't want to let him in, though I knew I couldn't leave him alone, cos' when the next group came along, he would get me.

As I frantically decided what I was going to do, I saw the next group arriving, shuttle load by shuttle load. Two groups had set down, but it looked like they were waiting for a third. Just to make sure.

Then, through the scope, I saw the third shuttle coming. And I knew my death was coming I knew I couldn't defeat thirty six troopers, even with my position. I had been awake for almost two days, constantly moving, fighting, and staying alert.

Then... the most beautiful sight I've ever seen, Travelling with the rays of dawn, a Turian frigate swooping down, firing a javelin missile, hitting the shuttle dead on, the whole thing just blowing up, Batarian heads flying everywhere... I swear, it was glorious!"

Jack had been silent a godly while, but spoke up now: "I swear Shep, you sounded just like Grunt when you said that." She said amusement in her voice.

"I did, didn't I?" I replied, the question plainly rhetorical. I continued with my story.

"Then the frigate released its drop pods. They landed in the best positions, in between me and the Batarians, and in between them and their escape. As I watched them close in, the Batarians decided to fight. Hah, idiots! They didn't kill a single one! As I saw them get cut down, I laughed for the first time in God knows how long. The valley my house was built in had great acoustics. My laughter echoed down at them. It seemed to be then that they remembered that the distress call had to have been sent by someone. Then, I heard a flanging voice over the comm., asking if anyone was there; it was Garrus's voice actually."

"Whoa, hold up, you knew Garrus all that time? What the hell, hero? Why didn't you chase him instead of...?" Jack paused, not wanting to finish the question.

"Shush, shush Jack," I said, my words calm and soothing. "You're the one I want, no one else, and besides, I'm into girls. And Turians, my dear, are very manly." Jack moved to say something, but I shushed her with a finger on her lips. "And now, Jack, I'm carrying on with my story:

"By this point, my hands were shaking too much to use the comm. thing properly, so I just called out: 'Yeah, I'm here. There's a Batarian trying to get in, so just, you know, kill him and I'll let you in, deal?'

So about six of the black armour Turians advanced on the house. The Batarian at the door just took one look at them and legged it. The lead figure, black armour with a blue stripe on the shoulder right arm, raised his rifle, aim and fired in one smooth motion. Hit the Batarians right between the eyes. Lower set, anyway. Then they just moved on.

So they made their way to the front door and knocked on it. I staggered down the stairs to the security override button, pressed it on the third try, and staggered into the hall. And there they were: my saviours. The Lead one took off his helmet and introduced himself: He said: 'Centurion Vakarian, Sixth fleet. And you are?'

I just muttered: 'Dead on my feet' and collapsed into him"