In Her Eyes
A Mass Effect 2+ Alternate Continuity by Urdaniel
Disclaimer: I lay no claim to ownership of and make no profit from, characters and settings owned by Bioware and EA. This is a work of fiction and I am just its writer.
Dedication: With many thanks and much fondness to all the inhabitants (old and new) of the Jack-related threads on the Bioware Social Network. I apologize for the long absence and assure any and all of you who are waiting for Things Worth Keeping that I am still writing that story. It's just that this one sprang up, nearly full-formed, and asked to be told.
[2012.04.18]
Part One: In Medias Res
The firm push, almost a shove, on her hipbone woke Maya from her drunken slumber. That and the explosive expletive, accompanied by the sounds of frantic scrabbling on the floor, that came from the lips of her unexpected, but hardly unwelcome, bedmate.
"Where the FUCK is my gun?"
Maya's first instinct on waking had been to do the same thing: ask where her gun was (albeit more quietly) while searching for it in the piles of clothing that were undoubtedly scattered around her quarters on the Normandy in the wake of their impromptu party for two. But, unlike her companion, she hadn't been SO drunk that she didn't immediately remember the events of the previous night. As such, she stayed where she was, her only acknowledgment of the developing situation a turn onto her right side and propping her head on one bent arm, the better to look at the spectacle taking place across the mattress.
Jack knelt on the floor, throwing clothes about – with a touch of biotic augmentation no less, and uncaring of whose clothes they actually were – while searching for her weapon. She was naked, a fact Maya could not fail to notice but which she let pass unremarked, more out of self-preservation than anything else. Instead, she let the ex-convict's preoccupation work to her benefit, taking the opportunity to study Jack's lean, athletic form more closely than she ever had before. The previous evening didn't count – not quite drunk enough to forget the broad outlines, but more than drunk enough to miss the fine detail, and certainly more than drunk enough to really enjoy it. Maya could not, however, resist the urge to say something, for all that it might have led to bloody murder (her own) or at least a severe maiming.
"Don't think you're going to need it, Jack. Not unless you want to kill me, of course. And to be honest, I'd rather you didn't."
Jack waved a dismissing hand in Maya's direction, all the while not bothering to look up.
"Fuck off, Cassie. Just hate not knowing where my piece is. Once I find it though, you and me are going to have a talk."
"Just a talk?" Maya said, her tone playful despite her irritation at being called by her first name's diminutive. Anyone else would have gotten a punch to the gut at the least, maybe a high-caliber round to the face at most, but Jack? Different story.
Jack did look at her then, one corner of her mouth turning up in a sneer that did nothing to mar her looks. When she replied, her tone was cold.
"Don't push your luck, Cassie," she said, deliberately emphasizing the nickname. "Between you coming back from the dead, your little suicide mission, and last night, you're just about out."
Maya tried, not entirely successfully, to stop her brow from wrinkling at the repeated use of the nickname, and the grin that spread across Jack's face at the sight of it only deepened her irritation. Just then Jack's hand came up, holding the Carnifex that was her favored pistol and brandishing it in Maya's general direction. To Maya's private relief, Jack kept her finger well away from the trigger; the last thing she needed was a hole in the head.
Her quest completed, Jack stood up from the floor, not using either hand to steady herself but just rising from her kneeling position in one fluid motion. It was graceful and somehow feral at the same time, and Maya's breath hitched ever-so-slightly as she watched. Jack then ruined the illusion by unceremoniously throwing herself on the bed in an undignified sprawl and resting her back against the headboard, pointedly placing the Carnifex between them before crossing her arms behind her head. The weapon's barrel pointed toward their feet, but the grip was in a position far more convenient to Jack's hands than Maya's. It was a bit of theater that Maya understood but had no use for, and found too minor to make an issue of, especially where Jack was concerned.
So she ignored it and sat up in bed herself, leaning her own back against the headboard. The motion made the covers fall to her waist, and she tried – successfully this time – to suppress her instinct to pull them back up. Maya had never been a prude, but she had never managed to develop the breezy casualness that let Jack walk onto a ship full of strangers – Cerberus cell members at that – naked except for the lower half of a prison jumpsuit, all without the slightest hint of self-consciousness. Right now, however, Maya would rather be damned than give Jack the further satisfaction of seeing her any more uncomfortable than she had already revealed, soft spot for the ex-con or no.
They sat like that for a while, neither of them speaking. In the beginning, Jack had looked at her with an expression composed of equal parts anger, confusion, and almost- fear? Maya quickly discounted the last. Jack might have been afraid or anxious about some things – her trepidation about returning to Pragia came most readily to mind – but one thing she had never seemed to be scared of, let alone intimidated by, was Maya. But when Maya had locked stares, Jack had quickly turned away, finding something on the ceiling that seemed infinitely more interesting. After several minutes of stony, yet pregnant silence, Maya could take no more.
"Really nice talk we're having here, Jack. Glad we're having it. Should chat more often," she said, not bothering to hide the sarcasm in her voice.
"You always keep this thing open?" Jack said, inclining her chin to point at the skylight that dominated the ceiling above the bed.
"It doesn't have a switch," Maya replied, her irritation continuing to mount. "EDI probably slides an armor panel over it in combat."
"Watch the stars a lot? Didn't see them much on Purgatory. Too much time in solitary or cryo."
"Only when I'm awake and not busy. Which hasn't happened at all lately. Are we going to talk or not?"
"You going to stop staring at my tits?" Jack asked, finally turning back to look her in the eye. "Or the rest of me? Here, I'll make it easy for you," Jack went on, moving on the bed so that she faced Maya full-on and drawing one knee up to her chest, spreading her legs in the process. Not so much as to be utterly vulgar, but more than enough to ensure that nothing was hidden.
"Enjoying yourself?" Jack's smile was almost a leer. Maya actually felt herself blush, and she turned away. But not before taking a good, long look.
"Good. Now that you got it out of your system for a bit, we can talk. Don't want you too distracted." Jack moved back to rest against the headboard, slipping under the covers and pulling them up past her chest. She left the Carnifex where it was, though. Silence fell across the Loft once more, and this time Maya, still chagrined, didn't break it. Jack did.
"How did we end up like this, Cassie?" Jack's voice lacked the bite it had held earlier, and her use of the hated nickname was gentler, less goading.
"Well, we got drunk at Afterlife, then you jumped me in the elevator when we got back to the Normandy-" Maya began, her tone acerbic. She was still angry at being embarrassed; the only good thing about it was that it wasn't where anyone else other than Jack could see.
"Shit, knew that already. Wasn't that drunk."
"Then you tell me, Jack," Maya said, throwing her hands into the air and letting them fall with a thump back onto the bedspread, narrowly missing the Carnifex in the process. "You were the one who said you weren't the girls' club type. And don't say I should have stopped you either. I'd have to be goddamned crazy to turn you down. Not after-" her voice faltered, and it was a long second before she found it. "Everything."
They both fell silent again. And once more, it was Jack who spoke first.
"Why?"
"What?" Maya replied, her brow wrinkling yet again, this time in puzzlement.
"Why did you take a shine to me?"
"I didn't take a 'shine' to you. This was, and is, all about the sex," Maya replied, though the first sentence was a lie and she didn't mean the second in the slightest. But even as she tried to hide behind flippancy, she admitted to herself that she wanted, maybe even needed, to let it all out, potential awkwardness notwithstanding. It was, after all, already more than awkward enough.
"Was it the ink?" Jack went on, as though Maya had said nothing. "Did you look at me and think 'Tats. Potty mouth. Walks around half-naked. Yeah, she's into freaky. Probably swings both ways. Should be easy to get into the sack.'"
"Yes," Maya replied, surprising herself with her candor and how quickly she had told the truth. "But-"
"But what?"
So Maya told her.
~ End Part 1 ~
Author's Note (2012.04.19)
Welcome, and thank you for visiting; I hope you stay and enjoy yourselves. For those of you who have read Things Worth Keeping (hereinafter referred to as TWK and also readable here on FFN) and are waiting patiently for the next portion of Jack and Gabriel's story, I apologize. This isn't it. I do assure you, however, that it has NOT been dropped and that it is, in fact being written as you read this. It's just that I've reached a bit of a sticking point on Day 6 and need to work through it in order to continue.
So why is this here? To put it simply, because it wanted to be told. I know that sounds both pompous and presumptuous, but that's essentially what happened. I'd batted around the idea of a Jack/FemShep story pretty much from the beginning of my work on TWK (soon after I posted Day 1 if memory serves), but never did more than write some notes. There were several reasons for this, maybe even some good ones. In no particular order (except for the first) here are the ones I remember:
1) I was already working on TWK and saw little point in splitting my time and effort to work on another story. I tend to write long passages (each day of TWK is a case in point), and knowing that TWK would be a fairly large project despite its limited scope, I was concerned about my ability to keep my focus and sustain my effort, especially since I didn't want either story to be essentially a copy of the other with only Shep's gender switched. In the end, it was outside factors that made me lose my focus and my drive to write, so perhaps I shouldn't have been so worried. C'est la vie.
2) Jack is canonically not a "girls' club" sort of person. This is perhaps the weakest of the reasons for not proceeding, simply because fanfiction, by definition and by its very nature, is not canonical in the slightest.
3) I wasn't certain of my ability to realistically portray a same-sex relationship, even taking into account the (slight) artistic license allowed when dealing with fictional characters. First off, I'm male. Second, I'm heterosexual. In the end, I just decided to try and write them as real people, which, I believe, is the most important thing. I hope for a modicum (no matter how small) of success in this regard.
In any event, while I was trying to write Day 6 of TWK (not easy after a long absence from the characters, the story, and writing itself), the prose for this story popped into my head and wouldn't leave. I wrote down the passages as they came up, intending to put them into the notes file and leave them there, but as more and more were placed into tangible form, the first few parts of the story ended up writing themselves. Which is why they're here.
Some more things before I let you get on with it (unless of course, you just jumped to Part 2 after reading Part 1):
1) Maya is NOT Gabriel. More to the point, her character differs from Gabriel not simply because she needs to be different from a story standpoint, but because she was played differently when I went through ME and ME2. She hasn't made it through ME3 yet (Gabriel got that dubious honor; besides, I hate the ending), but she'll stay true to her earlier paths. Additionally, she's nowhere as nice as Gabriel is, a fact which will become clear as the story progresses. Note that she's not full-on Renegade; any more detail than that will be supplied in the story itself.
2) Jack is not (quite) Jack. This alternate version of Jack is a little more centered, a little less damaged, but she's still essentially the same Jack. If it helps, think of this version as a little bit further along on the road which leads her to where she eventually ends up in ME3 (if you took Paragon choices in ME2) than the Jack who is in TWK. The gear she eventually ends up with is a little higher-tech as well (thanks to an idea generously supplied by an old denizen of the Social Network forums who I have unfortunately forgotten the forum handle for).
3) I will endeavor to avoid too much overlap between the two stories. This means that, apart from locations like the Normandy and major hubs like the Citadel and Omega, I will not be visiting the same places twice. This means no Pinnacle Station, no Intai'Sei (as much as I love that apartment), and no reuse of incidental characters. Even the roster of main supporting characters will likely be different in each story. Some may be dead, others away, yet others simply not on stage. I don't want to take the easy way out and just recycle my own stuff. I love the franchise and the characters too much and respect them too much (despite the slapdash treatment they get in ME3) to be lazy about it. Unfortunately, this means that I can't and won't churn out product just for the sake of posting it, which also means that my updates will be as pokey as they have ever been (although I hope they won't be as few and far between as they have been over the past year or two). Now whether what I DO post lives up to that lofty ambition is another matter entirely, one that is up to the readers to decide.
4) The individual parts are significantly shorter than those in TWK. This is my attempt to keep the workload manageable, which hopefully means I can post more installments, more frequently. Whether this will work out is again another matter entirely.
5) Finally, note that I will never portray sex explicitly. There will be coarse language (wouldn't be Jack without the occasional bit of profanity after all) and sex will be implied (and rather more often than will ever be the case in TWK), but it will never take place on-page and certainly not in the sort of detail that exists elsewhere. The reason for this is simple: I am absolute rubbish at writing that sort of thing, and I'd rather not be any more laughable than I already am.
Once more I thank you for your time and your patience.