Disclaimer: I have no ownership of Mass Effect, BIOWare, or any intellectual property of such. Having said that, I enjoy playing with their toys.
Kiera sits in the bar on the Normandy's observation deck, an empty bottle and a glass on it's side. She's neatly passed out on the table.
The door behind her slides open with a quiet hissing sound, and Jack walks into the room, looking around. "Shepard, was looking for you to talk about something, and they said you'd be..." The tattooed woman trails off, seeing the familiar silver hair at the bar, splayed over the unconscious head of Commander Kiera Shepard. Sighing, Jack walks over to where Kiera has begun to snore slightly, and picks up the empty bottle of alcohol, shaking it a little bit with a surprised snort. "Damn Shepard, you really know how to party, don't you?" She looks down at the her, a slight grin on her own face. "Well, I guess whatever I have to tell you can wait, can't it?" She begins to walk away, then feels a slight resistance to her movements. Looking down at the half jacket she keeps tied around her waist, she notices the small, pale hand of the other woman clinging to it.
Jack tilts her head to one side in curiosity, then attempts to peel Shepard's hand away, only to be met with a tighter grip and a small whimper coming from the other woman. She sighs. "Dammit, Shepard, don't make me a fucking teddy bear, or an emotional anchor, or whatever, just let go you stupid bitch.." She attempts to prise the hand off with a little more force, then hears a mumbled phrase from Shepard. Leaning in slightly, more out of morbid curiosity than anything else (How often do people hear what Commander Shepard talks about in her sleep?), and mutters, "What the hell did you say, Shepard?"
Listening close, she manages to catch Keira saying "Don't leave me alone.. not again.." However, looking at her eye and peeling back the lid, Jack realizes that the woman is completely out cold.
Sighing, Jack looks to the viewport and rubs her eyes with one hand. "Dammit, I don't need this kind of emotional fucking baggage..." She rolls her eyes and lifts Kiera up, managing to support her one one shoulder, with only a little help from biotics. "Damn, Shepard, you're heavy for someone so small." She begins walking her over to the elevator. When she gets there, she punches the number for the captains quarters, then walks Kiera into the elevator and waits.
Shepard stirs a little, and Jack looks over. "Oh, you finally waking up Shepard?" When the Commander's head lolls back, the bald woman sighs and hangs her own head. "No, of fucking course you aren't." When they finally get up to the cabin, Jack carefully moves Shepard to her bed, and then lays her down. "Alright, now I'm gonna just go.." She stops as she realizes that Kiera hasn't let go.
Jack, for only a moment, is tempted to break her fingers, and then sighs. "Dammit." She settles down on the bed, then places a hand on the sleeping womans shoulder and shakes her. "Hey, Shepard."
Kiera frowns and curls up a little more before tightening the grip, much to the creaking protest of the leather half jacket.
Jack rolls her eyes and shakes Shepard again, to no real effect. However, after trying for several minutes to rouse the Commander, Jack finally just settles back. "Fuck it. I can explain that this is why I'm here when the bitch wakes up."
Several hours later, Jack is asleep and sitting on the floor next to the bed, and Shepard is beginning to rouse herself from sleep, sleepily blinking the tiredness away from her vibrant purple eyes. Looking around, she felt her hand had wrapped itself around something, and she follwed her arm off of the side of the bed, seeing Jack sitting there on the floor. A moue of confusion settles in on her face as she removes her hand from Jack, then she hesitantly reaches over and touches her shoulder.
Jack quickly wakes and slaps away the contact, then looks up and sighs tiredly. "Oh, for fucks sake Shepard, you nearly gave me a heart attack. Forgot that you wouldn't let go after I dragged your sorry ass up here."
Kiera looks even more confused. "You moved me up here, Jack?" Her eyes widen as she remembers slipping into sleep as she finished that bottle of Elasa that she had kept in the Normandy's bar. She vaguely remembered being moved by someone, but she couldn't tell who at the time. "Well... thanks."
Jack snorts and rolls her eyes. "Yeah, yeah, whatever Shepard. By the way, later, when you've finished getting out of bed, I've got something to talk with you about." She rises and makes her way to the door. Stopping for only a moment, she turns around and bites her lip for a second in hesitation before turning back into the normal stone faced convict. "Never again, Shepard. This was a one time thing."
Looking more than a little confused, Kiera nodded in a sort of agreement as Jack walked out. But she had noticed one thing...
Her heart had lurched slightly when Jack had bit her lip, and she frowned in thought to herself over that particular fact. Also, the Commander still had the hangover headache to deal with.
For the next couple of weeks, Kiera noticed herself becoming more and more fascinated by Jack. She took the time to actually get to know the tattooed biotic, even to the point of almost friendship. But it was obvious to her that there was something weighing on Jack's mind.
"Jack, what's going on? You seem more stressed than usual."
Jack sighed and cracked her neck. "I've just got something on my mind lately, Shepard. 'Bout my past. Found the location of a Cerberus facility on Pragia. 's where I'm from."
Kiera looked askance at Jack, but smiled. "So you want to go there, yeah?" When she nodded, Shepard placed a friendly hand on Jack's shoulder, much to the convict's surprise. "Just give me coordinates and we can head there as soon as possible."
Jack opened her mouth as if to say something, then she closed it and smiled. "Thanks, Kiera."
Another day passes, and the Normandy settles in orbit over Pragia. Jack, Kiera, and Garrus Vakarian begin prepping for the excursion mission to the Teltin facility, as it is called in the Cerberus records.
Garrus looks over at Shepard and Jack. "So what are we looking for down here?"
Jack shrugged. "Not sure myself. Just want some closure. Shit, scarface, maybe I just wanna blow the place up and be done with it. We did bring this giant bomb with us." Garrus coughed awkardly as Jack rolled her eyes and unslung her shotgun from the attachment point on her lower back. "Alright, Shepard, lead the way in." The silver haired commander nodded and unfolded her massive Widow rifle, the gun being almost as long as Kiera was tall. Jack occasionally wondered to herself how the small biotic could hoist that massive gun so easily, but shook that thought from her head as the team delved into the Teltin facility, and memories overtook her mind while they walked.
As Jack recounted her experiences in this facility, and they listened to old security footage regarding the breakout when Jack managed to escape, Kiera grew more and more thoughtful. Interrupting her thoughts however, was the view of a massive krogan and a small pack of vorcha in an atrium styled room.
The krogan was speaking into an omnitool. "Aresh, you better have not been lying about the salvage here, or your life is going to be spectacularly short and bloody." Turning, he sees Shepard and her team enter the room. "Yeah, and we've got some interesting people out here. Alright, I'll take care of them, but after this, we're talking about the contract you made with us." He closes the call and hoists out a large Claymore shotgun, ordering his mercs to open fire on the Commander and her team. Jack and Kiera take cover rapidly on opposite sides of the room, while Garrus sets up in the middle. They drop the vorcha shock troops like a swarm of flies, Jack and Kiera's biotics, as well as the Commander's and Garrus' sniper fire, ripping through the pack fairly rapidly. The krogan proved to be the bigger issue, but was also taken down, a large gaping wound where his head and most of his chest used to be.
Finally making their way towards the center of the facility, Jack is stunned b the fact that the room where she spent most of her childhood being tortured and experimented on was fairly untouched by the passage of time. Looking around, she barely notices the man who walks in behind the team until he gasps out. "You're Subject Zero, aren't you? I'd recognize you anywhere."
Jack turns, angrily. "Don't you fucking call me that. No one calls me that. And who the hell are you that you know that name anyway?"
Kiera clears her throat. "You must be Aresh. Any reason you're so intterested in this particular facility?"
Aresh turns to the Commander and nods. "I was one of the survivors, one of the other children that was experimented on here. One of the lucky ones, too. Most of the others didn't make it. We went through some horrible things so that they could improve Subject Zero, here." He lamely gestures to Jack, who is by now seething with anger.
"I fucking TOLD you not to call me that, you motherfucker!" She slams Aresh in the back of the knees, driving him to the floor. "And that's all bullshit, anyway. I received the worst of the treatments here."
Aresh laughed, sounding both a little sad and a bit insane. "You never even saw the half of it. They only saved the methods that worked for you. You saw the tapes as you passed through here. You saw how many children died so that you could be improved. But! It can be made to be worth it." He stands, not noticing Jack's death glare. "I want to restart this particular project. I think that the Teltin facility can be great again, fulfilling it's purpose in creating amazingly powerful human biotics."
Jack screamed in fury. "I will NOT let you bring this nightmare back to life!" She slams him too his knees once more, putting her pistol to the back of his head, only have Shepard place her hand on top of the one holding the pistol and squeeze lightly. "Jack..." Jack looked over at Kiera, who just shook her head. "It's not worth it. Let him live."
For a moment, Jack considered disregarding the request from her closest friend in a long time, but seeing the look in her purple eyes, one that was botth accepting and pleading, she sighed. "Goddammit. Get the fuck out of here, you bastard. I'm gonna blow this place to hell in a few minutes, so it's your ass if you stay here." Aresh rose quickly and sprinted down the corridor, obviously expecting gunfire to follow him, but when he finally tunbred the corner, Jack only dropped her gun to her side and rubbed the bridge of her nose with one hand. She hears a loud thump, looking up to see Shepard, having laid her massive rifle on the ground, had put both hands on her shoulders. "You did the right thing, Jack."
Scoffing, Jack looks around the room. "Can you give me a few minutes here, Shepard? I'm still gonna blow this place sky high, but I spent most of my fucking childhood here." Kiera nods, and then goes to stand at the doorway to the room, muttering something to Garrus about getting the bomb and carting it in. She then watches Jack slowly make her way around the room, touching various objects, lingering only over a few things. Shepard already knew their significance, they had been talking for weeks now. If she had to guess, she knew Jack almost better than anyone alive today. When Garrus finally came back with the bomb in tow, Jack nodded. "Let's blow this place sky-high, Shepard."
Having set up the bomb and left the facility, the shuttle was on it's way into the atmosphere, and Jack was fiddling around with the detonator. Kiera was performing minor maintenance on her massive rifle, bbut was distracted by watching Jack just flick the cap on the detonator up and down, each movement coming with a small clicking sound. Finally, Jack made eye contact with Shepard and she depressed the switch. Kiera turned around and slammed her fist on the intercom to the cockpit. "We need to go, now!"
As they rose above the planet, the massive fireball consuming the Teltin facility could be seen tearing through the jungle, leaving flames and scorched earth in the blast radius, and nothing more.
AN: Alright, just getting this out there. I am going to go back to Learning to Be Human, but I wanted to post this idea and see how well it was recieved while I was writing. Please review when you get the chance, and this story will be updated based on the reviews and view count.