Disclaimer: I do not own Mass Effect, nor the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Obligatory Note: This is a half-assed story with potentially inconsistent characterization and writing. There may be faulty logic and canon characters who seem rampagingly OOC due to reincarnations and headcanon. There may be unintentional Mary Sue activity, 'cause that shit's sneaky. This story will contain poorly executed adult content. There will also be times this story seems to take itself too seriously only to follow up with people shooting rampaging dinosaurs. As I have the attention span of a squirrel on speed, chapters are likely to be under ten pages. If you're down with this, party on.

Comfortable Old Boots
Chapter One: Vandalism

Anderson David's dog had been on its last legs for years. Thane was a mottled, gray old thing, descended from the rangy, spindly limbed beasts that roamed over the lush hills outside of Shepard's Stand. He'd been entirely too solemn for a dog, right down to the way he'd sit on his ass and stare with his black, soulful eyes at anyone he deemed worthy of his attention. He'd been creaky as the nuts and bolts of the land cruisers parked outside the rickety houses. Lately, he wheezed and spent most of his time in a restless sleep outside the front stoop of Anderson's house, as if patiently waiting for death. Kai Lin Xiu had backed his own cruiser over him that morning.

She had retaliated by setting the vehicle on fire.

Quicker than one could say 'That was for Thane, you son of a bitch,'the colonist had been read her rights and hauled off to lockup by one of the Moreau boys. She'd gone quite willingly, all full of piss and vinegar as Kai Lin had snarled and pointed and threatened and swore and-

Strangely, she hated her off-world ex enough in that moment she would have put a bullet in his head if her weapon hadn't already been confiscated. Relationships rarely ended smoothly in Shepard's Stand when one party was an outsider, but murder was not the outcome any sane person considered. Arguably, neither were acts of arson. She knew damned well and good that was the only reason she was sitting here, locked away nice and neat behind one of the glowing blue cell doors instead of being shipped off to Omega and faced with some real jail time. The folk here took care of their own, even when Their Own decided to do something hard-headed and crazy as reducing a Mako Firebird XG-K to little more than a fireball and various metal parts.

All in all, it had probably been far easier to do what she had than it should have been. It helped that Kai was disliked because he was a douche who wore expensive computer equipment on his face during the daytime.

One way or another, she'd be getting her comeuppance for the stunt she'd pulled earlier in the day. Dad would rant and rage over the video feed, Omega in the background giving his prosthetic eye an odd blue tint when the flashing lights hit it just the right way. He'd ask her why Anderson and Jimmy were doing a 'shit job' in keeping an eye out for her- or better yet, why she didn't decide to make a living blowing things up for Various Interested Parties. He'd demand to know why he shouldn't call in a few favors and see if some real, hard time might make a soldier out of her. Anderson's disappointment would be far worse. She'd caught a glance of him as Geoffrey Moreau had cuffed her, dirt on his hands from digging Thane's grave and stern disapproval etched on his dark face.

Somehow, letting Anderson David down was worse than letting down anyone else on the planet Normandy. It was something she did more often than she'd like. Arms folded over her chest,she tipped her head back and blew out a noisy breath. The air behind the cell 'door' was slightly stale due to the crappy ventilation systems, while the blue energy keeping her locked away flickered dangerously now and again. "Well," she said aloud, voice all ragged and raspy from black, oily smoke. "Hell. Still worth it."

After a while, she slept. It was boredom and stuffy, sticky heat that put her under more than any real exhaustion. Really, it was more dozing than anything that would carry her through the next day. She roused at one point, pulled from her nap by a distant rumble and shaking of the ground that reminded her of the earthquake she'd experienced the one time she went to Earth with her mother.

Five minutes later, Geoff Moreau wandered back there to tell her they'd watched one of the military supply ships go down. The site was probably too far from the Urdnot outpost for the base to realize what had happened, leaving any potential survivors well and truly fucked if their comm equipment had been shot by a power surge in the landing. While the colonists hated those ships and weren't particularly fond of the aliens for whom they provided, leaving the crash site alone was out of the question. There were survivors to check for- if not, salvage they might sneak away before Urdnot was any wiser.

"Poor bastards," she muttered blearily, then wished him, "Luck."

The next time she saw Geoff, several hours had passed and her main source of entertainment was still extended napping. Damned if she wasn't glad to see him at that point. "Turian ship," Geoff stressed, as if the word were particularly dirty. 'Krogan' dirty. There had been a scuffle in the chaos, guns fired. One of the survivors had taken a shot and the captain had come back with him to smooth things over and use their vidcomm. Likely, there was more to it than a case of friendly fire.

It occurred to her that pissing off a military base by waving firearms at their soldiers was roughly as stupid as taking a plasma light to someone's terra cruiser. She was in good company. Head heavy from sleep, she'd grunted, muttered that it was lucky there were survivors and rolled right back over. Maybe she'd get out in time to get some firsthand news about what was happening out there in the wide world of space.

When she drifted off for the second time, she dreamed of the most beautiful glass floors she'd ever seen, reflecting stars and nebulae to the point it seemed impossible to know where space stopped and solid ground began. The panels shattered, bright shards of ice scattered over with rainbows. Outside, ships soared and men died in little bursts of fire.

That was for Thane, you son of a bitch

A large, turian foot stepped carefully about the pile of glass, but didn't bother to avoid crushing the hand of the man bleeding out over the cracking ruins of that same floor

Let's go, Sh-

This time, she snapped awake with her heart hammering in her chest and the sour stink of her own sweat in her nostrils. Scrubbing a palm down her face, she blinked hard, squeezing her eyes shut tightly enough that she saw spots of color flash behind her closed lids. Space dots, she thought inexplicably, shifting on the uncomfortable raised cot anchored to the wall. Christ. I have to lay off the fuel inhalation before bed. Her knees were shaking once she was on her feet, legs numb from being folded up underneath her for most of the afternoon. The pins and needles sensation combined with the godawful chill that shouldn't be working its way down her body in this heat made her all too aware of the need to move.

My God, a floor like that... The jail floors were steel, dingy and somewhat dented from a couple hundred years of heavy use hauling heavy security equipment across its surface. She stared at those floors a moment, then looked around the cramped interior of the cell as she carefully shook one leg to restore feeling. There was nowhere to go but toward the cell door, where a woman could just barely see into the open doorway of Armando Donnelly's office if she squinted the right way.

What she squinted at was a turian in front of the doorway, his bulk blotting out Miranda Donnelly's smaller outline. All she could see of her was a flash of white cloth and smooth brown hair. Oh, she thought to herself, locking her knees to keep them from buckling beneath her. Oh, shit. "Huh," she said aloud, in a strange, stunned way that sounded as if she'd been punched in the stomach and given a birthday present all at the same time. He turned his head toward her. "Hey," was the next thing out of her mouth, that single word muffled by the dull buzz of the energy locks. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she heard the sharp sound of glass breaking.

Vivid blue paint was messily smeared over a face that looked hard as leather and rough as tree bark. He was young- probably, some turian officer that had no doubt been in the military from the time he hit puberty. He had the thousand yard stare of a man who'd hauled himself from the wreckage of a ship and who'd probably earned himself a few scars in the process. She stared at him, a turian no different from any of the others she'd seen and inexplicably thought: Click. Don't flinch.

"Ah," is what he said, following up with an echo of her own dazed "hey."

That was how Tess Shepard Jane Helen McKay met Captain Garrus Victus for the first time.