A/N: This fic was co written by my partner in crime, Dinah Lance.
Wild Cards
Chapter 1 - Full House
Shepard was wasting time, and Jack couldn't fucking stand it.
Normally Jack wouldn't give two shits that Shepard was screwing around on the surface of some remote planet, but it had been over a week since their last mission. A week since Jack had killed anyone, set something on fire, or seen an explosion.
The quiet was making her bored and twitchy. Worse, ever since she'd found the coordinates of the base she'd been tortured at as a kid, Jack couldn't stop thinking about Pragia. Sprawled out on her cot, Jack stared up at the ceiling as her thoughts and emotions burrowed under her skull like a pack of rabid, screeching varren. Jack wanted to bang her head against the bulkhead just to make it fucking stop, except she knew it wouldn't stop even if she beat herself to a bloody, twitching puddle. It would never stop until she planted a nuke in the middle of that Cerberus base and blew it sky high.
Shepard had said they'd go to Pragia as soon as they could, and like a dumbass, Jack had believed her. It served her right for being stupid enough to ignore all of her instincts and swallow Shepard's bullshit, but knowing it was her fault didn't piss her off any less.
If they couldn't go to Pragia, Jack figured that they should at least be kicking Collector ass, but no. After picking up the quarian on Haestrom, they'd dicked around the Citadel while Shepard played social worker with Thane and his son, and now Shepard was jerking off on a planet that no one had ever heard of before, probably doing some secret job for the Cerberus cheerleader.
She needed a distraction before she went completely batshit insane, but she'd already dug through all of the Cerberus dirt she could get her hands on and her weapons were cleaned and modified as best as she could get them. Usually when she was bored like this, she went and bugged Zaeed. Other than the krogan and Shepard, the merc was the only one on this ship that she could stand. But she'd already listened to him wax poetic about his damned gun until she wanted to fix it just so she could blow a hole in the old man's skull.
Which meant one thing. It was time to find Miranda and tell that stuck-up bitch to get Shepard's ass back on the Normandy. And if a fight broke out, then hey, that wouldn't be Jack's fault, now would it?
Jack cracked her knuckles as she rode the elevator up a level, the thought of breaking that smug bitch's perfect nose making her feel warm and fuzzy, but when she got to Miranda's office everything was locked up tight. Jack was about to punch the nearest console and demand to know Miranda's location from that creepy ass AI when she realized one of the people sitting at the nearby mess tables was Normandy's pilot.
Another Cerberus whore, and in this case even more useful than Miranda. If anyone knew how long Shepard was going to fuck around on the surface, it had to be that crippled freak, so Jack detoured into the open space the crew used as a mess hall.
"How many did we lose?" The turian was hunched over the table. Jack avoided the turian most of the time; whatever vigilante bullshit he tried to pull off, asshole was a cop through and through. Acted just like the warden back on Purgatory, so fucking sure that everything he did would save the whole fucking galaxy.
"Twenty crew members, all told." The glass in front of the doctor was empty. Big surprise. The dried-up bitch was a drunk. Not that Jack gave a shit. She wasn't about to let a Cerberus stooge patch her ass up anyway.
"And Pressly," the cripple muttered before taking a swig from a bottle.
Jack scanned the pristine kitchen wondering who the hell Pressly was, what the fuck they were talking about, and if there was some decent food that wasn't made out of those shitty military rations. She swore when she realized that Rupert had everything good locked up tight. Fucker.
The quarian wrung her three-fingered hands. "Shepard said that she wanted to find their ident tags for their families. I offered to help, but she said that it was something that she had to do on her own."
Jack's anger exploded like one of Zaeed's favorite grenades when she realized the planet below was the Normandy crash site. "Fuck! We've been dicking around because Shepard wants to cry about her dead crew?"
The quarian turned her attention to Jack. The only thing Jack could see of the girl's face were those weird white eyes that went wide with shock. "Excuse me? I wasn't talking to you."
Three other sets of eyes glared at her. Jack crossed her arms and glared back. The pilot looked away first. "Mind you own damn business," he said.
Jack went back to looking for food, digging through the one unlocked storage bin that held the foil-wrapped ration bars. She snagged one, hopped up on the counter, and left a nice big bootprint just for Rupert before dangling her legs over the far side. "You're the assholes having a pity party in the middle of the mess hall. Want to talk private? Go somewhere else."
The turian pinned her with his beady bird eyes. "Most people are smart enough to know when they're not wanted."
Jack tore open the foil with her teeth. "I don't give a shit about what you want," she said as she crumpled up the wrapper and tossed it aside. "I don't get it though. They're dead. They won't care that she's collecting their tags. If Shepard wants to do something, she should keep going after the bastards who fucked up her life." She pointed to the crippled Cerberus pilot with the ration bar. "And if I were her, I'd start with you."
"Fuck you, baldy," he snapped. "Nobody asked your opinion."
Jack could smell blood in the air. It made her smirk. A pissing match wasn't as good as fistfight, but with all of the crazy thoughts screaming in her brain, she'd take whatever distraction she could get.
She spoke around a mouthful of food. "It's interesting what you can learn by poking around a few databanks. I read all about the Normandy crash. I bet you thought you were all heroic and shit by staying with the ship, but all you did was get Shepard killed."
He didn't have a snappy comeback for that one. He just stared at her, his face twisted in a sneer of hate. It was a familiar expression; people had been looking at her like that ever since she could remember.
"Shut your mouth," the turian shot at her.
"Come on, Vakarian. You were on Horizon. You saw the look on Shepard's face when that boyfriend of hers told her to fuck off." Not that Jack gave a shit about Shepard's fucked-up love life, but still.
The turian straightened to sit upright. "What I saw was Alenko being an ass. And that's his problem."
"He hates Cerberus, which makes him smarter than the rest of this fucking crew." She turned back to the crippled pilot. "You cost Shepard her life, her man, and her job. I've crashed space stations into moons, but I don't think I've ever caused as much mayhem as you did trying to be the big goddamned hero. Maybe next time you can top yourself by killing her pets and pissing on her grave."
When the quarian rose from her chair, Jack itched to use her biotics to rip that face mask off. She'd bet all of the credits she had that the girl's face underneath was twisted by some seriously tasty rage. "You bosh'tet!"
"What's the matter, cupcake? I'm just speaking the truth. The crippled asshole here even got rewarded for his stupidity. Cerberus gave him a new ship, a pay raise, and a new pair of legs for bending over and being their bitch."
"You think you get to judge me, you tattooed freak?" the pilot snapped. "Look around, psycho. Who do you think owns the ship you're flying on now?"
"Like I had a fucking choice." Jack narrowed her eyes and tilted her head as she studied the Cerberus stooge. "Maybe you didn't either. From what I read you were washed up and grounded. Even the Alliance didn't want your crippled ass anymore."
"Yeah? Well, you can kiss my crippled ass, bitch. I don't have to take this." He pushed himself slowly to his feet and hobbled a few steps away from his chair.
"Jeff..." the doctor began.
"I'll be in the cockpit," the pilot cut her off. Jack smirked in victory as the others watched him limp to the elevator, then turned to glare at Jack again.
After a moment's silent, Vakarian jumped to his feet. He stalked toward her, mandibles flaring, like some giant space bug from a bad vid. "What the hell's the matter with you?"
Jack shrugged, shoved off the countertop, and brushed her hands on her pants. "I'm surrounded by Cerberus lackeys. It makes me cranky." Jack just knew that those assholes were waiting for her to turn her back or drop her guard so they could lock her in another fucking box and play more of their sick games.
"Joker isn't a Cerberus lackey," the quarian said. "He is a good friend and the best pilot I have ever seen. None of us would be standing here if it weren't for him. He deserves to be treated with respect."
"You'd be floating in space around that Collector ship if not for him." Vakarian waved his arms in the turian equivalent of a shrug. "Not that any of us would care."
"So what? I don't owe him shit. He does his job, I do mine. If you expect me to hold hands with any of the Cerberus assholes on this tin can, then you're a fucking idiot." She turned back toward the elevator. Now that the cripple was gone, the conversation was becoming boring.
The quarian stepped in her path, hands on her hips. It was almost cute how cupcake stood her ground. "I don't know why you've decided to bully Joker and I don't care. From now on, you leave him alone."
Jack threw her hands wide. "Or you'll what? Take me out? Work me over? Turn me into Cerberus? Tell on me to Shepard?"
The doctor rose from her chair and clasped her hands in front of her. Her calm, clipped voice cut through the room. "You know, it occurs to me that you've not only angered the pilot of this vessel, but the doctor, a technical specialist that excels at making things explode, and a former C-Sec officer who probably knows dozens of places that have warrants out for your arrest. That doesn't seem very wise of you, young lady, considering how your sad little existence is going to depend on us doing our jobs in the next few months."
Jack snarled, her mood gone sour at the doctor's words. She plowed forward, bumping the quarian in the shoulder as she strode toward the elevator, disappointed that she hadn't knocked cupcake on her ass. "Whatever," she spat. "Fuck all of you. I can take care of myself." Always had, always would.
She rounded the corner, punched the button for the elevator, and barreled past the pair of engineers that emerged when the door slid open. She threw a rude gesture at their startled faces, and then the door closed. When she got back to her hole in the bowels of the ship, Jack threw herself on her bunk, screwed her eyes shut and tried to ignore the howling and whispering in her brain, alone with her thoughts once again.