*~~*~~*
[]
*~~*~~*
ARKHAM SPACE STATION
R&D/SCIENCE LABS SECTOR
"The beauty of it all is in the details, Kaiden."
The voice was soothing, without a hint of a rasp or a tone too sharp or mundane. It was soft but not low, rich but not too distinct. It filtered through his ears and throughout his body, connected the pieces of his mind that felt broken apart, swimming through his veins and coating his stomach and warming his heart.
It made Kaiden feel as if it would be okay to lay down and sleep for a year, ten years, one hundred years. Until the pain of living evaporated from his soul.
"Feel that sun. Doesn't it just warm you up inside, like a blanket Mary has heated up for you?"
"Mary?" Kaiden asked himself as recognition floated lazily to him. "Mary…"
"Yes, Kaiden. Mary. Mary, Mary-"
"Loud and scary," Kaiden finished, laughing. "She hated that."
The voice laughed with him, like an old friend who'd been there through everything, recalling it from memory instead of from a psych-eval prep sheet.
"Yes she does. But she's not loud or scary to you, is she? No, she's as smooth as butter and purrs like a kitten when your hands are on her."
"Birds," Kaiden said.
"…um, yes, Kaiden, you're like two birds of a feather, alone togeth-"
"No, no. I hear birdsong. It's relaxing, I guess."
The voice was silent for a moment. No, not quite silent. Just distant, murmuring, as though it was whispering to itself.
Then; "Kaiden, let's try focusing on Mary. You love Mary, don't you?"
"I…I loved her, yes."
"Oh, Kaiden" the voice good-naturedly admonished him, "once you love something, you never truly stop loving it. Even if it goes away, and the memory of its features recedes from quick-reference thoughts, you still love it. And Mary, she's no different. You still love Mary, Kaiden."
"Yeah, yeah I do. I love her."
"Good, Kaiden. Very good."
"Doctor D., if I may break the fourth wall for a moment?"
The voice chuckled amicably. "Go ahead, Kaiden, and please, call me Lucien. Just remember this will probably be your last chance for us to talk. The sedative and the neural inhibitors should already be taking effect. Within the next six minutes you'll forget all about me and my associates."
"Understood, Doctor Lucien. But why is it important to the process to recall an emotion like this?"
"Well, the science of it is a bit complicated. But at its simplest terms, it's like this; sometimes memories are brought on by the senses; hearing, touching, seeing, and especially tasting and smelling. You could easily get a good, three dimensional memory matrix from that; but we can't lock on to those and guarantee the right outcome. You might once have tasted lobster and shrimp scampi on your seventeenth birthday, the night you lost your virginity to Rosalind DeSanchez, but we could just as easily wind up in your third night at Jump Zero, where you lost a bet and wound up eating shrimp scampi off the bathroom floor, -schrshhh- then you lost your virg-scrhshhhh-a broom handle.-scrshshhh- Ha ha, and we wouldn't want you to be stuck in a memory like that.
"On the other hand; love, hatred, joy, sorrow, these are some of the most basic and primal of emotions. We might cloud them and weigh them down with other, more mature and difficult emotions as we grow, going from the simple, pure pain of wanting something we're told we can't have as a child, to seeing both sides of a controversial issue, like war or abortion-scrsshh-premeditated murder, rape-scrsshh-. Try to think of our system as a grid that searches out the colors of emotion and locates memories from them. As an adult, we must sort through the grey areas of all of your conflicted ideals and break them down in order to find the brightest of colors. Like Mary. Now, with primal yearning for Mary locked in your mind, we have a solid link to the memory we want to run you through.
"And so, with that, I'd like you to try and open up your eyes."
Kaiden opened his eyes. Blinked them furiously for a second from the brightness of the early morning sun.
And saw the truest and most peaceful form of beauty he'd ever known. Golden sand, warm beneath his hands and toes, even heating his rump though the khaki shorts he was wearing. The sand wasn't gritty or soggy, it was soft and separate.
He scooped some up and held out the palm of his hand. A cool breeze rippled through the soft pile in his open hand, granules dancing off into the air, only to land back on the shore.
The sound of the waves brushing against the shoreline, ever lapping and surging, brought up the fine hairs on the back of his neck and he shuddered pleasantly. The smell of the ocean, with its unpolluted waters stretching out beyond the line of sight, save for one small island a mile out, was so rich as to make him dizzy.
"Look at this beachfront property, Kaiden. It's yours. All of it."
"It's wonderful. I always wanted to come back here one day."
"What are you waiting for Kaiden. You're here now, aren't you?"
Wait. He was. Kaiden shook his head, trying to make sense of what was going on. He couldn't remember what had transpired in the last few days, or possibly weeks. But here he was, on the beach. And Kaiden suddenly didn't care about how he'd gotten here.
Kaiden, turn around.
Kaiden turned, as if on a whim.
There was Mary's parents' house. A three story beach house built on a large circular porch, the land around it bordered by a cream-colored picket fence. Beyond the fence, thick tufts of soft green grass stuck out in groups dotting the sand.
The house was a pale shade of blue, with a darker, navy-blue roof that covered the third story attic and partially covered the first floor, which was the largest and widest. A white wooden railing encircled the entire porch, save for the stairway that led to the entrance and, if memory served him, a separate entrance around back that led to a trail which subsequently ran up to the small ocean-side town of Anchorhead.
Mary worked at a restaurant during the day in Anchorhead. God, what is the name of that place?
Zingers.
"Zingers," Kaiden said out loud, and smiled.
Go to her, she's inside the house.
Kaiden decided he'd wasted enough time on the beach, he wanted to see Mary. He started to walk towards the gate built into the picket fence.
/CLICK/ Alright, we're in. This is log number one for myself, Doctor David Lucien, presiding over patient four-six-delta, self-admitted for study of possible delusions, schizophrenia and hallucinations brought on by post-traumatic stress disorder.
Side note, Peter, write this down; patient is, in my professional opinion, not in the right frame of mind to be self-diagnosing, as the psych evaluation clearly showed; however, patient shows absolutely zero signs of PTSD. We should be fighting a torrent of detrimental self-hatred and brain scan visual data showing signs of crippling physical and emotional torment, but aside from some perfectly normal survivor's guilt expressed verbally in the entry exam approximately… seventeen hours ago, patient appears frighteningly well-maintained considering the facts.
No, what seems to be going on here is, sadly, another case of an L2 series biotic slowly breaking at the seams. End side note. Basil, what do the enhanced format scans show at this current time?
/CLICK/ Student Basil Perrenia; doctor, the scans are reading low. Kaiden is using-
/CLICK/ This is Doctor David Lucien; Basil, how many times?
/CLICK/ ….I'm sorry, doct-
/CLICK/ How many times?
/CLICK/ sigh…This will not have been the last, Doctor Lucien, but I will not just wish that it would be, I will…er…
/CLICK/ 'strive to make-'
/CLICK/ Do not help her, Peter!
/CLICK/ Right-right; This will not have been the last, Doctor Lucien, but I will not just wish that it would be, I will strive to make it so that it was.
/CLICK/ Doctor Lucien again; Basil, please continue with the scanner report.
/CLICK/ Yes sir, um-I mean, yes, doctor. Student Basil Perrenia; the scans haven't spiked, si-doctor. Not once. Kaid- no, ugh, Goddess! Patient four-six-delta is using three percent of his biotic energy, and has been since we began.
/CLICK/ Doctor Lucien; and what does this tell us, Basil?
/CLICK/ Student B-buh-Basil; …okay, I've got this. The three percent he's currently utilizing is known to be a constant of all L-series human biotics when they're asleep. This attributes to their faster heart rate, greater metabolism and a shortening of six to eight years of their lifespan.
/CLICK/ This is Doctor Lucien; fair report, Basil. I'm sure will start to see those spikes soon. Keep in mind, for the thirtieth time, that we do not use the patient's name while complimenting the logs. Pete, what've you got for me? And quickly, I've got to get back into the REM-stasis, I don't want him in his head alone for too long.
/CLICK/ This is Student Peter Reinhardt; Doctor, we've managed to locate the memory key nearly intact in his deep subconscious, we're only missing the…well, the hind quarters…
/CLICK/ Lucien here; 'hind quarters', Peter? Be specific, you're coming from the head of your class, I'd expect you to be better at succinctly relating the details. Just because you want to be a doctor doesn't mean you have to sacrifice being blunt.
/CLICK/ Student Reinhardt; Doctor, patient four-six-delta can't remember how big her ass was.
/CLICK/ Oh…uh, Lucien here; I said 'blunt', Peter, not vulgar. In any case, make it average. Well, a nice average. Like something that would look good in sweats or jeans, but great in a tight dress…you know what, screw it, I could be stuck in here for hours if he goes deep. Make it fantastic, okay? An apple.
/CLICK/ Peter; very well, sir. Apple-bottom it is.
/CLICK/ Excellent. This is Doctor Lucien, ending log one, reentering REM-st-, oh, wait! One more thing. Who put in the damn birds?
/CLICK/ Student Basil; I'm sorry, sir? What birds?
/CLICK/ Lucien; The birds, Basil. The patient mentioned birds while I was setting up shop, trying to weave him into the memory, and it really threw me off.
/CLICK/ Student Peter Reinhardt; Doctor Lucien, I assure you, sir, birds were not part of the program, we know they don't show up until the seagulls at sunset. Those are the only birds we have coded in, sir, it's textbook. Probably just the patient's mind wandering as the drugs set in.
/CLICK/ No, no. It wasn't… After he mentioned it, I heard them too. Look, never mind, it might just be a glitch in the audio system. Lucien out. /BEEP/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The young blond human sighed, pulled off the ear set and tossed it onto the display above the keyboard. He rubbed his scruffy cheeks and glanced at the asari next to him.
"God, that dude is something else, huh?"
Basil Perrenia checked the data display one more time before ripping off her own headset and turning in her swivel chair towards him. "I swear to the Goddess, Peter, if that man ridicules me over the logs one more time I'm changing majors."
"Aww, don't do that, sweetness," Peter crooned, rubbing one of his fingers along the underside of her jaw. "Then what kind of a view would I have when I come to work?"
Basil giggled and playfully batted the finger away. "You're so gross, I'm like, twenty years older than you."
Peter leaned towards her. "I know, it's great. I've always wanted to be with a chick in her forties, older women are so fucking hot."
Basil's jaw dropped and she laughed. "Oh, shut yourself off, Reinhardt, before you combust. Besides, I'm not melding with you right now, it's totally the wrong time in my life."
Peter put his feet on the floor of the chamber and pushed, rolling in his swivel chair across the small circular room until he reached the mini fridge on the other side. "You're just afraid to lose you're virginity, my little blue sexpot. Don't wanna pop that mind cherry you've been saving."
He reached into the fridge and grabbed two cans of soda, kicked the fridge shut and used the momentum to roll back to his station.
"Mmm, speaking of, did you catch that nonsense Doctor dickhead was spouting in the preamble? About Kaiden's virginity?" She asked conspiratorially, taking one of the sodas from him and quickly kissing him on the cheek.
"What are you- oh, that's right! I was going to ask him about that shit!" Peter said, opening up the red can he'd kept and gulping down some of the drink.
"What did he say? 'That night Kaiden ate shrimp scampi off the floor and lost his virginity to a broom'?" She took a sip and wiped her mouth.
"Yeah, a 'broom handle', I think. That and the thing about rape. Weird shit, man… But I don't know, I couldn't quite hear, the audio got kind of static-filled, you know?"
"Right, but when was the last time that happened? Three months ago?"
"Yeah," he answered, "last semester. The burn victim."
"Okay…and we fixed that problem, a cross in the wires in between panels-"
"H-eleven and I-one, yeah, I remember. You were dead certain the doc did that on purpose…what, you think he's pulling the same sophomoric shit on us tonight?"
Basil's smile had grown shorter as they spoke, and now it was all but gone, replaced with hesitance bordering on worry. "I don't know, Peter. It's just; when he was talking, and he stopped making sense, I got this bad feeling in my gut. It wasn't like this the last time, it's like something isn't right."
Peter laughed, putting his ear set back on. "Relax, it's the same old, same old. Only more boring, cause nothing's wrong with this guy. Let's get back to it, sweetness, and you'll see. You'll be bored to tears watching him walk around that beach house with lady apple bottom in no time. Then you'll be begging for some excitement."
Basil gave him a smile, but she didn't feel it. She rolled in close to him and slid the headset back over her tendrils.
"I think tonight I'll settle for bored, Pete."
*~~*~~*
[]
*~~*~~*
CITADEL
"Look, the beauty of it is in the details, why can't you see that, Merl? This time the plan will work!"
Merl Orthanc sighed and tilted his head back in his chair, blinking the ache out of his wide salarian eyes. "Why, Sami, why do we have to have this argument every…dreaded…cycle?"
"It's a great show, okay? All we have to do is score the tickets, take some really well-earned time off and book a flight to the Horsehead Nebula."
"Yes, but a flight like that would cost a fortune in credits-"
"Not if it's for official Citadel business!"
Merl turned to the other salarian, who had his face obscured up to his eyes by the terminal he was working at. Sami's eyes were filled with hope and excitement.
Merl scoffed, incredulous. "We don't have any reason for them to believe we need to go to-"
"Badges! We have these rippin' badges now, Merl. Look, here's all we have to do; first we use the badges to get into the flight office, telling them, oh, I don't know; we'll tell them we got word of a burst pipe flooding krogan feces through the wall, then-"
Merl had known Sami since they were kids, which, at the age of nineteen now, wasn't really that long ago. But Sami sometimes made it feel like a millennia. Once they'd completed what education they'd been forced to, Sami had suggested working for the Citadel doing some crap job that they could do with their hands tied behind their backs so that Sami could use the time to scheme and plot out their real futures.
"-convince that new human councilor that the best way to get the 'lethal poison', heh, aka your mom's krellit sauce, off the station is on a top secret mission. From there, we-"
When they'd been hired as waste management, the job was really simple. Keep the pumps running, clean out the gutters every once in a while, make sure the garbage haulers and waste removal flights were on schedule; but just under two weeks ago, the very day after the attack on the Citadel, they'd been moved underground and stuck in this bunker to hack into the data stream the Keepers used to run, this as punishment for their involvement with Chorban and Jahleed's scanning plan.
"-kill him if we have to, but you leave that to me, Merl, you were always a big softie, I can kill a volus, I mean I'm pretty sure I can, I'll just get the mercenaries to sit on him and he'll pop like a soap bubble, those guys are really just big, fat gas-bags anyways-"
God, Merl thought, if only Chorban hadn't ratted me out for helping him develop the software.
"-and then we flip the creds onto the next guy in line, give the injectors we scored from trading the fake tickets to the mercs that flew us there and we're in! It's just that simple. All in the details."
Actually, if I'd only cut ties with that scumbag sooner. He turned a harmless science project into a seriously illegal credit scam; that lousy grabbak's ten times worse than Sami ever will be.
"So, what do you think? Are you in?"
Sami could never actually hurt anyone or screw them over, even if he had the brains to think of a good way to do it.
"Merl, hey! Merl!"
Still, I wish he was smart enough to help me break through this code. I'm tired of doing all the work while he sits their jabberin-
Something light and fluffy struck him in the side of the head, fell to the floor and squeaked.
"Hey, Merl! Answer."
Merl turned to him, spotting his friend's eyes peaking over the terminal once more. The room was filled with data receptors, blinking lights and really, really old computer and relay screens.
"What do you think of the plan? Foolproof, right?"
Merl looked down at the floor and spotted what Sami had chucked at his head. A krogan plushy doll, the Palaven shotgun in its claws worn from Sami's constant squeezing, much like its soft, squishy head. He picked it up off the floor.
"Sounds great, Sami. We'll get started on it next week." He tossed the doll back over the terminal and watched two gangly green arms come up, fingers webbed at the bottoms splayed wide. Sami's hand clapped together on the doll, and Merl heard the other salarian huff in disappointment.
"You weren't even listening, were you? You always agree with me when you zone me out."
Merl smiled and turned back to his own terminal. "How can I argue with logic like that?"
Sami didn't respond.
Merl rolled his eyes. "Hey, while you're mad it me and shunning my existence, would you mind cracking open the Citcomp System Manual and trying to learn a little bit about what we're doing, so I don't have to do your work too before we head out for the day?"
Still nothing.
Merl waited, but Sami didn't respond. He always had some smart retort, unless he felt genuinely hurt.
"Greels, Sami, I'm sorry. I'll listen to your plan over dinner, okay? Honest."
The voice that finally replied was low and frightened. "I didn't do it, Merl."
Merl frowned, stood from his chair. "What? What are you talking about?" He walked quickly around the large blinking station.
Only to find Sami squeezing the tiny krogan doll, his eyes as wide as they could go and scared. Merl hadn't seen Sami scared in ten years.
Merl stared at his friend, questioning with his eyes.
"I got to page sixty in the manual, Merl, I wasn't lying when I told you that. I know there's hundreds of pages left, but in the first sixty pages, they definitely mention this." The young salarian raised his hand and pointed at the data screen. "And that's really, really bad, right?"
Merl looked at the coded data streaming down the screen. It took him seconds to recognize the pattern; one sentence, three words, repeating over and over again.
"Citadel Computer System Manual, page thirty-seven, paragraph twelve," Merl recited from memory, his near-breathless voice shaking. "Legend has awoken."
*~~*~~*
[]
*~~*~~*
Alice Shepard finally found her partner sitting down in the embassy lounge, hidden at a corner table near the back. She had her elbows on the table, one arm up, hand under smooth curve of her chin, supporting her head as she sulked, the other hand playing with a tiny plastic umbrella sticking out of a glass.
As Alice neared the table, she recognized the drink Liara had ordered. Rum. Ruby red rum. It was filled to the brim, the umbrella floating at the top.
Shepard seated herself across from Liara, staring at her expectantly.
Liara briefly met Shepard's eyes. She had been crying, that much was evident. Liara returned her gaze to the umbrella.
"Liara, I've never been one to care what species someone is-"
"Maybe not now, Shepard, but let's never say never. You seemed to care a great deal a few years ago."
Alice scratched the back of her neck nervously, searching for the right words to explain what had transpired that day on Elvira.
"Goddess, I'm such a fool," Liara said bitterly, "you must've found it humorous."
"What? Found what-I don't understand."
Liara rolled her eyes. "Oh, please, Shepard. Do you agree with him? Am I a…a shy, stuttering, blue-skinned, biotic f-fucking princess?"
Alice's face darkened and her eyes searched back and forth for a moment, before- "Oh, that son of a bitch."
"Do not blame him, Shepard, I would've found out eventually and we still would've had this conversation," Liara said dryly, echoing Rickard's words.
"Liara, Kaiden was upset, and when he said that I ignored it, that much is true, but sometimes that's what you do for people when they're angry. You let it go. I never intended for you to hear those words, Liara, I never want to see you hurting like this…"
The asari laughed. "I heard about it a week ago, Shepard, before we even left for the medical station. I just…I thought you were…I thought of you differently, then."
Shepard reached her hand out across the table.
The asari quickly yanked hers back, shoving both of her hands in her lap.
Then she watched as Alice wrapped her hand under the glass and began to turn it slowly so as not to spill the rum on the tablecloth. The umbrella began to bob in the alcohol, to and fro, dancing in the red liquid.
"What are you doing, Shepard?" Liara asked, obviously trying to sound distant and uncaring, but without much success.
"I'm checking for your lip prints on the edges."
"Why are you doing that?"
"To see if this is a refill, and you've been a busy girl, or if you've been sitting here for the last hour hiding from me, struggling to decide whether or not this is the day you'd like to try getting shit-faced for the first time in your life."
"And what if you see prints on it? How would you know they're mine? I might just have let some stumbling drunken human take a sip-"
"There aren't any prints on this glass, Liara," Alice said, still staring at the rum cup, her voice calm and cool, "and if there were I'd know in a heartbeat if they were yours. I'll be able to recognize the shape of your lips for the rest of my life."
Liara bit her bottom lip. She blinked a few times and looked out at the other patrons, but she didn't respond.
Shepard sighed. "Even if you run away today because I said something stupid eight years ago, something I've regretted from the second it left my mouth, and you set up a new dig site light years away where I'll never find you, and you hide from the world for another hundred years, until I'm old and broken, if you so much as kiss a plate of glass at a restaurant at the end of the universe, and I hobble my worthless carcass in there one day and take a seat; I'll still be able to point to that plate and say to whoever is sorry enough to be stuck with me," Shepard pointed in the air and prodded her finger, a small, sad smile on her face, "lookit there, I know those lips. Used to kiss a pretty girl, had those exact lips."
Liara watched her, eyes wet. One corner of her mouth turned up, just a little.
Alice leaned forward. "I'd tell that person that I'm sorry I did something that scared you off. That I never meant to hurt anyone when I said what I said, except the person I said it to, because I was hurting myself, Liara. I'd met asari before, but only briefly. And I was young and stupid and in pain, and I didn't care what came out of my mouth, so long as Sam knew she'd hurt me something awful. But when it did come out, I knew I had, at least for that brief moment, become someone worth leaving."
Liara suddenly brought her arms up from her lap, grabbing Alice's hand in her own, wrapping it up with her blue fingers and squeezing.
"I'm not going to run away, Shepard. Please, please don't think that. I-I care about you very much, I think I-. Well, I just, I never considered leaving you, leaving this, what we have. It's just that I've spent so much time with you these last few months, watching you, and I've grown accustomed to your charm and your wisdom. This is going to sound foolish, Shepard, but I've seen you kill people, bad people; but in all this time I've never seen you hurt someone. Am I making sense?"
Alice nodded. "Yes, Liara, I understand. I'm so sorry that I said that, I really am."
"Shepard, it was eight years ago. I have been hiding here, like you said, with the rum punch and all, and some of it, a great deal of it was spent dwelling in the pain of words you said long before we ever met. Once I realized how foolish that was, I started to focus on what was really bothering me…you're human."
Shepard blinked, taken aback. She frowned. "Um, Liara?"
The asari shook her head. "No-no, that's not what I meant, I mean, I like that you're human, you have very nice curves and you are soft in all the right places, very flexible, surprisingly flexible, really. Oh, I wish that I had your ability to voice romantic feelings…um, oh! You're wet, when I kiss you."
Shepard's eyes went wide, her head turning to scan the tables around them. "Uh-"
"Not too wet, you know, I once kissed a salarian named Harley on a dig site while engaging in higher learning, and his mouth was overly filled with saliva. You have just the right amount, it feels good, tastes good, you taste really good in my mouth-"
Alice shook Liara's hands. "Okay, okay, you're very sweet, but you've got to stop. Just tell me what you meant when you said you realized that I'm human."
Liara let out a breath of air. "Oh, alright. Um, I'm sorry, I'm not sure I know how to say this properly."
"It's okay," Alice said, "let's just avoid words like wet and flexible."
"…I-I said that I've been watching you. I have. I think I began to put you on a…what's the phrase? A pillar? Well, I worshipped you, for your strength and valor, your kindness. If someone with ill intent was unarmed, or if someone with good intent was armed and was…what did Chief Williams call it? Batshit crazy. Either way, ill and unarmed, good but armed and batshit crazy, you would resolve the situation without causing them pain. I saw you as a symbol of always doing the right thing. I guess that went to my head, and today when that horrible little man would not stop speaking, I had my world shaken. I discovered…"
"That I'm human."
"Yes, exactly… Thank you for understanding."
Alice smiled. She got to her feet and pulled on Liara's hand, the asari meeting her halfway across the table. Alice kissed her deeply, sensually but briefly and then sat back down. "Thank you, Liara."
The asari smiled brightly. She squeezed Alice's hand again. "Nice and wet, Shepard."
Alice sighed. "Liara, we've got to talk about your choice of wor-"
Suddenly the ground shook beneath them violently. The tremor shaking the glass until it tipped, sailing over the edge of the table, rum splashing, glass shattering and sparkling on the floor.
People screamed all over the embassy lounge. Alice pulled on Liara's hands hard, bringing the asari out of her chair and into the commander's arms.
"Shepard," Liara whispered, frightened but not panicking.
Then it was done, just as abruptly as it had come.
Alice looked around. People stumbling across the lounge, diplomats grabbing briefcases and soaked bundles of contracts and briefs off the floor, the bartender looking at the mess of broken glass around him, checking for any cuts on his body.
And down on the floor, in the liquid remnants of Liara's first rum punch ever, the little plastic umbrella sat amidst the shining droplets, broken at the stem.
Alice kept Liara in her arms. "What the-"
*~~*~~*
[]
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