Out of suffering and fire emerge the strongest souls. The most massive characters are seared with scars.
- Captain David Anderson
For a moment, he thinks that the onboard locator is malfunctioning and has led him to an empty room, but then she stands and her movement sheds the cloak of shadows and stillness that had hid her from his usually piercing sight. She looks younger than he expected, somehow diminutive despite the strength he can see rippling through her body as she strikes military posture and raises one hand to her brow in a crisp salute. The snug military uniform bulges over a swath of bandages still clinging to her left side but she is otherwise immaculate and apparently untouched by her hellish trek through the toxic deserts of Akuze. He salutes her back, and then motions for her to be at ease.
Her shoulders fall back to natural posture, and her knees unlock, but it is impossible to say that she relaxes. He gets the distinct impression that she never really does, that the electric intensity of her blue eyes never loses its penetrating intensity. She lifts her chin slightly, and they study each other from across the room as they consider what they will say to each other.
"Good morning. Captain." It is a greeting carefully chosen. "What brings you to the medical wing?"
"You." He has never been one to beat around the bush and if her response is any indication, neither is she. She reveals no surprise at the news, merely continues to study him, her blue eyes holding his. He advances into the room and motions to the row of slightly reclined leather seats that look out over the brilliant blue and green curve of Earth. After a moment she sinks into one of them, her elbow settling on the arm rest, hand cupping her chin. He descends the small flight of stairs and takes a seat beside her.
Diminutive is not the correct word, he decides, but he certainly did not expect her to be so small. Five foot four, and made mostly of long, supple legs. Her fingers are long and slender, her large blue eyes the centrepiece of a deceptively soft face. Her file says she is twenty three, but she looks more like she is eighteen to his eyes.
"Me." She says, and turns to look at him. Whatever illusions of frail innocence her soft bow-shaped lips and narrow waist might suggest are swiftly burnt away by the heat of her gaze. They look at each other for a long moment and he can see a muscle in her jaw working, ticking thoughtfully as she grinds her teeth silently. "What do you want with me?"
"Do you know who I am? What I do?" He asks, instead of answering her question. She narrows her stunning eyes and looks out, through the panoramic window at the distant horizon of Earth. The muscle in her jaw is still ticking.
"Most of your mission files are classified." She says placidly, not answering his either.
"But you've still looked at them." He presses. She shoots him a sideways looks and shrugs in a noncommittal fashion.
"There's not a lot to do when no one has any poker money left." She finally responds, shifting her weight in her seat. "The SSV Fenris is a notorious ship, even among the Alliance. Very secretive, operating mostly in the fringe systems on highly classified missions. Not the sort of ship that typically drops by an orbital garrison unannounced for a few days."
"I guess not." He lets the silence stretch for a few moments. "If you've read my files you should have some idea of what I want with you."
She snorts, and the sound contains an ocean of disbelief and suspicion. She turns to look straight at him again and it is his turn to gaze out through the windows toward their home planet. Her gaze prickles along his forehead like a hundred tiny fingers, making tiny hairs stand on end. The muscle in her jaw continues to tick as she stands, and strides across the narrow viewing platform to stand directly in front of the window, staring out into the great void of space.
"Why do you want me? Because of Akuze?" She asks. Her voice is as polished as her posture, just as strong and unwavering. He has met people who survived things half as horrific, half as intense as Akuze and never recovered from them. She, aside from that bulk of bandages under her tailored uniform, is so completely unfazed by it that it borders on frightening.
"Not entirely. I was considering you before the reports were even filed." He replies truthfully, crossing his ankle over his opposite knee and meeting her eyes as she turns at the waist and lets that penetrating blue gaze rake over him again. She looks back through the window after a moment, raises one hand and runs it over the smooth line of her brown hair, back to the military knot it shapes at the base of her neck. "Akuze just proved that all those special commendations you've received over your first year of service were actually worth something."
"They certainly are." She snaps, her voice breaking into emotion for the first time since they began this conversation. Her eyes are two points of burning sapphire when she glances over her shoulder and looks at him, dark brows arched into positions of disgust over her soft face. "I earned those. Every single one of them."
"You don't think your upbringing had anything to do with them?" He asks, even though he knows by this point it did not. Not enough, at least, to erase the work she did to earn them. But this reaction is the first earnest one he has gotten from her, and he needs to gauge more than just her rigid and unrelenting self control before he makes this decision. "Sympathy?"
"You must work for a different military than I do." She snorts, turning away again. Just like that, the flicker of indignation is gone, slid below the surface to be replaced by… nothing really. Her face is neutral and blank once more. "Sympathy doesn't come into play in my life very often."
"I can see that." He says, and she stiffens again, only slightly. She does not turn to look at him as her shoulders rise and fall in a silent shrug, but he can see the tension working through her shoulders, down her strong back and her posture shifts, filling with nervous, violent energy.
"Look, Shepard." He stands and takes a few steps forward, stopping when he is close enough to see her face reflected in the glass window. She is staring, unblinkingly, at the surface of the Earth far below. "I didn't come here to play games. I could use someone with your particular skill set on my ship."
She finally turns around again, arms crossed over her chest and her gaze is flat and unconvinced as it picks over him once more. She is not the kind of person who says or does anything without thinking about it very carefully. In that way, as well as many others it seems, they are very similar people. Her jaw is still working in and out as she grinds her teeth, one brow twitching slightly, perhaps annoyed that he is making himself so difficult to read. She is the kind of person who can learn more from body language and nervous ticks than words. In other words, the smart kind.
"Have you read the mission files on Akuze?" She asks finally.
"I have." He answers. Brutal stuff, distilled into clean military jargon designed to inform without inciting any emotion. Pointless. Fifty dead marines and a twenty-nine mile walk through the burning desert is something that can only be distilled so far. On top of the written report are the pictures of her injuries, rotten flesh crumbling under the surgeons hand, blackened veins full of poison standing out under pale skin, bloody froth collecting at the corners of broken, sunburnt lips. Even on paper that has weight, and all of that was written on her flesh no more than a month ago. And here she is standing as though already prepared for action, the bandage more formality than necessity. He has made the right decision. He already knows it.
"Then you'll excuse me saying that if your missions require the kind of skills I showed on Akuze, I don't really want any part of them." She says wryly. "If they don't, then I'm unsure as to what you think is particularly special about me. All I did was walk."
"Modesty doesn't become you, Shepard." He says, raising one dark brow in the first expression he has allowed himself since this conversation began. Her eyes capture the detail instantly, he can see them still dissecting his face and body language even as her attention focuses on his words. Every moment he spends with her makes him more convinced he has found something truly special, makes him more determined to see her on his ship. He tries not to let it show.
"It's not modesty, it's honesty. I didn't kill the thresher maws, I didn't rally the troops in a triumphant backlash, I didn't do anything particularly heroic or inspiring. I just laid really still and then walked through the desert. That's not something that makes me a great soldier." Her voice is hard, unrelenting and strangely devoid of feeling. She speaks from a pragmatic standpoint, not the mire of survivor's guilt he has come to expect from young soldiers in her position. This is a good thing.
"No, you already were a great soldier." He says after a moment of silence. "Akuze proves that you know how to survive. That's something special, something invaluable in our line of work. If you hadn't made it to the surgeons station they would have deployed a hundred marines, that would have followed the signal from your tanks right back to the thresher nest. There would undoubtedly have been casualties, again, but because you walked through hell there were not. Things like this are much better indications of true potential than combat scores and commendations."
They stare at each other for a long moment and she turns around again, facing the graceful curve of the planet below as her eyes grow distant and blank. She does not say anything for a long moment and he realizes that he has shifted, his posture filling with eager energy. He cannot disguise how deeply he has fallen into the force of her presence, the undeniably greatness beginning to manifest itself in her eyes. There is a part of him that instinctively wants to be around her, fighting beside her, a part of him that already knows she can be depended upon. An instinct that comes straight from his gut and is impossible to ignore.
"You can have some time to think about it. With the upgrades being slapped on the Fenris we won't be ready to depart for another three days." He says. "Life in the fringe isn't easy. After what you just went through, I'm sure any number of easier and more illustrious positions are available to you."
"I don't need any time to think about it." She replies, sounding slightly annoyed that he might think she does. Her gaze flashes over her shoulder, still guarded, definitely not yet at ease with what is happening. But there is ambition there, spurring her forward, and a need for action like an itch in the corners of her lovely eyes. "And I definitely am not interested in anything easier or more 'illustrious'."
He smiles. "I thought not. I'll have the transfer processed by the end of the day. You can report at 1800 hours tomorrow."
"That's fine." She confirms, turning back to face the window. Her expression is still strangely blank, her eyes slipping to places far away as she stares down at the swirl of white clouds spinning over the Gulf of Mexico far below. A hurricane, lashing arms of furious destruction across the world below is little more than a pretty shape from this distance and she watches it crawl along the coast as he taps at his omnitool, sending requests and orders where appropriate. When he looks up again she has not moved a muscle. The tick in her jaw is gone.
"I look forward to working with you, Shepard." He extends one hand and she turns away from the window after a moment to clasp it in her own. Her fingers are pale, long and feminine. They look like they could barely lift a pistol, let alone the heavy sniper and assault rifles her profile says she favours. Her grip is as strangely powerful as the rest of her, not hard but solid as they shake hands.
"And I you, Captain." She replies. This close, he can see the pale pucker of scars where her lips had split open from the dryness of the desert, the scattering of brown freckles under her large eyes and the white line of an old scar clinging to the very edge of her jaw. A few strands of chestnut brown hair curl gently above one tiny white ear. It will take a while to stop being surprised by how pretty she is, how small and almost delicate she appears to him. She drops her hand and folds it with the other, behind her back again. Turns around and faces the planet again, staring down at the broken coastline of the America's, the encompassing stain of the ocean. Her eyes lose themselves in distant places, in memories or thoughts he has no hope of deciphering from his position behind her.
He takes his leave, and heads back to his ship feeling accomplished. As the distance between them grows he thinks back and is slightly surprised by his own actions, his own feelings. He cannot recall having ever been as eager to recruit someone, to know them and work with them. The force of her personality overwhelms the more suspicious, rational side of him. He already trusts Shepard, trusts her to get the job done no matter what, after that irrationally brief encounter.
He shakes his head, clearing doubts and thoughts as the airlock slides open and the decontamination ray flickers to life, bathing him with its itching radiance. She will do just fine.
He knows she will.
I know I said we were going straight for the Normandy, but sometimes a moment just pours out of you, you know?
Now, we'll head straight for the first game. That said, I'm having trouble deciding which moments from the game I should include around my own dialogue and minor events. If there's any specific scene or event anyone would particularly like to see please suggest it in the comments. I am also still interested in hearing who you guys think should be the ME1 romantic interest.