A/N: thanks for the fav and follows :)
John and Noah sat late into the night, drinking and talking. John was still trying to wrap his mind around the fact that his little girl was alive, albeit a continent and an ocean away from where he'd left her. From the sounds of it, she'd had a rough time of it since he'd last seen her.
He still remembered the last words he'd said to her before he left on a shuttle bound for the spaceport.
"I'll be back before you know it."
But he hadn't come back, not for a year and a half. By then, his house had burned down, his father was dead, and Bex was missing presumed dead. He could only imagine that Bex and Caleb had heard those same words applied to him.
Heartbroken, he had left the military and gone back to school to finish the last few credits he needed for his degree in veterinary medicine; he'd graduated and immediately hopped on a transport leaving Vancouver. He'd ended up in London and joined a practice there. The woman who'd owned the clinic had retired a year ago, giving the reigns over to John.
Noah had explained how he'd come to know Bex and everything that had happened in the two and half years since, though he said Zaeed would be able to tell him more. Assuming the man ever woke up.
Any operation involving a gunshot was tricky business, but this was trickier than most. As John had suspected, Noah had more experience with gunshots, but even he wasn't all that confident in Zaeed's chances of recovery. But Bex kept insisting he was going to be okay.
She also kept insisting she was going to kill Vido Santiago, first chance she got. John certainly shared the sentiment. From what Noah had said, the only good thing Vido had done since Bex had come into their lives was to double-cross the two bastards he'd sold her to, and that had been for purely selfish reasons.
The thing John didn't quite understand, and Noah hadn't been any help, was how Bex had ended up on the streets of Vancouver in the first place. She'd apparently told Noah and Zaeed how she'd come to live in London, but never told them why she'd run away from the orphanage. Assuming she had actually run away and not been lured out and taken.
John had gone to the orphanage in Maple Ridge and talked to the matron. Mrs. Talbot had been less than forthcoming with the details of Bex's brief stay. All she said was that Bex hadn't gotten along with anyone and she'd refused to sleep in her bed; she'd slept curled up in a ball in the corner every single night she'd been there. It had seemed to John that Mrs. Talbot had been almost relieved when Bex had gone missing along with her roommate. When the older girl had come back a week later, she'd apparently been scared out of her mind and half-starved, but very much alive. But she'd never spoken to anyone about what had happened in the week she'd been gone, nor where Bex might have been. In fact, it had been more than six months before she spoke at all.
John glanced over at Noah when someone started pounding loudly on the front door.
They walked out of John's office just in time to see Bex standing in the doorway, glowing from head to foot, yelling at the two men who stood on the step outside.
John took a step toward the door, but Noah held him back.
"She knows what she's doing, John."
"How long has she been a biotic? Moira and I always knew it was a possibility, after she was exposed to eezo a few months before Bex was born, but when I left on that last mission, she hadn't shown any tendencies."
Noah shrugged. "No idea. First time she and Zaeed met, she had him in a stasis field. And it didn't seem to be a new phenomenon. It's likely the Reds picked her up because she was biotic."
They watched, amazed, as Bex threw a biotic punch at the two men standing outside. A moment later, there was a dull thud as they hit the wall on the other side of the alley.
She closed and locked the door and turned, a slight grimace on her face as she spotted John and Noah watching her. "Vido's men. I don't think it's safe to keep Zaeed here. They'll be back with –"
She stopped suddenly and fell to the floor in a dead faint.
"Bex!" John rushed over to pick her up and took her into his office. He turned to Noah after he'd laid her carefully on the couch. "What's wrong with her?"
Noah sighed. "Nothing, really. She just hasn't eaten in way too long. I made her a protein shake after Vido brought her to the warehouse, but that was hours ago. And she hadn't been eating right for about a week before that."
"Why not?"
"She knew if she didn't eat, she'd be too weak to go on jobs for Vido. At least, that's what she told Zaeed last night. She's been doing it for over a year, whenever he went out on a job. I always thought she was trying to starve the biotics out of her system or something."
"I'm not stupid," Bex mumbled as she regained consciousness. "I know I can't actually make it go away."
John helped her sit up as Noah took an energy bar from his pocket and handed it to her. "Eat."
She rolled her eyes, though John noticed she tore into the packaging like a bear coming out of hibernation.
"She's right," Noah said as the two men walked to the exam room to check on Zaeed. "Zaeed once said Pike was a man who doesn't like to lose, but he is... was... nothing compared to Vido. Pike would travel across the planet to take out revenge on someone, but Vido will absolutely hunt them, and me probably, across the whole damn galaxy."
"So where's that leave us?" John asked.
"Until we know something definite about Zaeed, whether he's going to make it or –"
"He is," Bex snapped, following them into the room and sitting on a stool beside the exam table. "He just... he has to. 'K?"
Noah and John nodded.
"Fine," Noah said. "Until Zaeed is stable enough to travel longer distances, we don't have many options. But I think, if we're extremely careful, we can make it to a safe house I have just outside the city."
"Let's get to it, then," John said as he threw supplies into a bag. "The quicker we can get him moved and stable again, the better off he'll be."
