Standard disclaimers: I don't own ME or any of its characters. Great big thanks to JaliceAZ, Stacy218 and Orchidellia. Your reviews kept me excited to write. :) Smallish chapter here, but got two more roughed out. Should be following up soon.
A long time ago, the girl touched the bulkhead of a departing US Navy destroyer and asked it to keep her then-fiancée safe. When it finally returned to port, repaired and sea-worthy again, her hands shook as she silently thanked it for doing as she'd asked.
Walking aboard the Normandy makes her remember this and she doesn't even try to resist the urge to let her fingers graze along the bulkhead of the airlock. Her hands don't shake this time, but neither are they completely steady, either.
As they walk into the ship proper, she takes a deep breath to ward off the dizziness. She's learned to better deal with the odd juxtaposition of familiarity and oddity that comes from seeing a computer generated space rendered in reality, but this isn't the Promenade. This isn't a line of shops. This is the Normandy. Thick with personality and presence, it closes around her, enveloping her, and she knows that it has the potential to terrify her if she lets it.
She's on board the Normandy. The Normandy.
And she's following Commander Shepard past the side consoles, by the universe map, and towards that odd little War Room.
"I miss the old ship…" she thinks wistfully and almost, almost says aloud. She'd liked the layout from the second game and had always found herself unconsciously looking for it while wandering around in the third. She swallows hard at the reminder of things she shouldn't know, and looks over her shoulder. Thane is there, tall and alert, Garrus visible a few steps behind him. They'd all come, Garrus, Liara and Shepard, to escort her from Thane's little bolt hole apartment. They'd said little, but it was telling enough to know they were moving her and were concerned about her safety.
Of course, Thane had come along too. If he hadn't, an echo of her pride would have protested at the thought of being handed off like a sack of potatoes, while the raw places in her would have wailed at the abandonment of someone who knew so many of her secrets and had at least pretended to like her.
The hissy fit would have been epic.
She smiles faintly and her mind is briefly filled with comical images of her clinging like a stubborn toddler to Thane's leg while Shepherd, Liara and Garrus try in vain to tug her off. It's enough to make her start to giggle as they pass through the security detector and to cause Liara to turn and give her a hard, cold look.
She recognizes the urge to stick her tongue out at the woman as a particularly unwise one.
But...
She is on board the Normandy.
Sticking her tongue out, strutting about like she belongs there, complaining about the layout not being to her liking… even things that ridiculous wouldn't top the sheer insanity of what is already happening…
She is on board the Normandy.
People that she's never met, but that she's spent hours, weeks of her life invested in, will call her by name, ask her things, and look at her.
And, like it or not, the girl will be in the light. She will be seen.
Because she's on the Normandy now.
And, sooner rather than later, she is probably going to have to find some way to make that feel real.