Thirteen
Shepard catches most of the fight from beneath the stairs. She'd found this passage accidentally, meant for maintenance drones, but she fits, barely, and it runs a twisted path from the hangar to the hull to the engines to her room.
Her room. The room Tali shoves Garrus away from, the room Kaidan turns to before he's drawn back by Joker's hiss of pain. Kaidan is a mess—she can see the tremble in his profile, hands covering his closed face.
"I'm sorry," he says. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have—"
Joker limps himself toward some privacy, and she follows suit, slithering away between the coiled cables, back along the grease-smeared underbelly of the ship. It's not a straight path by any means: she is detained by static recycle in the engine room and so arrives only after her sanctuary has been invaded.
She lays flat, watching through slits in the grate, as Kaidan closes the door and turns to Joker, perched on a clean chair, shirtless, and twisting around to examine a bruise forming on his back.
"You okay?"
"Nah, but I got twenty-three other ribs, right?"
He grins, and Kaidan's mouth twitches a little.
"Hey, it's okay to laugh," Joker says gently. "Besides, it's probably closer to fifteen. I sneezed yesterday."
The best he gets is a half-smile.
"All the same, I'm sorry."
"I'd say not your fault, but I can't remember which side you were standing on."
"Neither can I," Kaidan sighs. "I don't know what came over me. It felt like we were...well. Like last time."
He glances at Joker shamefully.
"I never apologized to you for any of...what happened."
"Hard to apologize to someone you can't find."
"Or won't look for."
"You were drunk, your dad just died, Shepard was gone. It all happened—"
Joker sighs.
"It all happened a long time ago."
"Doesn't change what I did," Kaidan says, handing over a med-kit. "How did you know about...about my dad?"
"My dad. He likes reading the Alliance briefs in every burst. Recognized the name, and told me. It was a few days after, and I remember thinking that maybe it was you."
"It wasn't."
"Yeah, well, I know that now," Joker says, with a chuckle that fades abruptly. "Killed me a little, you know? Thinking that maybe you'd...hard to imagine at first, then I just kept picturing you on that floor, all fucked up and alone."
"It never got that bad."
Joker's useless with the syringe, missing the port by centimeters, so Kaidan takes the needle, overcareful, pressing the plunger with a frown.
"Is this...did Cerberus...?"
"Free employee upgrades," Joker confirms with a wry grin. "Too expensive and painful and dangerous to reinforce the bone, but they implanted channels to funnel medi-gel and provide some support."
He winces.
"Between stealing your kid and breaking Shepard, they did a few good deeds."
Kaidan nods, already miles away.
"I should go apologize."
"To Garrus? Think that'll do anything?"
"No. But it's the right thing to do."
"Fucking boy scout," Joker sighs, shaking his head. "Go on. I got this."
Kaidan nods again and leaves. Shepard blinks, breathes in, breathes out.
"Hear enough to satisfy your curiosity? Or do you still have questions?"
He doesn't turn but holds out his shirt expectantly, waiting for her move.
"How did you know I was here?"
"I can hear you lurking," he says. "C'mon, it's cold."
She slithers out from the shaft, nudging the grate back into place, taking the shirt and holding it low enough to help one of his arms through.
"So, catch the main event? Any comments?"
"What did you mean by last time?"
The other arm, and then she's gently stretching the shirt over his head. He quickly settles that awful hat over his flat hair and shrugs.
"Last time means last time we all saw each other. Remember that story I told? About my flight status getting revoked?"
He scoots over, and she perches on the other half of the chair, pressed against his side, stealing his warmth. Home: she settles an arm around his back, high, avoiding the injury.
"Wasn't the whole story."
"Color me surprised."
"You could use some color," Joker says, surveying her face with a critical eye. "You're like a fucking blank canvas, you know? Dark lines and empty white spaces."
"Tell me the story, LT."
"So, this glorious day. I'm told by the brass to stop with my appeals. I'd gone as high as I could, and it was done. No flying. Day before, Garrus got fired. Didn't know it at the time 'cause he was too ashamed to tell us, but he still hung around, and after finding out that Tali and Liara were being kicked off the detail, we met up with him at some shit bar. It was just a bitch session, you know? I was pissed that I lost the one thing I'd worked so fucking hard for, Garrus was pissed he'd fucked up all over again, and Liara and Tali were just along for the ride."
"Doubt that's how they'd characterize it."
"Then they can tell their own fucking version."
"Okay, okay."
He smiles, and she's compelled to smile back. It almost feels natural.
"Kaidan was acting CO. None of the Normandy survivors had been reassigned yet, because of stupid fucked up protocol over who could debrief us and why and when. All of my appeals had to go to him, and I told that to Garrus, which somehow meant that we should go over to Kaidan's apartment and make him wave a magic fucking wand and fix everything."
He sighs and leans a little closer, chin centimeters from her shoulder.
"Kaidan's dad had just died. He was getting ready to go home, for the funeral, and that day—that same fucking day, he was called in to Anderson's office for an unofficial chat. The way Anderson tells it, the brass started out sweet and ended with a threat. Said Kaidan would face court-martial if he didn't keep to the company line. I told you they wanted everything you stirred up gone, and Kaidan and Anderson were the last sticklers. You gone, all Kaidan had left was his career. But he's a good guy."
She nods at his bitter laugh.
"Said he didn't care, wouldn't throw you over for a promotion and a pay bump. Said they could toss him out—he didn't care. And then they threatened the rest of us."
"Where was Hackett?"
"Ham-strung. Pulling the pieces of the Fifth Fleet back together. Navy answers to the president, answers to Parliament, answers to the billion-upon-terrified-trillion voters. And Parliament didn't want humanity hiding behind the shadow of a nutjob the Council couldn't stand. No offense."
She smiles at him, and it's real.
"They were going to ship the rest of us to Siberia, you know? Told him he'd still get his promotion because it was great PR, but everyone else was going to the ass-end of Alliance space, given the shit assignments. He couldn't stop me being grounded or Chakwas routed out to Mars. Anderson burned too many bridges to be any help."
His smile turns sour.
"So that's the scene. Makes sense he'd go out and get a little blasted, right? And then he stumbles home to a break-in, the four of us sitting there, seething, totally oblivious. Words were exchanged, punches thrown, friendships severed."
"What did he say to you?"
"Nothing," he says, too quickly. She waits him out, knowing his insatiable desire to fill a void. "Stupid shit. Stuff he didn't mean. Nothing I hadn't thought myself."
"Like what?"
He gets quieter.
"That it was my fault. That I deserved to lose flight status because I disobeyed a direct order. Said my selfishness, my obsession with saving the ship was the reason..."
He draws in air, chest expanding against her arm.
"The reason you died. He said it was my fault."
"It wasn't."
"Yeah, it was."
"Jeff, it wasn't."
He meets her eyes briefly, nodding but only to quiet her.
"And I guess that's what set Garrus off. Starts screaming about honor and loyalty. Kaidan had no chance. He was too drunk to defend himself, really, just kinda crumpled to the ground and rolled with the blows. Liara had to separate them with a barrier. Kaidan was such a fucking mess. There was blood everywhere."
She can see it behind his eyes, can see that he's seeing it all over again.
"So messed up. Just screamed at us to get out, get the fuck away. And we did. And that's the story of the last time any of us saw him."
"Last time," Shepard repeats. "Long time ago."
She pulls Joker's free hand onto her lap, thumb running over his knuckles.
"So, are you crazy?"
"Am I?"
"Are you?"
"I don't know."
"That's bullshit, Commander," he grins.
She can't meet his eyes, focusing on the seam of their joined fingers as it begins to blur.
"You know what you are. Get it together, Shepard. We need you."
He leaves her alone after a quick kiss to her temple. Home, she thinks again, fingers tracing where his beard scratched at her skin. As close as she's ever been.
There's time to process now, with the ship gone silent. She anchors herself to the feel of Joker, moments ago against her side. She stays on just half of the seat, unwilling to banish the impression of him. The heat—it crawls beneath her skin, bubbles up between her joints.
"You know what you are."
She traces the imagined seam—here is what she was, when she was twenty-two. Half-dead, melting into the roof of a Mako, the maw's acid making canyons and craters of her hip and ribcage. Porcelain smooth, leather rough.
Sixteen hours under Akuze's brutal sun, until a turian merchant ship answered the beacon. Then two days in their cargo-hold, screaming, no painkillers, no medi-gel, begging to die. Sometimes she closes her eyes and sees the captain's pitying gaze, feels his cool hand curving over her feverish forehead, hears the calm quiet of his certainty. No one expected her to live.
The room's disorder beckons to her, and she falls onto a pile of blankets. Sleep is something she can summon and control, half-conscious, breathing steady.
She needs to see his face, and his fingers close around hers.
"Corporal Zachary Toombs."
"Corporal Jane Shepard."
"It is a genuine pleasure to meet you."
Forward in time, then back. His message, his threat, the certainty of his gun to her temple—then his funeral, the empty casket and empty words she chokes out, arm splinted at her side, still reforming, still sewing the edges together.
"I'll kill you if I see you," he promises, but that's not what she remembers, not what she wants to remember. Loving Kaidan is different than loving Zack, more complex. Zack would have loved this body, the smooth lines and softened angles, precise little nails.
She knows what she is: she is Cerberus, she is twenty-two, she is the woman that Zack loved, the woman he fucked and then saved and then left. She is the woman who died on a turian transport, in an Alliance hospital, beside a quiet grave back on Earth. On Ontarom, on Virmire, above Alchera.
She died with David Archer in Atlas Station.
There is a knife curled in her hand, used hours ago to build her models: she opens her eyes and sees it. It feels cool, calming, right. She knows what she is.
The work is slow and simple, a careful carving. She uses her finger as a brush, gently painting medi-gel over her lips. The cut seals, and she scrapes the excess away with what's left of her nails. She leans back and whips her head left and right, the knife-tip catching a pinprick glow from the light above the mirror.
"Perfect," she says, syllables pulling the skin tight across her mouth. She opens her jaw, stretches every muscle she can feel, scattering the pain through her face. "Perfect."
She surveys the rest of her body, calling up the holo, checking and rechecking each careful etching. The starburst wound on her kneecap is unsatisfactory, scalpel-like in its precision. She waves an ultrasonic wand over it, releasing a gentle ooze of blood, and examines the wall beside the sink. The metal there is ragged, stitched together with shoddy welding.
Once, twice she tests, swinging her leg back and forth, and then slams her kneecap into the seam. Pain explodes through her leg, pulling the breath from her lungs, and she collapses against the sink, gasping.
Fire is followed by emptiness, stars going supernova behind her eyes as she slides to the floor. She twists her numb legs around, fingers pulling at her thigh to examine her work—but the door behind her opens, and she is frozen in detection.
"Shepard, what was that noise? What happened?"
Kaidan crosses the room in three wide steps, stooping to help her up, but she waves him back, knife still curled in her hand.
"What the hell?" he says, stopping short. "What are you—?"
She's protected momentarily by the lack of light, but she scoots back and pulls herself up the wall, and he's staring at her face, horrified.
"Did you...what are you doing?"
She looks down at the knife and looks up again, mouth open, struggling for the words. She knows how it looks, her face dirty, hair disheveled, clothes speckled with blood.
"I..." she says, barely above a whisper. "I make more sense this way."
He chokes something, maybe laughter, finger hovering over the cut that runs down her cheek. She flinches away from the chance of contact, ducking her head, clinging to the wall. Her knee shakes, threatening to fail under her weight, blood soaking her bare feet.
Kaidan follows her around a corner, where she slips down into the darkness between two columns.
"I'm more real like this," she says, hating the weakness trembling through her voice.
"Jane..."
He kneels and reaches out, gently touching her arms, tugging her hands from her face, sliding a finger across her brow and tucking her hair behind her ear.
"Jane," he says again, tenderly. "Janie."
But softness is the opposite of what she wants. He leans in, arms closing around her, but she snaps and lashes out an arm, shoving him back. The knife slices across his chest, just deep enough to draw blood. He gives a strangled cry, knocked on his ass, and his hands fly to his skin.
"What the hell was that for?" he shouts, shoving to his feet. Shepard rises as well, snarling.
"Don't touch me!" she says. "What's wrong with you?"
He doesn't need to be told twice, lifting her by both arms and slamming her against the wall. The impact knocks the knife from her hand, and she claws at him.
"Stop it!" he says. "What the hell are you doing?"
"This is who I am! This is me. Can't you remember that?"
He drops her down again but doesn't let go.
"This isn't you. This is what Cerberus did to you."
"You don't know me," she snarls. "All of you have this idea, that I'm some big fucking hero and I'll get it together and fix everything and save all your asses, all over again. Well, it's not going to happen!"
The cut on her cheek has reopened, sealed too tight and tearing now, stretching towards her ear.
"And so this is your solution? Just keep cutting until there's nothing left?"
Fuck his lack of blinking—she looks down and speaks to the pulse jumping in his neck.
"If I wanted to die, I'd swallow a gun and end it. This is...this is me, Kaidan. This is what Cerberus took away. I'm just putting it back."
Her jacket has slipped off one shoulder—the left, exposed down to the elbow, and his grip loosens, hand gliding tentatively over skin that tingles. She shivers at contact, and he makes a small wet sound, tongue ungluing from the top of his mouth, as though about to speak.
She's breathing too fast, face turned left and pressed to the wall, eyes focused on a bubble in the welding, as his fingers move lower, gently pushing the jacket past her wrist and off, gliding back up to her shoulder and down again.
"I remember," he says, not this, but what was there, she thinks, because he's tracing the perfect line of where all her scars used to be, pressing in, deep enough to bruise.
"Kaidan—"
Not gentle, as he yanks her chin, forces her to look at him, to watch as he leans in and kisses her, brutal, nipping her lower lip until she lets him in. He releases her long enough to wrap his arms around her back and pull her tight against him. There is blood in his mouth—hers or his, but she doesn't care, because this is real, is the most real thing she's felt since waking up on Lazarus Station.
One arm circles his neck, and their hands tangle at his belt and then at her zipper, ripping seams, breaking what won't give way. She locks her legs around his back, pulling him deeper, gasping for air when he finally breaks the kiss.
Nothing sensual or romantic about it, just a fast fuck against the wall that leaves her unsatisfied. Kaidan rests his head on her chest, regaining his breath, and eventually carries her to the bed. He doesn't even pause long enough to tend to her knee, stripping away what's left of their clothes, a line of lips and teeth down between her thighs, but soon enough the blood congeals and she's lying beside him, sated, brushing the sweat-soaked hair from his temple.
"I was lost without you," he whispers, eyes closing, catching her wrist and holding her hand against his cheek. "I feel like the last two years happened to someone else."
"Maybe they did."
"I missed you."
"I missed you," she says, with the same little stress on the second word, as though she'd been the one to say it first.