Very Special Note: I've recently (7-18-2011) posted a chronological ordering of the fragments in this fic. That posting is merely for convenience of reading. I will still be working haphazardly and posting to this fragment fic first and foremost...and that fic may occasionally be removed and reposted as chapter ordering changes. So, for those of you following this fic, please continue to do so. Thank you all so much!
Note: All standard disclaimers still apply. Although I don't own the characters or universe, I do work hard on my little stories. Please don't print or repost without my knowledge. Thanks. And thanks again to all the people who've taken time to encourage me by adding me or my story to favorites. And, most especially, thanks to those few who've written reviews. I welcome your interest, thoughts, and ideas-even constructive criticism. Your support is always appreciated, and often instrumental to maintaining the inspiration necessary to develop a story.
Chapter-Specific Notes: With a nod in the general direction of Dirty Harry.
Chapter takes place immediately following Shepard's appointment to Spectre status, which would currently place it following Chapter One: Enter Garrus and before Chapter 12: Controlled Crashing
Spectre.
She hadn't really meant for that to happen. At least...she didn't think she had.
She'd asked for it...and she'd sounded so sure, so certain in the process.
Shepard turned away from the dias, feeling almost dizzy, faintly nauseous, caught up in delirium.
The last time she'd really felt like herself had been Eden Prime...just before she'd looked over her shoulder and seen her handsome First Lieutenant stumbled toward the tall spire of the Prothean Beacon she'd been sent to retrieve... a beacon that had begun to glow rather ominously...
She remembered leaping forward before she'd really had time to stop and think, knocking the Lieutenant off his feet and out of harm's way...
She remembered a lot of stuff after that, too, but none of it felt quite...
right.
Depending on what had happened to her after the beacon had caught her up in a sudden, terrifying rush of energy like the screaming, pounding surf of a tidal wave...well...she might well be tossing about in med-bay, imagining all of this.
She rather hoped she was, really, when all was said and done.
Still, surreal as the last few days had seemed, something told her they were real.
Some parts were easier to believe than others.
The lieutenant, looking at her with warmth smoldering in the depths of his grave whiskey-colored eyes, for example...if anything, he seemed a little too good to be true.
The tall, tawny, towering woman on his right, well, she might just be the most believable thing in the room. The most relatable, without a doubt. She, like Shepard, was a fighter, a survivor, a skeptic.
The krogan and the quarian flanking her, on the other hand...well, they were equally unlikely. They looked as if they knew it, too. The krogan seemed to be deeply amused by the whole situation. The quarian just looked damned confused. Shepard knew how she felt.
"Feeling lucky, Shepard?" the turian on the lieutenant's left flared his mandibles. Now he was vivid. Solid. Absolute. She wished she knew what it was about him that seemed so...
It might have been an optical illusion, but she thought she saw Williams' hand twitch in the corner of her vision. She subtly extended two fingers of her own hand, angling them out from her hip and dropping them sharply. Stand down.
"I don't know that luck has to do with it," Shepard said wryly. "Most days I think I'd have no luck at all-" if it weren't for bad luck. Most people might have thought surviving the slaughter of an entire unit, the opportunity to see a Prothean Beacon firsthand, running into-not one but three!-people who happened to possess leads on the very information she needed to catch a criminal, and becoming the first human ever to be named a Spectre, was good luck. Almost too good to be true, if anything.
Of course, those people had never had to live through-or up to...or with-any of those experiences.
She wondered sometimes, what it was she had been expecting when she signed with the Alliance military, planting her booted foot firmly in her parents' footprints. Whatever it had been, she was pretty sure she hadn't expected this.
Alenko frowned slightly, his puzzled brown eyes meeting her grey ones over the brilliant, blue-armored expanse of the turian's broad shoulder. Shepard shifted slightly, not quite a shake of her head, not quite a shrug.
"Why? You wanna make my day, Vakarian?"
"We should visit Flux." Garrus said with surprising enthusiasm, missing or ignoring the stifled snickers of the three humans.
"Flux?" Williams repeated, sounding wary. "Sounds familiar..."
"A club, right?" Alenko supplied thoughtfully. "The one that C-Sec officer mentioned?"
"You mean me?" the turian blinked, the plates on his forehead flaring and contracting.
"No, another one. Human." Williams said categorically, her face composed. Innocent.
"Seemed to be a fan of Shepard's," Alenko said. Did he sound a bit sullen, or was that Shepard's imagination? His eyes flicked away from hers, down toward the platform...but, then, the low, rumbling laugh of a krogan quaking through it was a little...distracting.
"Tall," Williams added. "Broad-shouldered. Blonde." She nodded to herself. "Cute." She raised her eyebrows in Shepard's direction. "I'm in. I may need to break out my tinfoil skirt for this one."
"Sounds like the kind of place I generally try to avoid," Alenko said. "Too many bright lights, too much noise...One giant headache. But this..." he tilted his head in Williams' direction as the corners of his mouth quirked. "Sounds like a sight I've got see."
Shepard definitely hadn't expected this. Not any of it. She hadn't asked for the hand she'd been dealt. But did that mean she wanted to trade it in for something different, easier in the end? That she wasn't willing to play?
Whatever happened, it ought to be interesting.
"Why not?" she said, laughing. "It's not like I had anything better planned." Hell, if anything, she was looking forward to it.