Kaya sat in the co-pilot's chair, helping with some navigation calibrations as they left the last mass relay. Jeff and Gabby had been teaching her a little about the Normandy over the past few months. It had started mostly so she could have an excuse to be up on the bridge. Now, she found the calculations relaxing and the physics behind the mass effect core fascinating. Kaya got so distracted by an anomaly in the ship's mapping system that she did not have enough time to react as Jack snuck up behind her.
"No, no, no – Ow!" Kaya yelped, grabbing the back of her head where Jack had smacked her.
"That's for getting yourself put into a coma," Jack said through gritted teeth. She lightly – lightly for Jack, anyway – punched Kaya in the shoulder. "And that's for sneaking onto the Normandy."
"What part of 'brain surgery' doesn't compute inside your thick skull?" Kaya cried, shielding the back of her head from any more surprises. "And, you're going to stand there and tell me you wouldn't do the same damn thing?"
Kaya looked over at Jeff for some help. However, he was too busy considering how similar this was to the beginning of some of his more messed up fantasies. She narrowed her eyes at him in warning and annoyance. Men.
"You're probably right, but you're supposed to be smarter than me, Doctor," Jack said, sitting on the console between Kaya and Jeff. Kaya rolled her eyes and relaxed a little, though she still kept her arms defensively up in front of chest. "Liking the new look, by the way. You know–"
"I'm not getting a tattoo on my head, Jack," Kaya said shortly.
"Some nice geometric shapes right there," Jack said, flicking Kaya's skull. Kaya swatted at her hand. "It would be hot. What do you think, Joker?"
Jeff said nothing, and Kaya rolled her eyes. "He's thinking he's too smart to choose sides here. Asshole."
"I'm gonna make you some sketches," Jack said. "I could do the ink myself. You were considering letting me give you one before this mess."
"Wait, really?" Jeff said, raising his eyebrows at Kaya.
Kaya sighed. "I told Jack that if she could come up with something I liked, I would consider it. But, I can see inside your head, Jack. Those skull tats hurt like a bitch."
"If you survived twelve bullets, you can survive a little ink," Jack shot back. "I'll keep working on those sketches. Anyway, Joker, how long until we get to kick some Blacklight ass?"
They had ten hours before reaching Amaterasu. Even with all the painkillers and a new dose of anti-psychotics, Kaya found herself anxious and jittery after Jack left. She attempted working on the calibrations again, but her mind was going off in fifty different directions. She was going through all the ways this mission could go wrong. She was thinking about how Shepard was going to flay her when they returned to the Citadel. She was concentrating on the throbbing patch on the back of her head.
Kaya had changed into the N7 hoodie and sweatpants she had borrowed from Shepard, but she still had Steve's Asari headdress on. It had survived her and Jeff's reunion surprisingly well. She ran her fingers nervously over the edges, and Kaya was unsurprised to find that her hands were shaking.
"Uh, Kaya?" She looked over at Jeff and realized he had been trying to get her attention for a minute. She must have spaced out. "You okay?"
"Yeah," she said, flashing him a smile that Jeff did not believe for one fraction of a second. She took a deep breath, refusing to wince as it pulled at her side, and shifted uncomfortably in her chair. "I just hate the waiting between missions. Same as always."
"Serious question," he said, checking something quickly on the console before turning back to her. "What would you get a tattoo of?"
"What's that supposed to mean?" she asked, narrowing her eyes as the way his voice shifted on the word "you."
"I dunno. I just never saw you as the kind of girl who would get inked," he said with a shrug. "I mean, it doesn't exactly fit into your image as a sort-of-hippie, dress-wearing, cupcake-baking cheerleader."
Jeff had gone a full month without mentioning her little stint as a cheerleader in high school. Kaya supposed his jab was right on schedule.
"You forgot the bad-ass former biotic who knows how to kill you with a ballpoint pen bit," Kaya shot back. "Or a gun. Whatever's close by, really."
He laughed. "Okay, fine. Point made. But, seriously, I'm curious."
Kaya pulled up her Omni-tool and forwarded a sketch over to his personal files. "Actually, this was what I sent to Jack to work on. I had a friend in medical school. Her younger sister, Rhea, was a tattoo artist down in Venice – it's a crazy eclectic part of L.A. We were hanging out with her and some friends one night, and she made me something like this. I've been trying to remember what exactly it looked like. Rhea had this awesome, kind of sketch-like style. Really artistic. I was actually considering it as a graduation present to myself. And then, you know, I got sent on a mission to Mars. There wasn't time to track her down."
She looked at the image, studying it and trying to remember what other elements Rhea had included that were so badass. All she could really remember was the stylized caduceus.
He pulled up the sketch on his console and studied it for a bit. "You're serious about this, aren't you?"
"Maybe," she said with a shrug. Kaya was just enough of a commitment-phobe that she would probably never go through with it. "Maybe when this is all over, I'll do it. Celebrate this chapter being done with. Hey, I could get it in purple. Indigo, you know? That could be kind of cool. What?"
Jeff was looking at her with worry. "This just – it seems like the kind of thing you'd do in a manic state. And then you'd regret it five hours later. Which makes me wonder – are you feeling okay?"
Kaya pursed her lips and looked away, out the window at the Normandy's nose. Was she manic? Her fingers were still tapping nervously at the metal at the side of her temple. For a psychic, sometimes Kaya could have a poor grasp on her own mind. That's what Jeff and Kaidan were for, so she might as well listen to one of them on occassion. She thought back over the way she had excitedly opened all of her Christmas presents, smuggled into her cabin by Kasumi. She thought about the way she had agreed to sex, even though her torso and spine were already sore with protest. Hell, she had wanted it more badly than him, even though there was that voice in the back of her mind saying, "What the fuck? You were in a coma last night." She reflected on how seriously she had just been considering getting a freaking tattoo.
Damn it.
"No," she sighed, lowering her shaking hands and putting them in the pockets of her sweatshirt. "Make me a promise, okay? If I try to get off the ship or do something just as stupid, you'll stop me, right? This won't turn into another Palaven."
"Deal. Do I need to call Dr. Chakwas?"
Kaya shook her head. "Karin already put me back on my meds. They just haven't kicked in yet." She took out a bottle of pills from the pocket of her sweatshirt. "I think I'll just go back to sleep for a bit. Wake me up when Kaidan calls everyone together for a briefing, okay?"
"You sure that's a good idea?" Jeff asked, eyeing the bottle of sedatives.
She dry-swallowed a pill and shrugged. "Me in a drug-induced sleep is probably better than me in a manic state trapped aboard a ship, even if I don't have my biotics anymore. Just wake me up when we reach the star system, okay?"
Joker considered not waking her up. Kaya had curled up in the co-pilot's chair, the hood of her sweatshirt pulled over her face, and slept for the entire ten hours. He could only see her lips, parted as she softly snored. He had already let her continue sleeping after they hit the outer edge of Amaterasu's star system. Now, the Normandy was only twenty minutes away from the silent planet.
Traynor was right. There was something distinctly eerie about the former Alliance colony.According to their data, it might as well have been a gas giant. No errant broadcasts of vids or occasional intercepted communications of a ground team. The whole planet was dark.
Kaidan was calling the team in to the conference room to go over all their intel. Kaya would be pissed if she missed the whole damn mission. Joker sighed and stood up. He gently nudged Kaya on the shoulder. Still asleep, she murmured something he could not make out and grabbed his hand. Joker stood there for a moment, again debating whether to wake her. But, the pressure on her shoulder must have been enough, because Kaya's eyes fluttered open.
She laced her fingers in his and tried to sit up straight. Immediately, Kaya inhaled sharply and curled back into a ball.
"I should not have tried that stunt on top," she muttered. "Ow."
Joker laughed. "Hey, I tried to talk you out of it, remember? You said something about a 'sex goddess'." He made air quotes with his free hand, and she just groaned. "Kaidan's pulling everyone together in the conference room. I think if you go in there, he might actually try to space you. So, maybe we should just listen from here."
"I guess I should try and keep my big mouth shut. He's legitimately pissed at me." Kaya saw something flashing on her Omni-tool and pulled it up. "Oh, shit."
"What?"
"I got a message from Shepard when we hit a comm buoy." Her eyes widened as she scanned the text. "We are both so grounded."
"Grounded? For the record, I really hate it when you refer to Shepard like she's your mom. It's creepy."
She raised an eyebrow at him. "It's only creepy because of that one dream you had. Which, gross, by the way. Besides, she's eleven years older than me, not counting the whole being-in-cryo-for-seventy-years thing. She's kind of like a big sister. The kind of big sister that will kick your ass when you get out of line. Which I'm pretty sure is what's going to happen next time I'm on the Citadel."
"No. It's creepy because I'm only one year younger than her," Joker said, wincing. He preferred to forget how much of an age difference there was between him and Kaya. Ten years was just starting to reach the point where people judged you.
"Yeah, but you're a guy. So, you know, you automatically deduct at least five years to get to your mental age," Kaya quipped. Then, she seemed to realize this was really bothering him. "Oh, come on. We've had this conversation. Multiple times. With everything that's happened to both of us, age doesn't really mean anything. Neither of us followed the typical path. I sure as hell don't have the life of a normal twenty-something."
Joker sighed. "Never thought I would hear myself complain about having a hot, younger girlfriend."
"Exactly, so–"
Kaidan's voice was coming in from the conference room. "Joker, what's our ETA?"
"We're twenty minutes out, Major," Joker said, deciding to drop it.
"Alright. We don't know if they're expecting us or if they have intel on the Normandy's stealth systems. Bring her in behind the planet's moon, and we'll take the shuttle from there," Kaidan said. He must have turned to the team gathered in the conference room, because he continued, "Liara, what do we know?"
"Not as much as I would like," she said. Joker looked over and found Kaya carefully studying him. "We know for sure that this is where Anne Rivers supposedly died. And we know that something is blocking all communications in and out. But, the Alliance reports that their team has been maintaining contact."
"So, we're either dealing with a rogue Alliance faction or someone with the access codes to fake communication," Kaidan said.
"Correct."
What the hell are you staring at me like that for, Kaya?
Kaya muted her comm output. "Why does this bother you so much?"
Joker rolled his eyes and pointed to his ear. Not now, okay?
"–all hands on deck," Kaidan was saying. "We've got where the signal is likely originating from. Cortez, I want you dropping the three squads at these points. We'll converge on the base and try to flank any troops that might be stationed there. Once inside, if they're there, taking Thomas or Rivers alive is the priority. This could be another Binary Helix, where someone else is pulling the strings. We need to make sure that we end it this time."
So, you know, don't go shooting our one witness during an interrogation or anything like that.
Kaya had turned away for a moment to listen more intently to Kaidan, messing with something on the console. At his thought about Maya Brooks's interrogation six months ago, she visibly shuddered. But, neither Kaya nor Joker had quite processed that little display from the Commander, so Kaya changed the subject.
"Did someone say something about us?"
He shook his head as Jack asked exactly how strict that last order was. Joker groaned, knowing he was going to regret engaging his girlfriend, and muted his comm.
"It's just that you say stuff like that sometimes. I mean, Garrus is younger than me, and you've compared him to your dad more than once."
"You never met my dad," Kaya said, as Kaidan was chewing Jack out. "It's sometimes eerie how much Garrus is like him. The being a pain in the ass during lessons, the healthy and somewhat hypocritical dislike of bureaucracy–"
"Fine, but you can understand why that creeps me out, right?"
Kaya bit her lip and studied him. Joker had gotten used to this, to having her sift through his thoughts whenever they argued. The first time it was infuriating. How were you supposed to argue with a damn psychic? Later, he had just given up. Reading people's thoughts was second nature to Kaya. He found himself thinking about how much Kaya hated Van Dyne for doing the exact same thing. And then he remembered that she was still reading his mind.
"For the record, I am not trying to pick a new fight–"
"I know. And you're right," Kaya sighed, leaning her head on her knees. "On both counts, I guess. But, you know I don't think of you as my older boyfriend or something, right? You're just Jeff. You're the pilot of a damn military space frigate who saved the galaxy. That's a hell of a lot more intimidating. But, your age is never really something I even think about. Honest."
Kaidan was telling everyone to suit up. Joker turned back to the console as Amaterasu grew larger in the window. He located the moon and set a course, noting how Kaya had not really touched the whole morality of telepathy thing.
"Goddess of the sun," Kaya said, leaving Joker to shoot her a curious glance. She shrugged and explained, "Amaterasu. In Shinto, she's a major goddess. My dad took me to her temple in Ise City, when I was little. I had this toy wolf that was a representation of her from some old story. I loved that thing. Took it everywhere. I had it – it was with my things aboard the Magellan. Arriving at a planet named after her is honestly throwing me a little."
Joker took the change in topic to mean that they had finished talking about their issues, just as Kaidan walked into the cockpit. Joker was pretty sure he saw Kaya shrink toward the starboard side as Kaidan stopped behind them.
"Kaya, come talk with me for a minute. In private."
Joker avoided looking at Kaya. He had never really heard Kaidan talk this way to a junior officer, with a darkness in his voice. Not while he was in command of the Normandy, anyway. (And as long as they weren't including Jack.) The Major had always been one of the most levelheaded commanding officers Joker had ever known. He kept it together better than Shepard. So the edge in his voice now was particularly unnerving.
Out of the corner of his eye, Joker saw Kaya swivel her chair around. He was surprised at how soft her voice was.
"You have every right to be furious with me. And I'm sorry. Honestly. I–"
"'In private' mean something different seventy years ago?"
Holy shit. Joker looked over at Kaya, to try and give her some kind of reassuring look. Make some kind of projected joke about how much trouble she was in. But, Kaya was looking straight ahead, studying Kaidan intently. Whatever she saw there, it set worry into her eyes.
"Be right back," she muttered, slowly uncurling herself and standing.
She took a couple cautious steps forward before Kaidan realized she needed help. He put his arm under her shoulders, and they walked slowly over to the elevator. Joker turned his chair and watched them both, feeling his stomach tie itself into knots. Something about the way Kaya looked at Kaidan made him feel very uneasy. Something was wrong. Something neither of them was going to tell him about.
Up in Kaidan's cabin, Kaya sat down uneasily on the couch. She now knew most of what Kaidan was going to say, but her habit of cutting out the pleasantries of verbal conversation typically only applied to Jeff. And, besides, she wanted to see if the Major had the guts to say it to her face.
Kaidan paced in front of the aquarium. Kaya had never actually been up in the penthouse suite of the Normandy, and she would have laughed at the absurdity of putting an aquarium on a damn warship if the situation were different. As it was, the reason for her staring at a few lazily floating jellyfish was quite serious.
"Do we actually need to have this conversation?" he said, stopping in front of her and rubbing his temples.
"You wanna lock me a cargo hold, I need you to tell me why," Kaya said, finding herself laughing bitterly. "I need you to say it to my face. Say that you don't trust me. Say that you've known about this for weeks and just decided to bring it up now."
"Kaya–"
"Cut the bullshit, Kaidan," she said, curling her knees into her chest.
There was an angry lump in her throat that was threatening to bring tears. How could she have not realized sooner? And why didn't he say something before? And now – if it was true – how did she live with herself? She had illegally boarded the Normandy and put everyone at risk. These people were her family, the only friends she had, and her very presence put them in mortal danger.
"I realized it back on Omega, when we extracted Malik," Kaidan explained, resuming his pacing as he ran a hand through his hair. "Actually, Van Dyne realized it. The bodies of the scientists, killed before we got there. The fact that whoever had taken them out didn't take you. The fact that your biotic implants are clearly more than just that. The scans they took at Huerta – I mean, they gave you a graybox. So – so. Damn. I can't even–"
"Say the words 'control chip?'" Kaya finished for him, frustrated by how her voice broke. "Say that this could all be a trap, to get me in range of a crazy mind control device? God damn, how do I avoid telling Jeff about this?"
"That's what you're worried–"
"He. Will. Freak. Out," Kaya said, balling her hands into fists. "And then he'll set to blaming himself for helping me get – oh no, you don't. You are not blaming him for any part of this."
"I wasn't–"
"Yes, you were. I heard you!" she accused, raising her voice. It felt good to be angry at him instead of herself. "And, yeah, I'm not supposed to call people out on their errant thoughts. But you meant that one."
Kaidan sat down on the bed across from her, taking a deep breath. "I left you in L.A. on purpose, Kaya. I should have – why didn't I kick you off the ship? If I had been thinking clearly–"
"It doesn't matter," Kaya said. She might want to rage at him. Smack him upside the head for being such a fucking idiot, even. But, she was not actually going to let Kaidan blame himself for her fuck up. Hell, neither of them should be blaming themselves. This was all on Blacklight. Bastards. "What matters is whether or not you have a plan to keep me from going all trigger-happy on my own crewmates."
Kaidan reached into his pocket and pulled out a device. She realized it was one of the psychic dampeners that Sanders had swiped from the Alliance. "You get locked in the port cargo hold. I'll put two marines on guard duty. They'll have this."
"So if something happens, I can't make everyone shoot themselves in the head."
"I was thinking about you getting them to open the door, but yeah. That's the gist of it."
Kaya nodded. It was hardly a foolproof plan. Kaya had a feeling that, if she really wanted to get out and murder everyone, she would find a way. She was stubborn like that. But, it was the best they could do on such short notice. If he had only told her – no. There was no point in blaming him now. Maybe she would tear him a new one later, when the threat was behind them.
"Okay. Come down and lock me in, and then go suit up," she said. She unbent her legs and looked at him for a moment, debating. She stood up slowly, and Kaidan matched her. He looked ready to help her keep standing, and she preyed on his vulnerability to pull him into an abrupt hug. "And you had better come back, after kicking some major Blacklight ass, you hear?"
He wrapped his arms around her, squeezing her tightly enough that it hurt. Kaya did not care.
