"Jack?" Shepard calls out into the bay, half down the stairs. She knows she's still there. No movement on the cameras she hasn't disabled for the past hour since she came down. "Jack, it's me."
"For fuck's sake." Her sigh is audible over the ship noise even over in the next room. "I already told you, Shepard. You got me, hook, line, and sinker. What do you want?"
It's as good of an invitation as she's going to get. Shepard steps inside to see Jack in her usual half-naked glory, hunched over the side of her cot like a mix between the Thinker and a cat having grudgingly endured a bath. If she isn't the picture of a petulant little school girl scorned, she didn't know what is.
"I had Miranda transfer files from the Teltin facility to your profile," she says, unmoved.
Jack scoffs. "As what, some kind of apology for what Cerberus did to me? Y'know, concessions don't mean shit if you gotta make her put out."
"Actually, I was hoping you might kiss and make up, but if anyone's gonna make her put out, bet's on you." Shepard does her best to maintain her composure. The best she can do is sarcasm, but Jack isn't buying.
"Whatever, asshole. Look, you can bow down and worship her sweet ass all you want, but don't act like you ain't been eyeing mine-"
"Since I busted it out of prison? Hard not to catch a little unwanted attention, between the tit belts, tats, and welts-"
"Jesus Fuck, Shepard." She has to be losing her goddamn mind if she doesn't think Jack could smash a bulkhead with her, take this ship, sail off into the Terminus Systems. If it wasn't for the fancy remote control bells and whistles and the damn onboard AI, she might already have. "Aren't you Alliance types supposed to be subtle?"
"Oh, hit a nerve?" Shepard coos, unimpressed. "Who honestly expects me to mind my manners on duty," she says, matter-of-factly, "a dead Spectre, ex-marine, working for a terrorist organization."
And Jack seemingly acquiesces. She sighs. "You get the fucking point... I swear, this is why I don't do bitches. Always leads to this shit." She sinks even lower into herself, quiet. But of course, between the two of them, quiet never lasts for long, not before Shepard says some stupid shit and gets her going.
And true to form, she doesn't disappoint. "Between you and Miranda?"
"What? F-fuck, no!" Jack balks at the idea no less than she would kissing and making up, or she doesn't know, an actual attraction to her beyond the physical, or wanting to be in the same room right now. "This shit with you!" She shoots up and whips around, deadly and incredulously serious. "All this you caring about me, me caring about you. Wanting to fucking strangle you because you talk to her. Wanting to strangle her because she fucking talks to you. Working for Cerberus-"
The longer she goes on, the crazier it sounds, and the more she paces, the more agitated she is that her hands want to tear out hair that isn't there.
"You mean blowing up their shit and having the files handed over to you on a silver platter." Shepard's correction is a swift deadpan, and she's dead on, but Jack hardly gives her the point.
"Let me fucking finish. all I'm saying is, these people don't give a damn about you and me. Fucked me over. Probably fucked you over." She's still pacing, can't stop. Throat is dry. Can't control the sound of her voice, so she swallows uncomfortably. "I mean, you could be in heaven or valhalla or whatever it is you believe in right about now, partying like it's your goddamn birthday. Instead you're stuck dealing with this shit, with me... So Fuck Cerberus. Fuck the cheerleader."
Shepard raises a brow at the choice of words. "You could've been fucking the cheerleader right about now if I hadn't come to your rescue," she quips. The look it gets her is less dangerous than Jack wants to believe, but even if she were any mortal peril, she's too much an opportunist not to push the envelope.
The realist in her reminds that if Jack were going to kill her, she'd have done it already, probably a quarter 'til, "I've got the only way out. I'm offering to take you with me – and you're arguing."
"And you're never going to fucking let me live it down, are you? That's your problem. You don't know when to"–Jack swallows hard, too close to the truth–"shut up." And of course, she doesn't know why, but she regrets it the instant it comes out of her mouth, that, and that with Shepard's eyes still on her, unflinching, suddenly there seems to be very little to talk about.
Shepard holds her gaze for a while, weighing her thoughts. For once she doesn't look like she's going to give her shit. "You know what? You're right," she concedes after a moment. "Forget I said anything."
Of course, she won't, but she's going to spend an awful lot of time sulking in her bunk tonight.