"Are you sure about this?" Ashley stood in the middle of Bex's quarters, holding Kaidan's electric hair clippers. "Are you really sure?"
Bex rolled her eyes. "It's hair, Williams. It'll grow back. And more importantly, when it does, it won't have crusty rachni guts in it."
Kaidan, perched on the corner of the bed, visibly shuddered as he glanced askance at her hair. "Never have I ever been so glad to have not been chosen for a mission."
He had always been vain about his hair, even back at Brain Camp. He'd hated getting his head shaved when they went through basic and hadn't let anyone else touch it since, keeping it regulation length himself.
"So, why me?" Ashley asked. "And why's LT here?"
"You're both here because we have a mission to plan for," Bex said, settling into her desk chair. "You're the one holding the clippers because you're less likely to hork on my head than he is."
Kaidan nodded. "That's a fair point."
Ashley shrugged. "If you say so. Buckle up, Skipper, this may not be pretty."
"Don't need pretty," Bex said. "Just functional. Professional-ish."
"Ish?"
"Just get all the guts out and then see what you have to work with."
Ashley nodded. "Got it."
Over the quiet hum of the clippers, Bex told them about her conversation with Hackett, her own reservations about the whole thing, and the diplomacy they'd need to use to pull off the mission successfully.
"You said you wanted to talk to him," Kaidan reminded her. "Now you've got your chance."
"Yeah, but I… ugh. I wanted to… not have to rescue him from our people while doing it."
"Your people?" Ashley asked. She gently pushed Bex's head down until she could look at her port. "This is one of the L2 implants?"
"Mine too," Kaidan said, trying to look anywhere that wasn't covered in rachni guts. "We're part of a small handful who didn't get severely fucked up by them."
"We both still get migraines from time to time," Bex added. "But that's about it really. Most are not so lucky. Hell, even some non-L2 biotics are fucked up more than us."
"So what's my role in all of this?" Ashley asked. "I'm not a biotic. Won't I just piss them off?"
"Not necessarily. In theory, they won't know if you're biotic or not unless…"
"Unless they ask for proof we are who we say we are?" Kaidan said.
"Yeah, that. But basically, Ash, you're insurance in case we have a long fight on our hands. In case we run out of steam."
Ashley frowned. "You're going in unarmed?"
"Yes."
"This can't end well," Kaidan muttered.
"No disrespect, Skipper, but… are you out of your mind?" Ashley said, the clippers faltering in her hands for a moment. "This won't be a friendly chat. They're gonna want to kill anyone coming in to rescue Burns."
"I know," Bex said, "but I want to show them I mean them no harm."
"Do you?"
She shrugged. "Depends how it plays out I guess. I'm hoping to resolve this with little to no bloodshed, but there will be a lot of flared tempers in there—"
"Including yours, and mine," Kaidan said.
"True. Still…"
He shook his head. "If all this goes sideways and you die in there, I will not be the one telling the admiral that you elected to go in unarmed."
"Noted."
"I am unarmed," Bex said, her hands up in surrender as she stepped out of the airlock and onto kidnappers' freighter, right into the midst of the hostage situation. "I'm here to try to resolve this peacefully."
"What about them?" asked the man who seemed to be in charge, nodding toward Kaidan and Ashley.
"They are armed, but they will only fire if you fire first."
The man grunted but made no move toward them. "You say you want to resolve this peacefully, then you must not know what this bastard did." He looked as if he was considering whether kicking Burns in the nuts counted as 'firing first.'
"Oh no, I know what he did," Bex said, her temper rising as she looked at Burns. "Believe me, if I wasn't under orders to be here, well, let's just say, I'd probably join you."
"Would you now?" another man said, this one standing over Burns, a gun aimed at the back of the chairman's head. "What's your interest?"
"We are like you," Bex said, gesturing to herself and Kaidan, "L2 biotics."
"That so?" the leader looked skeptical.
"I can pull up my medical records if you like," Bex snapped. "Or we could just get on with this."
The leader held up his own hands for a moment. "No need to get snippy with us." He jutted his chin toward Burns. "He's the one who's fucked us over."
Bex blew out a slow breath in an attempt to calm her temper. "Look. Yes, he's a fucking bastard who clearly doesn't know anything about biotics, much less L2s, but killing him won't help you. Us. It'll only make things worse for everyone."
"I don't see—"
"It's very simple," she continued with more authority than she felt she actually had. "He voted against reparations for L2 biotics. Three weeks later, he was kidnapped by a group of said biotics. The galaxy, or at least humanity, already holds a pretty dim view of human biotics."
"If Burns dies by your hand, any of you," Kaidan said, continuing where Bex had left off, "it won't get you what you want, and will make life even harder for every other human biotic."
"How will it not get us what we want?" asked the man holding the gun to Burns' head. "We want the bastard dead."
Bex cocked her head in mock confusion. "Really? I could have sworn you wanted reparations for pain and suffering caused by a shitty implant."
"Well, yeah, but—"
"You can't have it both ways. You either kill Burns and screw over the rest of us, and yourselves, or you sit down with him, explain your position. Each one of you can give him a rundown of how your life sucks because of this implant."
"And if he doesn't listen?"
"Oh, he'll listen." Bex leveled a glare at the cowering chairman. "And if he doesn't at first, we'll just keep talking to him until he does."
"If all this plays out the way you say it will," said a woman in the middle of the crowd surrounding Burns, "what will happen to us? Not with reparations, but because of… this." She gestured to Burns and the man still holding him at gunpoint.
Shit.
Bex hadn't even thought of that. "I will use my position as a Spectre and within the Alliance to try to work out a deal. I don't really know. But I do know," she added as a general murmur of discontent rippled through the crowd, "if Burns dies, anyone responsible will go to prison. And probably a few more pegged as accomplices."
The man holding the gun on Burns growled. "Fine, let's get on with it. But if he doesn't listen…"
Bex narrowed her eyes on him. "Put the gun down. Now. I will not hesitate to take you down if you so much as look at him wrong."
"You wouldn't."
"If you don't, I will," Ashley muttered so only Bex and Kaidan could hear. They both turned to glare at her. "Just sayin'."
There was limited space in the room, but with a bit of maneuvering, the biotics were soon seated on crates and the floor surrounding Burns. Bex and Kaidan stood on either side of him, with Ashley watching for trouble in the background.
Bex knew she'd made the right decision, coming in unarmed, as her temper, and biotics, flared with each new story of grief and misery. She knew what she'd said, what Hackett had said, about killing Burns being the opposite of a solution to the problem, but if she'd had the chance, she'd have shot the bastard a thousand times over for ever thinking of denying reparations.
Finally, what felt like hours later, the last of the L2s had said their piece and Burns stood in the midst of them looking shell shocked.
"I had no idea… none," he said, voice hoarse with disuse—for once. "I don't even know what to say."
"There's a first time for everything," Bex said. "How 'bout you start with 'I'm sorry I'm a fucking asshole who doesn't do research before making a decision that affects the lives of millions."
"I—"
"By the way," she added, "my colleague over there"—she gestured to Ashley—"recorded this entire meeting. She'll send you a copy of it so you can listen to it again before you decide to make any other decisions."
Burns blinked at her but said nothing.
She gestured toward the airlock. "Shall we?"
"This cannot be true," Hackett said after reading the report Bex and Kaidan had written about the hostage resolution. He looked ready to spit nails. "Rebekah—"
He had never uttered her name in anger before and Bex stumbled back as though his holographic image had hit her.
He seemed to notice her reaction and modified his tone. "Commander, please tell me this report is wrong, that you didn't go into a den of kidnappers unarmed."
She could practically feel Kaidan's silent "I told you so" as he, Ashley, and a suitably chastened Chairman Burns stood behind her in the comm room.
"The report is correct, sir," she said, still feeling the sting of his initial tone, though she understood it—she knew if their positions had been reversed, she'd have reacted the same way. "But only that I didn't have my shotgun. Biotics are always armed."
Hackett didn't seem to have a response to that and remained silent for the moment.
"If you want to see the exchange for yourself, we recorded it for Burns' benefit, in case he forgot anything he heard today."
Hackett nodded. "Honestly, I'm impressed, with all of you. Chairman, while I don't condone what your kidnappers did, I do hope you now understand some of their pain."
"I do," Burns said. "And while I don't condone their actions anymore than you do, I won't press charges against them, any of them."
"That is your prerogative and I'm sure they will be most appreciative," Hackett said. "We've arranged an Alliance ship to dock with the Normandy to take you and the biotics to Arcturus."
Burns paled slightly but nodded.
"Plenty of time for you to apologize to each of them in turn," Bex said as she turned to face him with a tone of mock cheer. "And maybe begin a plan for fixing your mistake."
Burns nodded again.
"Lt. Alenko, Chief Williams," Hackett said, "please escort Chairman Burns to his quarters. You will be in charge of his safety until the Alliance ship arrives."
They both nodded. "Sir."
Bex watched them leave before she turned back toward Hackett's image.
"Rebekah, I—"
She held up a hand. "Joker?"
The comms crackled to life. "Commander?"
"Please transfer Admiral Hackett to my personal terminal."
"Yes, ma'am."
She suppressed a laugh at his formality; it was unnecessary anyway since Hackett knew the kind of ship she ran. "And hold all calls until the Alliance ship arrives."
"Can do. Joker out."
Bex took her time walking to her quarters. She didn't want to make Hackett wait any longer than necessary—he always had too much on his plate as it was—but she needed time to center herself. Her emotions were still raw from hearing all the stories of suffering and she didn't want to lash out unnecessarily.
Locked in the safety of her quarters, she sat in her desk chair and scrubbed her fingers through her newly shaved hair as she reestablished the link to Hackett's office.
She gave him a tight smile. "Hi."
"I'm sorry, Rebekah." He sighed. "I shouldn't have snapped like that."
She shrugged. "'S okay."
"Clearly it's not. If it was okay you wouldn't have reacted the way you did."
"Wasn't the snapping," she said. "It was… the way you said my name. Reminded me of Vido."
"Oh." Hackett shook his head. "Goddamn that man to hell."
"Don't worry, I'll send him there myself, hopefully sooner rather than later."
"Just promise me you won't be unarmed when you do it."
Bex pinched the bridge of her nose hard enough to hurt. "Steven, I knew what I was doing."
"Please, explain your thought process, because I'm having a hard time understanding why—"
"I needed the kidnappers to not see me as a threat. Or… not more of a threat than themselves, given we were all, in theory, equally capable of hurting each other. Maybe not all of them, but…" She growled in frustration. "No. Actually, Steven, they were, are, a group of highly damaged people. Most of them were only there because they wanted to look Burns in the eye and ask him to his face why he'd done it. Some of them can't even walk. There weren't but a handful, if that, who are capable of hurting a fly, much less three battle-hardened Marines."
"But you didn't know that when you walked into that room."
"I… no, I didn't. But Kaidan and Ashley were both armed. That was my whole reason for taking Ashley in the first place, as backup in case things turned out bad."
Hackett sighed but said nothing.
"I knew what I was doing," Bex said again. "But god, Steven, do you have any idea how close I came to throwing in my lot with them? Reading the article, seeing the news report, they were bad enough. But actually seeing that fucker in person…" She closed her eyes a minute before she looked at him again. "You were the only reason I didn't. I had to keep your words at the front of my mind the whole time to keep from killing him myself. Especially once everyone started sharing their stories."
"You did well, my love. I'm proud of you, even if I was terrified after the fact of losing you."
"Keep up, Admiral. That comes with the territory." She sighed. "But I promise I won't do it again. Probably. Unless I have a good reason."
"Fair enough. But if you could warn me beforehand next time, I'd appreciate it."
"If you insist."
"I do."
A message popped up in the corner of her screen. "Shit. So much for getting a little rest in."
"What's wrong?"
"Councilor Valern just sent me a message. He said they have no more leads on Saren, but he's lost communication with a unit of STG operatives on Virmire and wants me to check it out."
"STG? Sounds serious. Good luck. I'll talk to you when you get back."
Bex nodded. "I love you."
"Love you too. And nice hair," he said with a wink. "It suits you. Hackett out."
