Author's Note: Life's a little nuts right now, so I'm grabbing the plot bunnies that are hopping the highest, which means this one for now. I'm rather enjoying exploring these characters from a different angle, and I'm glad y'all seem to be, too. Thanks as always to those of you who have read, faved and followed, with special shout-outs to: CACNTommyBoi, Soirreb, ValeriNeria, wyles77, Madcat Capers, Drummerchick7, Alcandre, KalenCaelli and the always-anonymous Guest!
2179 CE, Arcturus Station, Finnegan's Pub
"You all right?" Erin, cutting to the chase, as usual.
"Perfect," Talia told her, lifting her mug. "Good beer, good friends, good music. What more do I need?"
"Some action, maybe?" Shepard suggested, green eyes going briefly to the dance floor. Talia did not follow her gaze. "Looked like she was pretty interested in you."
Talia snorted. "Interested in an exclusive, you mean," she corrected her friend. "Reporter," she added by way of explanation.
"Ah." Erin bellied up to the bar, ordered a whiskey on the rocks. "The folks are gonna be here tomorrow," she said in an offhanded manner. "Want to take me out to dinner, celebrate me making N7." Her drink arrived, and she took a sip. "Want to come along?"
"Sure," Talia replied without hesitation. It might seem casual to someone on the outside looking in, but that hadn't been an invitation to a social occasion; it was a request for backup. They made a helluva trio: Talia's folks were dead, Alistair had never known his, and Erin hated being around hers. Ian and Hannah Shepard were a matched set of Alliance military heroes, with medals and citations dating back to the First Contact War and a family history of service going back a century and a half. From their daughter and only child, mere excellence was nowhere near acceptable. If she aced a test, they'd want to know why she hadn't gone for extra credit; if she graduated at the top of her class (which she had), they'd ask why it hadn't been by a wider margin.
She and Talia had butted heads - hard - in the N1 sessions, both of them gunning for top dog. A wary but mutual respect had bloomed by the end, growing into friendship by the time they'd finished N2. Talia didn't hold back - Shepard would've kicked her ass for that - but she'd gotten good at gauging when not to kick on the afterburners. At the end of N7, Erin held the top spot, with Talia a close second and Alistair cruising comfortably in the middle of the pack, and since Talia didn't have anything to prove to anyone but herself, she was fine with that.
Her presence at dinner would tone things down; surviving both batarians and thresher maws tended to impress the brass, as well as the press. "She had a weird accent," Talia mused, taking a sip of her beer.
"Who? The reporter you're not interested in?" Erin didn't bother to hide the smirk any more than Alistair had.
"Screw you," Talia replied with no real heat. They'd figured out early on that a literal interpretation of that wouldn't work. No matter how good the sex might have been, they'd kill each other out of the sack. Wasn't worth trashing the friendship. "It was weird, though ... like something you hear in the older vids." She took another drink, thinking about it, but not giving in to the mild urge to turn and look at the owner of the weird accent. "You know anywhere they speak French any more?"
Erin cocked her head, considering. "I've heard of some colonies that are set up to recreate some old Earth cultures. Gotta be at least a couple that speak French." Again with the goddamn smirk, a nod toward the floor. "You could ask her."
"Christ, if you and Al think she's that hot, one of you go for her!" Talia exclaimed in exasperation.
"Al's on a blonde binge tonight," Erin replied, nodding to where he was busy chatting up his current target, though his attention seemed to be fixed well south of her hair.
"And you?" Talia challenged her.
Shepard shrugged. "I'm looking for easy and no strings attached," she replied with a grin. "And someone looking to score a story has all kinds of strings."
Strings that would lead back to the parental units. Erin's entire life had been spent in the shadow of their expectations, and while she indulged in minor rebellions, such as hooking up in bars, she had thus far largely pushed forward, determined to meet those expectations. Talia could never decide if she envied her friend, or felt sorry for her, though at moments like this, the balance definitely tipped toward the latter.
"Besides," she went on, the damn smirk back, "wouldn't want to cut in on your action."
Seriously? Granted, the three of them busted each other's balls pretty much at will, but still ... "I told you," Talia shot back, "I'm not -"
"Let me go!"
Her mouth snapped shut, teeth coming together with a click as she glared at Shepard. Even underneath the pulse of the music and the layers of two dozen conversations, she recognized the voice, the accent, but she refused to turn and follow Erin's gaze.
"Looks like a D.I.D." Shepard observed, a dare-you gleam dancing in the green eyes.
D.I.D. Short for damsel in distress. "That's his specialty, not mine," Talia growled, jerking her head in Alistair's direction.
"He's busy," Erin countered smoothly. Which wasn't entirely true. His attention still seemed centered on the blonde, but his posture had shifted subtly to readiness. He was aware of whatever was taking place on the dance floor, but he was waiting, watching. To see what she would do.
Shit.
After a final glower at Shepard, she set her mug on the bar and turned. The human krogan had the redhead's wrist gripped in a meaty hand and was trying to pull her toward him. She seemed more annoyed than alarmed, but was having no luck freeing herself from his grasp.
"I said let me go!"
"We ain't done dancin' yet," he growled, giving her arm a yank that sent her stumbling forward into him.
Well, crap. A glance around showed no sign of the usually vigilant bouncers, and while most of the dancing in the vicinity had stopped, none of the onlookers seemed inclined to intervene. Talia slid off the barstool and moved forward.
"She's done, and so's the dance," she informed No-Neck flatly, keeping her stance balanced, hands open and loose at her sides. "Let her go."
Beady eyes beneath a cliff of a forehead glared at her. "You think you can make me, bitch?" he taunted.
Seriously? The N7 insignia on the uniform was more than just a Get Laid Free card in any bar in Systems Alliance space; it was a warning to the wise. "No, I don't think so," she replied, voice calm and level. "I know I can, so why don't you be smart and walk away?" The redhead was watching her, making no attempt to escape. Damsel she might be, but she didn't seem particularly distressed, and Talia was considering taking her own advice when her peripheral vision caught movement on what most people thought was her blind side.
"Look out!" The redhead's cry of warning was a bit behind the curve, and Talia didn't even bother to turn her head when she drove her arm out, punching hard into the solar plexus of the mouthbreather who had tried rushing her from the left. The optics behind the eyepatch confirmed him folding over with a wheezing grunt, but her right eye never left No-Neck, whose own beady eyes widened as she deliberately opened and closed the fingers of the left hand, the lights of the cybernetics gleaming along the surface. They'd offered a cosmetic prosthesis for that, too; she'd turned them down, never wore gloves unless she was in an environmental suit. She was an Alliance-made killing machine, and damn proud of it.
"Last chance." Wiping the floor (and the walls, ceiling and tables) with him was tempting as hell, but the paperwork would be a bitch. Anywhere but Arcturus Station - N7 HQ - and she'd have gone ahead and let the chips fall, tried to spin it after, but at least half of the patrons here tonight were Alliance military; more than a few of them held no great love for special ops, and would be only too happy to report it if she swung first.
He wasn't going to back down; she could see that in the stubborn set of his jaw, and when a handful of his mates stepped up, she could see his spine stiffening. Five to one: she'd be hurting later, but no one would be able to spin this against her with those odds. She just had to wait for the numbers to make them brave enough to be stupid. "Which one of you ladies wants to dance first?" she drawled, deciding to help them along a bit.
For a second, she thought it was going to work, but then, just like that, their collective resolve crumbled as their eyes looked past her, and Talia didn't need to turn around to know that Erin and Alistair had taken up position at her back. She didn't say anything else, just gave them a cheerful, fuck-you grin; N7 to the third power was math that no sane individual wanted to fuck with, and while this bunch was undoubtedly stupid, they were apparently not crazy.
"Fuckit," No-Neck snarled after a long moment, shoving the redhead forward into Talia's arms. She caught the other woman, shifted her smoothly behind, ready for the sneak attack, but he was already backing away, trying hard to look like he was doing her a favor by tucking tail and running. She watched until they were off the dance floor, then turned to Shep and Al.
"Guess they didn't want to play."
"Too bad." Alistair's disappointment was about as genuine as the double D cups straining the front of the dress that the onlooking blonde was wearing, but if the look she was giving him was any indication, he'd displayed more than enough derring-do to get dragged back to her place as soon as he stepped away.
"Another time," Talia said with a shrug. Fights were easy enough to find when you were in the mood for one. "Thanks, man." She held out a fist, and he tapped it with his own.
"Anytime," he replied, and meant it. No matter what went down, he'd have her back, just like she'd have his, just like Shepard would have both their backs and they'd have hers. In the tightly knit microcosm of N7, they had formed something tighter still: a family, the bonds forged in fire and blood. One instructor in N3 had tried pasting them with the Three Musketeers label, but it hadn't stuck. Everybody else called them the Wolfpack, and tried not to piss any of them off.
As expected, the blonde had him in a liplock before he'd taken ten steps. Deciding she didn't want to see if she waited to get him out the door before mounting him, Talia turned back to Erin, shaking her head. "Christ, he's a dog."
Shepard nodded, smiling faintly. "But he's our dog."
"Damn right." Work hard, play harder, but when drop time came, he'd be right there with them, locked and loaded.
Erin glanced toward the redhead, gave her a slight nod and that enigmatic smile of hers. The faintest smug gleam in the green eyes as they slid back to Talia, and Shepard turned and sauntered back toward where she'd left her drink. Tall, blonde and mysterious: worked like a charm on men and women both, and Talia wouldn't have been surprised if the not-so-distressed damsel had fallen for it, but when she turned, the blue eyes were looking straight at her.
"Thank you," the redhead said, her voice and smile warm. "That was an … unpleasant situation."
Talia shrugged. "Not sure why you didn't just kick him in the nuts," she replied. "He was wide open." She wasn't sure why the redhead had picked the human krogan for a dance partner in the first place, but that was none of her business. Not that she gave a damn, anyway.
"In my experience, I've found that … less evolved males are not as affected by that as much," the redhead replied. "It tends to just anger them. Besides," she hesitated, weighing her words again, "I was fairly sure you would be coming to my rescue."
Talia felt her jaw clench. "Lady, I don't give a damn how much of my service jacket you've read, you don't know me," she said tightly, not sure if she was more annoyed with the redhead or herself.
"No," the other woman agreed, "but I would very much like to. Now that I find myself in your debt, perhaps you'll let me buy you that drink?" The lilting accent was smooth as honey and playing hell with the translator chip embedded in Talia's mastoid bone, but the language was definitely the common Earth tongue.
"I've -" got one, Talia was going to say, but when she glanced toward where she'd left her mug, she found it in Shepard's hand, lifted in a mocking toast before being chugged at a rate that was a crime against good beer.
Fuck you, she mouthed to Erin, careful to enunciate, before turning back to the redhead. What the hell. "Why not?" she said with a shrug. A free drink was a free drink, right?
"Good." The redhead smiled at her again. "I am Leliana."
"Talia," the marine replied, adding with a quirked eyebrow, "but you already knew that, didn't you?"
"Yes," the redhead - Leliana - replied, slipping her arm through Talia's, "but I'm very glad to be able to hear it from you."
2185 CE, Normandy SR-2 in orbit over Hagalaz
"Put her down here." Doc Chakwas was all business, her eyes on the figure that Talia carried as she pointed to the nearest of the beds in the medical bay.
Talia complied as best she could, placing Leliana on the bed and reaching up to unwrap the arms from around her neck, trying not to notice how thin they were. The other woman resisted, shaking her head. "No," she murmured weakly, fear and fever making the blue eyes bright.
"It's all right," Talia told her in a low voice. She really didn't want to give the doc ringside seats to this little sideshow. "You're safe here, Leli." The diminutive slipped out all too easily, considering it'd been six years since she'd last used it, and she bit her lip, trying to corral a whole host of emotions that she didn't want to be dealing with right now. "You're safe." One of the most advanced ships in the galaxy, complete with a full crew of badasses. Not many places safer ... at least, until they made the jump through the relay that no ship had ever returned from, but Leliana wouldn't be around for that.
The other woman gave no indication that she'd heard. "No," she repeated, fingers seeking purchase on Talia's armor and failing. "I need to tell you ... need to tell -"
"No," Talia shook her head, disengaging gingerly and stepping out of reach. "You don't need to tell me anything." That wasn't why she'd volunteered for this mission, damn it. "We're square now."
No response; she looked to have lost consciousness. Chakwas stepped past Talia to the bedside, giving no indication that she'd noticed the exchange. Her fingers moved swiftly over the interface of the diagnostic unit, eyes scanning the readouts.
"Dear God," she muttered, lips pressed into a grim line. "Tell me that whoever did this is dead."
"Full on dead," Talia confirmed, the flutter of unease an unwelcome presence in her gut. The doc was hard to shake up. "How bad is it?"
"She's septic as hell," Chakwas replied, brushing by Talia and diving into the supply cabinet, emerging with arms laden with bags of fluids, vials and transdermal injectors. "Severe malnutrition with metabolic acidiosis, her kidneys are on the verge of shutting down, more fractures in various stages of healing than I have time to count, and some maniac has evidently been using her to practice scrimshaw." She pushed a ragged sleeve up to give an injection, and Talia drew a sharp breath at the network of scars crisscrossing the pale skin, not all of them healed. She hadn't let herself look on the way up. "Her neuromuscular system shows signs of repeated electrical trauma -"
"Is she gonna make it?" Talia interrupted the physician. She got it: it was bad, but Dr. Chakwas was the best there was, and the new Normandy's medbay went beyond state-of-the-art. That had to be enough, right?
"She has a chance," Chakwas replied tersely, eyes focused on her task as she set up a fluid infusion, added shit from the vials to the bags, gave more injections, consulted the readouts again. "If you'd gotten there much later, that wouldn't have been the case." She glanced quickly at the marine. "Have a seat over there, and I'll take care of those ribs after I get her stabilized."
As observant as ever, but Talia shook her head, starting for the door. "They'll keep."
"Talia."
She stopped, looked back to meet Karin's calm gaze. "Seriously? I've gotten worse than this on shore leave." Fifteen years ago, those eyes had been the first thing Talia had seen when she had clawed her way back to consciousness on board the SSV Shasta, orbiting high over Mindoir. The physician had kept tabs on her over the years, though they'd never served together until Shep had tapped her and Alistair after being given command of the first Normandy. The doc had kept them all patched up during the hunt for Saren; she likely knew better than anyone except Erin or Al what Talia's limits were. "They'll keep," she repeated calmly. "Just … take care of the package, all right?" That's all the redhead was: a package, a mission, and Talia's part in this mission was done. "I need to go write up the after-action."
Chakwas' lips thinned in disapproval at the term, but she nodded and turned back to Leliana. "Lieutenant-Commander?"
She stopped again, one foot out the door. "Yeah?"
"There is to be no sparring with Jack or Grunt until I've cleared you."
She'd been busted down in rank for insubordination only slightly less often that she was promoted for performance, but there was some authority that she didn't buck. "Yes, ma'am," she said obediently, continuing out into the corridor and hanging a right toward the mess hall.
Officially, Shepard was dead and Talia and Alistair were AWOL; unofficially, the Alliance and the Citadel Council were hedging their bets, reinstating Shepard's status as a Spectre, letting her bring the two N7's on board the new Normandy, hoping like hell the Wolfpack, aided by the Cerberus vessel and its crew, could figure out who was behind the disappearances.
After burying the warnings about the Reapers under layers of bullshit, whitewashing the attack on the Citadel into a geth uprising and labeling the ones who had stopped Saren and his buddy Sovereign as crackpots, the Alliance brass found themselves up shit creek when whole human colonies started vanishing without a trace. The fact that they were relying on a Cerberus ship and crew to save their bacon had to be chapping some asses, but they still wanted their updates, and Talia had drawn that shit detail because Alistair couldn't type worth a damn.
Didn't mean that she told them everything, mind you, and she damn sure didn't prioritize them over chow, particularly when her nose told her that Gardner was doing Diner Night. One double cheeseburger with the works and a pile of fries later, Talia dropped into a chair, ready for a grease overdose. A shadow fell over the table, and Alistair claimed the chair across from her.
"Well?" he challenged her.
He wasn't alone. Seeing the biggest damn horndog in Alliance space with just one woman was weird enough, but that woman being Miranda Lawson only added to the Whiskey-Tango-Foxtrot factor. Even weirder: Talia was positive they hadn't sealed the deal yet.
"Is Shepard all right?" the Cerberus operative asked, settling into the chair beside Alistair. Talia gave her a flat stare, waiting for the stupidity of the question to sink in, before turning to Alistair. His attachment to Miranda might buy her a reprieve from the purge of Cerberus that Talia fully intended to implement once their mission was over, but that didn't mean that she had to pretend to like her.
"Shadow Broker's dead," she informed him, taking a bite of her burger.
"And?"
She chewed, swallowed. "And … Shepard is probably banging the new Shadow Broker as we speak."
"Liara?" Miranda didn't look surprised. "That could be useful to us."
Potentially true, but evidently not what Alistair was interested in. "And?"
As usual, he was as subtle as a kick to the groin, but he had yet to win this game with her. "And … Gardner makes a kickass bacon cheeseburger," she told him, taking another bite to prove her point.
"Had one earlier," he replied, visibly weighing whether or not to keep trying the oblique approach before giving up. "What about Leliana?"
Chew, swallow, shrug. "We got her," Talia replied matter-of-factly. "She's in pretty bad shape; Doc's working on her now." She snagged a couple of fries, dragged them through ketchup, popped them into her mouth with deliberate disinterest.
Hazel eyes regarded her closely, but it was Miranda who spoke, clearly trying to be comforting … something that she sucked at. "Dr. Chakwas is extremely skilled, Talia. I am certain that your … your friend will be all right."
"She's not my friend," Talia shot back, glaring at Alistair, who had evidently sung like a damned canary. "Or anything else. We had a mission, we did it, end of story."
"C'mon, Tal," Alistair protested. "She helped Liara get Erin back -"
"Well, damn, I'd completely forgotten about that!" Talia exclaimed sarcastically. "But you know what? She saved Shep, we saved her. She didn't fucking do it for me, and I damn sure didn't do anything for her." Appetite gone, she shoved the tray toward Alistair and stood. "Do me a favor and screw him before his brain turns completely to mush," she growled at Miranda before stalking out of the mess hall, frustrated rage throbbing behind her eyes.
