After a ridiculously long hiatus, I'm back! Of all my stories, this one is (somehow) the most difficult to write, hence the long delay.
Interlude Two:
On his list of things he meant to tell Dahlia, that wasn't quite at the bottom, but it was damned close. James shuffles under her gaze before she pulls it away to study a spot on the ground and thank God for that, because he does not want to talk about making out with Shepard. Her hands are white-knuckled together, and he wishes he knew what she was thinking, but of course, of course what she inherited from Shepard was a mean poker face.
Dahlia stands up, her hands going to her hips. She takes a few steps in one direction and then stops, turning thoughtfully. It's like she can't quite figure out what to do with herself, and James can't really blame her. This is some heavy shit he's laying down.
He sighs, and he stands too, tipping his beer bottle to get the last few drops. Dahlia is so small in the space of the living room, and her lost expression is so similar to Shepard's that it's like he's right back in the middle of the fucking war and he still has no idea what to do. He clears his throat, startling her and manages to shrug an apology.
"You hungry?" he says.
She blinks those blue eyes at him. "Pardon?"
Right there, that's a huge difference between Shepard and her daughter. Shepard hardly ever used manners, especially not with him. More than likely, her reply would be a raised eyebrow.
James clears his throat. "I'm starved," he says, a little too loudly, "and, well, I don't know how much you want to hear, but if you want me to keep going, I'm not going to be able to sit here all casual-like and tell you. Either I cook, or we go for a run. Your choice."
She stares at him like he's grown an extra head, and he reminds himself that she's not military, that she's never been military, and so she may not understand what he's thinking. Still, it takes her only a few seconds of deliberation before she says, "I could eat."
"Fantastic," he says without any real gusto, and jerks his head in the direction of the kitchen before wandering off. He doesn't wait for her to follow.
He'd planned on spaghetti for dinner, and it seems like a tacky choice with the bloody direction of his memoir, but whatever. He pulls out the ingredients for his sauce and sets up his chopping station, only dimly aware of Dahlia's footsteps into the room behind him. He hears her hesitate.
"You need any help?"
"Nah, I got it," he says. "Pull up a chair."
The chair scrapes against the tile floor as he begins to dice the onion. He tries to think of where to go from there, but he's stuck remembering how it felt to be so close to Shepard, and so far away. In some ways, it's exactly like this moment. Dahlia, well, she could be Shepard from a distance, but up close? No way in hell. Too lithe, too timid. There's a spark of something in her, but damnit, Shepard was born a wildfire.
"I wondered," she says, quietly, like she's afraid to bring it up, "why everybody said I should talk to you. I thought that, maybe, the Alliance had tasked you with keeping an eye on her because you'd been her jailer, but then I came and you said that you loved her."
"Actually," replies James, "I think I remember saying that I love her. As in, continuously. Haven't stopped."
"Right," agrees Dahlia, who sounds even more miniscule now, and he's not sure how that's possible. "You did say that but… I guess I never figured…"
Despite himself, James sets down his knife and chuckles, turning to her with a raised eyebrow. "Go on, you can say it." Her face turns the colour of his tomatoes, and she stares hard at her knees. "You didn't think the legendary Commander Shepard would fall for an average grunt like me, right?"
"That's not… I didn't," protests Dahlia, but she's far from convincing.
"Hey, I'm not offended," says James with a smile, and the only word he can slap on Dahlia right now is adorable, like a kitten or something. "Haven't you been listening? I was pretty surprised myself." He turns his back on her so she can't see the smile slide off his face as he remembers how torturous it was to know how she felt and to be so unable to do anything, especially when the world was going to hell.
"It's not that," she assures him, "or not only that. It's just… All those letters I got from people, they almost all told me not to think of Commander Shepard as a legend, and I thought… I thought I could do that, because I saw her that once and because, until the end, she seemed so… normal."
James barks out a laugh before he can help himself. "Normal? Hell no, she wasn't normal. She was…" A thousand words filter through his mind: amazing, wonderful, beautiful, complex… It goes on and on, so he finishes lamely, "Not normal. But she was human, and that's the part people usually forget."
"Right," says Dahlia, like she's trying to use the word to convince herself of this fact. For a while, there's nothing between them but the sound of chopping, but James feels her presence behind him like a spider down his back. It's unnerving, but damn if he's going to let it show. "Do you ever find it hard? To separate the woman from the legend?"
That makes him pause again. He licks his lips and considers his answer. "I used to. Back on the Normandy." He shrugs. "Now? Not so much."
"How did that change?"
That question, it's loaded. One wrong word, and it'll be his heart splattering all over this kitchen. He takes a deep breath, willing himself to remain nonchalant even though his muscles are tensing like he's back there, back in the thick of things, back with Commander Shepard, back with Kayleigh.
"The thing about legends," he says, "is that their life before the story starts is always kinda glossed over, you know? But when you start finding out the deep dark details of that, that's when you realize that those people who do amazing things, those people always have something pushing them forward, and it's not always pretty."
He doesn't want to keep going, but in for a credit, in for a chit.
Next Chapter: While on shore leave, Vega gets a tattoo and realizes just who he's fallen for.