- Three days later -

Operations Chief Williams winced as her boot crunched down on broken glass, the sound magnifying in the pervasive quiet and no doubt giving away her position to all kinds of creepy crawlies she imagined waiting and lurking in the shadowy corners around her. She lifted her foot again and carefully attempted to navigate around the shattered remnants of window on the floor, reluctant to let her concentration waver from her surroundings for any length of time while something could still leap out of the darkness to attack her.

The building was on emergency power, casting everything in an eerie red glow that was certainly not helping the young marine's rather overactive imagination. Her brain was skipping around to all kinds of dumb things to be dwelling on when she had to keep her head on straight, nightmarish creatures that she had seen with her own two eyes and hoped to God she never had to see again. Every phantom movement she caught out of the corner of her eye was in her mind a thorian creeper, a husk, a rachni.

Rachni. She shuddered involuntarily and tried not to think about where in the galaxy that massive queen might have scuttled off to. It was probably smart enough to keep a good distance away from any human colonies for a while, though. Right?

Williams steeled herself, narrowing her eyes as she stared down the length of her rifle, and shoved those unhelpful thoughts out of her head. Stop psyching yourself out, Ash.

She weaved cautiously through a maze of overturned chairs and splintered tables, over dishes and silverware that had been scattered during an interrupted meal, past some dark substance splattered on the wall that she wasn't sure she even wanted to identify. All the while, nothing shuffled out of the darkness to grab her, no tap-tapping of oversized insect legs or chilling groans from mindless husks. The place was completely deserted. No monsters, no people – dead or otherwise.

When she reached the far wall of the room without incident, a small fraction of the muscles in her tense body relaxed and she let out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding in. She cocked her head and felt a satisfying pop in her neck as she spoke out loud into her helmet's com-link. "Clear."

"Same here, Chief." Private Caldwell's voice broke through the sinister atmosphere and soothed a couple more of her high-strung nerves. Something about that place was really getting to her.

"No colonists?"

"Not a one. But if you've got a moment, Ma'am, I think you might want to come take a look at this."

Williams cast another glance around the room, silently deciding that he could be calling her over to see a grilled cheese sandwich shaped like the Pope and she still would have been grateful for the excuse not to hang around there by herself any longer. "On my way."

It was reassuring to be in daylight again, to see the rest of her team prowling in and out of the other colony structures and remind herself that she had not slipped into an old sci-fi horror flick. The whole situation was reminding her way too much of Horizon. In fact, that was probably why she was sent in the first place, to verify that the supposedly neutralized Collector threat wasn't about to rear its ugly head again. Though the more she saw, the more convinced she was that this had nothing to do with the Collectors. When they moved in to harvest a colony, nobody saw them coming; all that she had witnessed so far suggested that these mystery antagonists had all the stealth and subtlety of a herd of stampeding rhinos.

Caldwell was waiting in the building adjacent to hers, so the break from her uncharacteristic claustrophobia was little more than a tease before she was plunging back into the darkness again. This building was smaller than the one she had explored, some kind of storage unit, and so she came upon the other marine almost immediately.

She didn't have to ask what he wanted her to see.

There was sunlight streaming through a large hole in one wall of the room. The metal wall. Artillery fire, maybe? No. The edges of it were jagged, bent and torn in all directions as if something had tried to claw its way in from outside. Except that was ridiculous – what the hell claws through a metal wall? It was easily wide enough for her to crawl through, if she were ever struck with the urge. The tricky part would have been reaching the other side without gutting herself in the process. Shrapnel-like fragments jutted cruelly from all sides like gnarled teeth.

"What d'you think did this, Chief?"

Williams dragged her eyes away from the spectacle to glance at the man beside her. His eyes were wide, flighty; he looked like he wanted to high-tail it out of that place just as much as she did. "I don't know."

"Not Collectors, then?"

She shook her head. "Doubt it. The Collectors never left evidence of a struggle before."

The private "hmm"ed in understanding, then let out a noise of amusement that sounded more like a cough in his tightly-wound state. "You can't spit around here without it landing on evidence of a struggle."

Though she didn't find that fact particularly funny, she indulged him with a smile in hopes that it would take the edge off of his unease. He returned it briefly, their helmets only allowing the gesture to shine through in their eyes, before they were both settling back into their grim expressions.

Unable to help herself, she ran her fingers gingerly over the tortured surface, careful to avoid the sharp rim even with her thickly-gloved hands. There was a dried liquid coating the bottom fringe that couldn't have been anything but blood. There were drips of it running all the way down the two or three feet it took to reach the floor. Red – so that ruled out quite a few non-human species from the suspect list. Williams decided it must have come from a colonist, because to admit that it might have come from whatever had been playing can-opener on that warehouse was to acknowledge the possibility of a living creature being able to cause that kind of destruction. A living creature that could clear out an entire colony and disappear without a trace. She just did not want to start going down that road.

And for about the millionth time since her life on the Normandy had been violently torn out from under her, she wished that Shepard was still around to watch her back.

"Everyone through the doors! Now!"

One Collector after another fell at Shepard's feet, oozing dark blood out of holes punched in their carapaces by his assault rifle. And still, they kept coming. He could recall the smell with surprising accuracy, the bitter, earthy aroma that grew stronger with every rasping flutter of an approaching wingbeat until it made him want to gag. All around them, the air was humming ominously, and the high ceiling of the room was hardly visible through the swarm of seekers that buzzed violently just outside of the translucent blue of Samara's biotic field, currently the only thing preventing the lot of the insects from descending upon them all.

And Samara couldn't keep it up forever.

"Hurry, Shepard," the Justicar pleaded breathlessly, lasting barely another step before stumbling and falling to her hands and knees in utter exhaustion. Casting one last nervous glance up at the living cloud above them, Shepard left the cover fire to Jack and Thane and kneeled at Samara's side, drawing one of her arms over his shoulders to provide support as he helped her the rest of the way through the towering archway that led into the next room. He barely registered in all the chaos that Thane was the only one to slip past him to safety, could only track the pop, pop, pop of his rifle to know that he was close by.

The asari was settled onto the floor by the time he realized the persistent, deafening bang of Jack's hand cannon was still a substantial distance behind him.

Damn it, why did she always have to be the last one to retreat?

He drew his weapon again to go help her - or to drag her away from the fight, whichever the situation called for – but the sight that greeted him when he turned around made his blood go suddenly cold.

She hardly needed him for the Collectors. She was taking them out one-by-one with deadly accuracy, every shot bursting through chitin and sending her targets to the ground. Hard.

But the swarm had noticed that the field was gone, and it was falling fast toward her. Jack didn't see, was too concentrated on the bugs in front of her to look up. She was backing toward the doors, but slowly. Too slowly.

She wasn't going to make it.

"No! Fall back!" Shepard was already running as he shouted, shots from the remaining Collectors whizzing past him and crackling against his shields. He reached her almost exactly when the swarm did, to the point where he was forced to thrust his arm into the vibrating mass just to encircle her waist. She stumbled at the strength of his tug as he pulled her back to safety, landing them both in a heap on the ground while the enormous doors slammed shut at their feet and crushed the front lines of the pursuing insects between them.

When Jack first let out an anguished yell, he thought that she might have been shot. That thought passed soon enough, though, when she squirmed and rolled away from him, brushing furiously at her torso. There were maybe half a dozen of them on her, seekers that had managed to hold on to their target even as she had been dragged away from the swarm. The more she struggled against them, the more desperately they clung to her, dug into her in an attempt to escape from her grasping hands and panicked bursts of biotics.

Revulsion paralyzed Shepard momentarily before he dropped his gun and sprang to her side. He pried the first one off, the relentless insect leaving a starburst-shaped lesion on her abdominals in its wake. It had time to struggle for only a second, its needle-like legs waving helplessly in space, before he crunched it within his fist, quickly reducing it to a rather unappetizing mess of goo and cybernetics.

Between the two of them, they managed to remove most of seekers before too much damage could be done. But each one came off fighting, scrambling, tearing, and soon Jack was oozing blood from wounds scattered all over her front. The beetle-like shells were becoming more and more difficult for Shepard to get a hold of as his gloves became slick with blood.

She was tough, though, and almost all of them were off of her. Almost all of them were gone, and she was going to be okay. No one was going to die, damn it. Was that all of them?

No - there was one more. He caught a glimpse of its back end right before it disappeared beneath her skin.

A horrified shudder ran through him, and he only absently felt the impact of Jack's fist slamming down on his knee as she let out a pain-induced growl. His mind froze, but his hand went automatically to the field knife at his waist as if exhibiting instincts of its own.

He drew the blade from its sheath, the metallic sheen glinting even in the dim light, then met her agonized eyes as if asking her permission to use it.

Except no, he wasn't asking for permission; he was asking if she was ready. He was going to cut that little fucker out of her and then tear it limb from limb.

Her face was pale, her teeth gritted together so tight they might have all cracked right up the middle. Her knuckles were white against his knee, but she still kept her eyes steadily on him, perhaps in an effort to keep them away from her own torso. "Do it!"

Shepard shifted his attention back to the slowly migrating lump on her belly, ignoring his own turning stomach in unwavering concentration. He had one chance. An unsuccessful cut might have driven the insect deeper inside of her, for all he knew.

But that isn't going to happen, he assured himself, his hand steady as he finally drove his knife into soft skin.

Her resulting scream echoed all the way through those cavernous halls.

And even weeks later, it was still ringing in his ears.

Shepard was seated at his desk in the captain's quarters, staring absently at the report on his computer that he had honestly given up on reading a good ten minutes ago. The familiar voice of Mick Jagger was drifting over from his sound system only to flow into one of his ears and out the other. Instead of allowing him to remain in the comfort of his room, his brain had insisted on playing back that lovely memory for perhaps the hundredth time, evidently intent on driving him completely out of his head with it.

Jack hadn't spoken to him in days - that was certainly the main root of the problem. She was apparently avoiding the places he would usually expect to find her. He had made the trek down to the lower level of engineering several times and continuously found it empty. He never managed to catch her in the mess hall, and she wouldn't show up on the CIC. Every time he set foot into a room with her, she seemed to disappear before he could pin her down. It was like she was performing some kind of vastly unamusing magic trick. He might have been impressed with her ability to avoid him while they were stuck out in the ass-end of space together, if he weren't so endlessly frustrated that she could manage it. If her plan was to make him feel guilty enough to start groveling, well…

His eyes shifted traitorously to the call button sitting mere inches away from his right hand.

Goddammit, it was working.

Jack might have surprised herself just as much as she did Shepard when she actually paid any attention to the ship-wide request for her to come see him in his quarters. Yeah, she had been avoiding him. And the guy had a lot of nerve trying to call her out before she was good and ready to play nice with him again. For weeks, he had been holding her back, leaving her out of missions, siccing the doc on her every time she so much as strained a muscle. Bottom line, she was sick of all the coddling shit and she was determined to get a break from it even if she had to sneak around the ship for a while.

But she supposed the few days of relief that she got would have to do, she decided as she stood outside the door to the captain's quarters. Jack wasn't completely without mercy. By then, the boss man was probably tearing at that tidy military hair of his over what he was no doubt considering to be some kind of punishment for him - because if the entire fucking universe wasn't revolving around him every second of the day, it might implode.

Though that wasn't to say she hadn't been trying to punish him.

The door before her slid open only a moment after she knocked, and Shepard greeted her with a slightly raised eyebrow and a hesitant smile. She must have looked just about as happy to be there as she felt.

"I wasn't sure if you'd show up," he admitted.

"Yeah, well…" She grumbled as she slipped past him into the room, "You sounded too pathetic to ignore."

"That's what all the ladies tell me," Shepard smirked in response.

Jack scoffed, but turned toward the soft glow of the fish tank in an effort to hide her guarded frown, pretending to be interested in the few surviving skald fish still swimming about; he wasn't nearly as dejected as she had expected to find him. "You're gonna have to be a lot more self-deprecating than that to get back on my good side."

"Well then, Sour Patch," He gathered the courage to sidle up behind the woman and plant his hands against the glass on either side of her. He couldn't muster quite enough to try to touch her, though. "Does that mean you're not gonna admit you're here because you missed me?"

She snorted at his choice of nickname, the ghost of a smile flickering over her lips before she smothered it beneath a scowl. "Cut it out."

"Cut what out?"

"Don't play dumb with me, Shepard. I know what you're doing." Jack turned in place to face him straight on, cursing an inconvenient little flutter in her stomach as she realized just how close he was. She wanted to back up against the tank, at least until she couldn't feel his breath on her face anymore, but she sure as hell wasn't going to let him know that he was getting to her. Even without laying a finger on her, he could still manage to make her weak in the knees. Damn it.

All the same, she remained defiantly nose-to-nose with him, implementing a much-practiced mask of indifference. "You try to act all cute so I'll forget how much I hate your stupid guts. You've pulled it on me before."

An infuriating little grin appeared on his face. "You think I'm cute?"

Her lips twisted into a smirk in response. "I said try."

With that, she swatted one of his arms out of her way so that she could proceed down the steps into the cabin proper, waiting for him to follow before she addressed him again. She had come prepared to fight him at every turn, he suspected, taking her folded arms and rather defensive stance as a bad sign.

"You called me up here 'cause you wanted to talk, didn't you?" In a fluid motion, she hopped onto the arm of the sofa, perching there with one boot digging into the Cerberus-funded leather. "So talk."

Shepard met her hard gaze for a moment without speaking, honestly content with watching the light of the tank shine down onto her face, the occasional shadow of a fish fluttering across her striking features. He couldn't pinpoint the exact moment when he had managed to see past the crude and violent disposition, the shaved head, and the full body suit of tattoos that she hid behind. Maybe it had happened gradually. The girl had gone through so much trouble trying to scare him off, but in the end, it had all been wasted effort; he still found her disarmingly beautiful. Even while she was trying to stare him down.

And, damn, was she good at it. He averted his eyes with a sigh when she gave no sign of any willingness to let him off the hook, a submissive gesture she seemed to appreciate as the side of her mouth once again quirked upwards. He didn't actually enjoy these uncomfortable heart-to-hearts any more than she did, and had been trying to get away with making peace without one. It was quickly becoming clear, however, that the two of them couldn't carry on like they had been for much longer. He couldn't just ignore the growing tension between them anymore.

He switched off the music that had still been faintly playing on his way to join her on the couch, an action he soon regretted as the sudden silence cast a rather somber atmosphere over their prospective chat. Shifting his weight as he settled onto the cushion nearest to her, he wet his lips and turned his head toward her expectant stare. "I wanted to apologize."

"Oh yeah?" Jack's eyebrows lifted subtly, and to her credit, she kept her sarcastic tones to a minimum. "For not trusting me with those mechs? Or maybe for when we went to take out those Blood Pack mercs and you left me to guard the shuttle?" She paused briefly, then snapped her fingers as if suddenly sure that her next guess was the right answer. "How about that time I told you my amp was bugging me and you wouldn't let me off the ship for a week?"

"For all of that," he replied sincerely, and quickly - before she could come up with anything else to be angry about. "But mostly for the lack of explanation for it."

"I've got a feeling I know exactly what the explanation is." She twisted in her seat to face him, otherwise unable to properly glare at him while they were sitting side by side. He furrowed his brow in response to the hostility, though didn't flinch beneath it.

"That so?"

"I get it, Shepard. The resident psycho has a freak-out in the middle of Bug Village, so now you've gotta stick the training wheels back on. You don't think I can handle it anymore."

"Oh come on, Jack. That's not-"

She cut him off with a shake of her head. "All the time I've been on this ship, I've never given you a reason to doubt me. Not one fucking reason. Now you're watching me closer than you did when I was just a convict you broke out of Purgatory."

"I don't doubt you," he insisted. "I'd trust you with my life. I have trusted you with my life."

"So what, then? What's the problem? You give all the dangerous shit to your turian boyfriend now – why won't you let me in on the good jobs anymore?"

All the time they had been talking, he had been trying to stay calm. The last thing he wanted to do, after all, was sink into just another shouting match. But right then he couldn't stop himself from raising his voice. "Because I worry about you! Alright?"

Shepard's outburst struck the woman temporarily silent. In the pause, he bowed his head and sighed wearily, his voice softening considerably when he spoke again.

"I love you, Jack." He spoke as if it were obvious, as if she would be blind not to know it already, though it was only immediately after he made the statement that he realized it was true. He loved the tattooed little firecracker, crippling baggage and all. Loved her. Well, shit.

Her reaction was excessively hard to read, though her eyes were suddenly locked squarely onto his. Her lips parted momentarily as if she were going to speak, but then quickly snapped closed again. Shepard smiled a little, imagining all of her many defense mechanisms coming online at once only to short each other out.

"Bullshit," she replied at last. Not exactly the response he was expecting, but for all the harshness of the word itself, her voice came out soft and unsure. In that moment, he recognized what he was seeing behind those deep brown eyes, through the gaze that was furiously searching him for some sign of insincerity: Fear.

Shepard's smile disappeared as quickly as it had come. He had forgotten how uncomfortable these things made her. It was almost funny that for all the things she was willing to do physically, all it took was a little genuine affection to render her socially crippled. He reached a hand up to brush his fingers across her cheek, and after a moment, her eyes fluttered shut. After another, she was actually leaning into his touch.

"Shepard, I -" She trailed off, any words she might have had catching in her throat and refusing to come out. In the pause, she met his gaze again, eyes full of frustration at her own inability to say anything coherent. So instead, she fell back on what she knew. Slipping off of her perch on the arm, she crawled into his lap, pushing him roughly against the back of the couch and kissing him with an urgency that set him on fire. He pulled her close against his chest, savoring the feeling of her full lips against his and silently deciding he would never go so long without it again.

Jack plucked his hands from where they had settled on her hips and guided them up to the zipper of her skintight vest. He felt for the small metal grip and pulled it slowly downward, taking pleasure in the impatient tenseness of her body. She tolerated the agonizing pace for a few seconds before she nipped sharply on his lower lip in an attempt to hurry him up.

Shepard hissed through his teeth and flipped her over onto her back as punishment. She put up the predicted struggle against allowing him dominance, but he was ready for it, quickly catching both of her wrists and pressing her into the couch with his weight. Once she was securely pinned, he took a moment to stare down at her, her dark eyes flashing and her lips flushed pink. He grinned.

"You let your guard down." He brushed a kiss against her forehead. "You're losing your touch."

She let out a quiet noise of vexation, but was distracted by the attention he began lavishing on her neck before she could put up too much of a fuss. He risked letting her hands free to feel for the zipper of her top again, and she arched her back to help him reach it. Shepard made short work of it with one last tug. When the fastening was finally undone, she sighed lightly against his ear and he felt himself shiver. He pushed himself up enough to peel the garment away from her and drop it carelessly to the ground, taking the opportunity to drink in the sight of her bare torso. After a moment, he leaned down again, pressing his lips to her stomach just above the dip of her belly button.

As soon as his attention was away from her face, Jack smiled. A real smile. The same kind that had snuck up on her the night before they had gone through the Omega 4. A smile of contentment.

She then threw her weight to push him over and regain the upper hand while he was distracted, sending them both off the edge of the sofa cushions. Jack smugly on top again, they hit the floor with a heavy thud that shattered into rare breathless laughter from both of them before they became too engrossed in each other to mind much where they were anyway.

Morning found Shepard back at his desk, bathed in the light of his computer screen as he sifted through the reports and the messages that Jack had so capably distracted him from the night before. It was early, and the room was still dark to allow the woman to sleep; in his experience, waking her before she decided herself that she was ready to be awake was typically a bad idea.

He rarely slept through a whole night ever since he had been brought back from the dead. Sometimes sleep stalked him for days before he could actually indulge in a restful night. There was just too much weighing down on him – the approaching showdown with the Reapers, the ever-present feeling that Cerberus was lurking in the shadows just out of sight - and all that paired with the fact that he and his crew were basically on their own in the middle of it all. Lately, he was actually beginning to regret telling the Council to shove their superficial offer of a renewed Spectre status up their collective ass.

And then there was the newest development.

Shepard looked past his screen at the lumpy form under the sheets of his bed, smiling briefly despite the worries gnawing at the back of his mind. For all the affection Jack stirred in him, though, there was also a twinge of guilt that came along with it. Focusing his attention back onto his computer, he ignored the remaining unread messages and searched way back through the archives to dig up the one email that had been quietly nagging at him since he had woken up that morning. After scrolling past pages of spam, old messages from the Illusive Man, and threats from the Urdnot shaman about keeping Grunt in one piece, he came upon what he was looking for – a subject line titled "Hey there."

He had read the email about a thousand times already, but had only thought about replying to it once or twice. At that point, however, he felt like he had to. It was only fair to let Ashley know that he was with someone else, especially since he had dropped the l-word the night before. But how the hell was he supposed to tell her?

More for the purpose of stalling than anything else, he read the whole thing one more time. One line seemed to stick with him though, drawing his eyes back over it again and again until he finally bowed his head and rubbed his hands over his face in an attempt to erase it from his vision.

"Just stay alive out there… Skipper. I don't know what the future holds, but I can't lose you a second time."

Fuck… I'm sorry, Ash.

Shepard sat for what seemed like a long time, trying to compose a suitable message in his head as his hand hovered over the "reply" button. In all probability, he might have been there half the day without actually typing a thing if he hadn't heard stirring on the other side of the room. At the first rustle of bed sheets, he closed out of his email entirely. It could wait until later. He pulled up a report and began reading that instead, probably making more progress in the few moments it took for Jack to trudge from the bed and up the stairs from the living area than he had all morning.

She was still groggy from sleep, still naked except for a pair of his boxers that she had pulled on in a surprising act of modesty. He tried not to let the still plentiful bare skin distract him from pretending to be absorbed in his paperwork.

She yawned and stretched her arms above her head as she padded barefoot across the floor toward the bathroom. "I'm using your shower."

Shepard made a quiet noise of acknowledgement, his eyes not wavering from the computer screen again. He heard the door swish open behind him, but the footsteps paused. There was a beat of silence before Jack spoke once more.

"Care to join me?"

His reading stopped immediately. The threat of a smile already hovering around his mouth, he swiveled his chair around to face her.

It was almost impossible to see her expression; the dim room combined with the light shining from the bathroom behind her rendered her little more than a silhouette. There was clearly a smirk in her voice though, and the alluring figure she cast as she leaned against the doorframe made him suspect that he was never going to get his work done if she had anything to do with it.

He made a show of running his eyes slowly down and back up her body, pretending that he needed any time at all to consider what his answer was going to be. He had his mouth half open to respond with a definite affirmative before he was interrupted by a voice that seemed to come from everywhere in the room at once.

"Commander," EDI's avatar flickered into existence next to the outer door of the cabin, shining with a cool blue light that cut efficiently through the darkness around it. "Miss Lawson requests your presence in the briefing room. A message has arrived that requires your immediate attention."

Jack growled and muttered testily. Shepard only caught the words "cold-blooded" and "bitch" before she disappeared behind the closing bathroom door. He sighed and ran a hand over his short hair.

"Have I said something wrong?" the AI asked, a tinge of concern in her tone that made him marvel over how human she was beginning to sound as time went on.

"Don't worry about it, EDI. I'm almost positive she's not talking about you." He smiled reassuringly, even while trying to ignore the beginnings of a headache. "Tell Miranda I'll be right down."

Author's Notes: Wow, so that took way more time than I thought it would. Not gonna lie - the slowness may very well get worse when I go back to school in September. Just try to bear with me on that. The good news is that this chapter ended up being a little longer than I thought, so I moved a scene that I already wrote to chapter 3. So... head start! We'll see if it helps any.

P.S. - Anyone else notice that one of the actresses in The Human Centipede is named Ashley Williams? Mass Effect Ashley would never have so much trouble dealing with a crazed German surgeon, though. At the very least, she would have been able to convince the guy to let her be the very front segment of the centipede. I mean, come on.