Chapter Five:
She still didn't know his name.
Shepard had been sharing a bench and actually talking with this turian for at least three hours now, and they'd talked about everything but themselves. When it was clear that personal questions were off limits to both of them they'd delved into discussions regarding things from the latest omni-tool upgrades to the latest Blasto movie.
It was strange, but she was actually starting to like the guy. The turian. Her bench warmer. Her lips nearly quirked at the nickname. Oh, don't mind the crazy human just smiling at her own thoughts, she just forgot how normal people are supposed to interact. She was quick to school her features.
A part of her wanted to proudly strut off her new friendship in front of her first therapist, the one who'd dare suggest that her past affiliations made her unfit for active duty. Withdrawn and xenophobic, her ass. Shepard was many things, and not all of them good. She could readily admit this to anyone with the forethought to ask. She was paranoid, secretive, reclusive, and excessively violent; but one thing she was not was racist. Or xenophobic, or specist, however the hell you wanted to put it.
The thing that people just didn't seem to understand, no matter how many times you tried to explain, was that family was family, no matter what. Even if you don't believe the same things they do it doesn't mean you loved them any less.
"What are the chances of people stealing this bench if I get up?" Shepard asked, turning her head to look at him. She was tired, cranky, and probably more than a little hungry. She was used to not eating, mostly because she forgot, so she couldn't tell if the vague discomfort in her stomach was from hunger or sickness. She generally never could tell, until it was too late.
"Well, any sane turian or salarian would avoid it based on the scent alone," he responded with a shrug. "Can't say much for the humans or the asari. You may be out of luck."
She sighed, rubbing her eyes as she pushed back the jet lag that was creeping up on her senses. "I have a proposal."
"Is this when you ask me to marry you?" he asked dryly. She snorted.
"No, I mean – you stick here and watch the bench, and I'll go get food. I promise it will be dextro, but I can't promise that it'll be edible," she grinned weakly. "I'm hungry and my legs are cramping and I really don't want to lose my seat. Not after all that work."
He shook his head, "As if I'd kick you out of it after you worked so hard to keep it." He nodded, "Yeah, I'll watch it. I don't think anyone is stupid enough to take this bench now."
Shepard was already pushing herself to her feet before he finished talking, groaning as her legs protested. She twisted herself around, working the kinks out of her body. She ran her hand over her neck, rolling her head and sighing as the knots worked themselves out. "Right. Give me a moment, I'll be right back."
She didn't wait for a response this time, trotting off towards the cafeteria. Figuring out what she wanted to eat wasn't that difficult considering the astonishing lack of options, but the turian was another matter. She stared down at the meals with a frown, her brow ticking slightly in irritation. What the hell was she supposed to choose?
"Levo food is over there," an unfamiliar flanging voice said, rather unhelpfully. She glanced at the turian behind her, narrowing her eyes.
"I noticed," she drawled. "Look, what's good here? I'm picking something up for a friend."
He eyed her suspiciously for a moment before picking up something that looked like a sandwich filled with potato salad that was way too green and way too mushy. She wrinkled her nose and considered smelling it, but decided against it. She accepted it with a half-assed grin.
"Thanks," she said, raising it to him in a brief salute before placing it on her tray. Luckily the food on board was a step above what the military provided, and cheap enough that buying her new friend (or friend-shaped-thing) a meal didn't put any significant dent in her pockets. She didn't feel bad about spending a few credits extra.
Judging by the look on her turians face when she returned, she'd made a decent choice. She offered it to him before reclaiming her seat and balancing the tray on her lap. She pushed the sleeves of her hoodie up past her elbow.
"So, tell me something," she said, considering her own sandwich and trying to figure out exactly how she wanted to approach it. It looked kind of messy, and it was with a resigned sigh that she began unwrapping it.
"Could you be a little less vague?" he asked, glancing at her. She shrugged.
"I don't know, I'm just trying to learn. I'm being culturally aware." Shepard looked out into space, as if the starts would suddenly hit her with divine inspiration. She was surprised when it did. "Tell me about Palaven."
He quirked a brow plate, and she had the distinct impression he was mentally rolling his eyes at her. "That isn't what I meant by less-vague. You're asking me to tell you about an entire planet. That's a lot of information."
"Well, then what about where you were raised?" She grimaced as ranch slipped from her sandwich and onto her thumb. She licked it away. "You tell me about Palaven, I tell you about Earth. Sounds like a fair trade to me."
He looked at her for a moment, and she pretended not to notice. Instead, she kept her attention on her sandwich – the picture of nonchalance. Or at least that was what she was going for, she wasn't sure how well it played off.
"I was born in Cipirtine," he finally said, fingers moving to unwrap his sandwich. She wondered how that worked, with three fingers. She made a mental note to try that later, when it wouldn't earn her own fair share of strange looks. She got enough of those as it was. "It's like any other megatropolis in the galaxy, only it's bright. You have cities like Nos Astra, that are all shadows and neon. A city that looks like it's in a constant state of twilight. Cipirtine is the exact opposite. All the buildings are made of glass and marble and they reflect the light. During the day we don't even need lights, and night is almost just as bright."
He took a bite and Shepard watched as he angled his head back slightly, keeping the food in his mouth and not on the front of his armor. It was kind of weird. Was it considered racist to compare him to a parakeet?
"Even when the sun goes down, the moons are still bright enough that lights are mostly just a formality. The only places that are dark are the forests, and even then some of the fauna absorbs enough of the light that they let off a faint glow – not enough to light the whole place, but enough to help you see your way."
Shepard squawked slightly more ranch attempted to escape her sandwich, jumping free and landing on her hoodie no mater how she tried to avert it. He looked at her, raising a browplate, and she motioned for him to continued as she sat her meal down and grabbed a napkin. "Ignore me."
He did so, fairly readily. He seemed to be having nowhere near the troubles she was with his own meal, and for a moment she was almost ridiculously jealous of his sandwich.
"Even in the city, there are plants everywhere. Some people try and keep them back, but they wind up crawling up the buildings within a matter of days. It's easier to just guide them into place, instead of keeping them back completely." He chuckled. "The Vakarian home is surrounded with these blue flowers, it used to drive my dad crazy. He says they never behaved until my mom started looking after them."
She stored that away, mostly out of habit than actual interest. It was the first personal bit of information they'd shared, and she'd finally gotten a name. Vakarian. She'd have to run an extranet search on it later. Nothing personal, just habit.
"The walls of my childhood home were covered in those plants," he was saying. "The blooms never lasted longer than two weeks – the radiation levels curb the population. According to my aunt, the Vakarian clan used the colour as inspiration for the colour of our markings during the Unification wars."
"Why?" Shepard asked, opening eyes she hadn't even realized she had closed. She looked at him. He still had more than half of his sandwich left. He was too busy looking out into space, as if he looked hard enough he would be able to see Palaven waving back at him.
"I've never seen any of those flowers bloom as blue as they did in my yard," he said. "They're the rarest breed. I'm not into horticulture, that was always my mothers thing, but my aunt says it's the acids in the soil. The blue was seen as something to be proud of. She said it was a sign that the Vakarian family was destined to do great things." He chuckled, and the sound was much more bitter than Shepard would have anticipated. "My father hated when she said that. Probably because it was difficult enough getting Solana and I to behave without her encouragement."
Shepard looked at him, swallowing down the respect that was clogging her throat and the strange sense of longing that tugged at her heart strings. "You really love your family," She noted.
"Yeah," He agreed, running his hand over his neck almost bashfully. "I, ah, never got along with my father, but I owe him everything." He glanced at her, mandibles flickering in a grin. "Don't tell him I said that."
She just offered a crooked smile, "I'll keep that in mind considering I'll never meet him."
They shared a moment of companionable silence as they ate. She considered offering him her name, considering she now had at least a surname to refer to him as, but figured that would be only slightly less awkward than constantly wondering what someones name was. It would come up, eventually. She hoped.
"So, I told you about my home," he said, finishing off his sandwich while Shepard realized she still had a good bite of hers left. "What about Earth?"
"Can you elaborate?" she asked, shoving the remnants in her mouth before she got caught in a monologue.
"What's it like? I've never been." He rolled up the wrapper and quirked a brow as ranch slipped from her chin and onto her hoodie. She murmured out a curse around a full mouth and flicked the dressing off with a thumb. She'd have to wash it once she had a washing machine. Christ, getting an apartment was going to suck ass.
She sighed and leaned back against the bench, looking up at the ceiling as she considered his question. How did she even want to start? Her memories of Earth were tainted with knowledge; truths she hadn't known were deadly until Earth was a spec in the rearview mirror.
"Dark," she finally said. "Even when the sun is out, it feels dark. The skyscrapers have gotten so big they block the sun all day, except for when it's almost directly overhead. You know how you said Nos Astra was like a city caught in a perpetual twilight? It's kind of like that, only New York doesn't even have a sunset to look at. Not unless you're near the skyline. New York isn't a place, not really. It isn't an image. It's a state of mind. Maybe in the past it was brighter, maybe it held more hope, but when poverty comes knocking on your door you always wind up in the city. New York has some of the highest crime rates on the planet, and most of the orphanages were too full.
"Of course, I'm biased." She offered a blasé shrug. "I'm sure if you asked anyone else they would defend it. Talk about how it's one of the largest megatropolises in the country, how the lights never go off and the city never sleeps. But I wasn't just a tourist, and I didn't have a great childhood. I don't even know who my parents are. I grew up in the dark of alleyways, running errands for gangs and making my way as best as a kid could. I don't even know my birth name. My mother was the dark and my father was the street."
God, she was getting poetic. She needed to turn this around, quickly. Dredging up bad memories wasn't a great tip to making friends, even temporary ones. She let out an unnecessarily loud sigh, jumping to her feet and stretching out.
"Right. Well. Now that share time is over, I need to sleep. You should probably sleep too, it's dark. Or, I don't know. At least rest. If anyone tries to steal the bench back we can just sit on them, get the message across that way." She grinned, large and fake.
"Right, because that's a great way to make friends," he drawled. His eyes were too sharp, his mandibles too tense, and suddenly all she could hear was the rushing of her blood in her ears and her heart slamming against her ribs.
So, she did what she had always done. She ran.
...
a/n: So, I'm kind of nervous about the progression I've got set for the Shakarian relationship. I just want to emphasize that emotionally, I'm taking their relationship slowly. There will be no sudden and drastic admission of feelings, but that isn't to say they aren't attracted to or intrigued by one another. It's infatuation.
I have a few twists planned for this, and I hope y'all like them alright. I don't think they've been done like this before, not with the things I've got in mind. OR at least I haven't read any.
Anyway. Hope you enjoyed the update!