Lina Shepard sat back in the desk chair, concentrating on the stylus pen in her palm. A soft blue glow surrounded her hand and the stylus slowly, magically floated a few centimetres into the air.
She smirked. What a freakin' power.
Her feet rested on the desk, pointing toward the dark, empty sleeping area of the loft. It was all so shiny and new, the plastic practically just torn off the furniture, the fish tank still and void of life. She stared at the pen in her hand for another moment before giving it a small push, and watched as it flew over the empty display cabinet and landed on the couch just beyond the glass.
She let out a small laugh. What a stupid fucking power.
What a stupid fucking day. Was it bad that the first thing she thought of, post-"oh, by the way we brought you back from the dead"-conversation, was that Andrea freakin' Phillips owed her fifty credits? Turns out, there was, in fact, no afterlife, and as the bubbly brunette once bet her that there was (to be paid to her post-mortem in whatever currency was used in the afterlife) it seemed that Shepard had one over her former room mate.
Of course, for the present moment there were bigger concerns to be had, but Shepard also considered bringing it up with her new XO that Cerberus was in debt to her for one (1) ground team, seeing as they were responsible for the "Akuze Fiasco", as it was being called.
Fiasco. Massacre. However you put it, the assholes had murdered a dozen or so good soldiers for no reason. Her displeasure with now being associated with the organization responsible for one of the biggest traumatic events of her adult life was expressed thoroughly on the shuttle from 'Top Secret Science Station A' to 'Top Secret Science Station B' in the form of beating her so-called rescuers' faces in with her fist and elbow.
Ha! That's what you get for… bringing me back to life and then safely removing me from a doomed space station… Dicks!
Further memory searching had brought to mind a number of research stations that had been in some way infiltrated and sabotaged by the group during her first walk through hell. Other than her investigating the stations, shooting up some husks of one form or another, and contacting Fifth Fleet to do clean-up, she had little to no feelings about these incidents, except that they were a waste of her time and just piled on proof that Cerberus was, for lack of a better term, evil. The Illusive Man was little more than Satan with a bad rug and his little succubus Miranda wasn't much better.
The fuckers had to interfere in everything, didn't they? Fuck her team, fuck her mission, and now they've fucked around in her head, implanting biotics where no biotics should be implanted- in the hands of a woman with a quick temper and access to a lot of guns.
Although they had only granted her enough power to pick up one or two abilities. She was nowhere near strong enough to create a full-blown singularity, and, admittedly, making shit fly through the air was kind of fun.
"Shepard," Speak of the devil (ha!), Miranda's voice came over the comm, and the CO cringed a bit.
"What?"
"We're approaching Omega now, ETA in twenty minutes," came the response.
"Sure thing," Shepard flicked the comm to OFF and grabbed another pen out of the cup. She concentrated on it until she felt a now familiar surge of power in her hand, accompanied by a pulsing tingle, and watched her target- the chair on the far side of the room. With a small push the pen flew over the display cabinet and landed a half metre away from the chair.
She made an annoyed sound.
She realized the irony in her thinking of Cerberus as 'evil', seeing has Shepard herself had a bit of a ruthless reputation and bad attitude, but she did believe in respect and even though the word occasionally slithered out of her shipmates' mouths, she heard little meaning behind it. Sure they respected her actions in the Battle for the Citadel, how she had ordered the Fifth Fleet to concentrate on Sovereign instead of saving the Destiny Ascension, thus "securing humanity's place" as Udina had put it. She shuddered. She had shuddered at Udina when he sidled up to her and Anderson after the fact, and she shuddered when the Illusive Man brought it up again. In hindsight, what she had done was wrong, wrong, wrong. Even if the council was made up of racist dicks that didn't believe her for a second about the goddamn Reapers.
If only, she sighed. If only life had save points.
She pulled her armour out from the locker next to her bed, accidentally knocking the lampshade on her bedside table. After taking far too long to get it perfectly straight, she threw her hands in the air and then messed up the sheets a bit. The room looked too goddamn tidy, anyway.
In the elevator, she checked her dossier. The mercenary, the professor, and 'Archangel'.
/-/
It was hours after her biotic target practice that Shepard once again boarded her ship, wiping her forehead with the back of her gloved hand, clearing away the sweat but leaving a streak of blue blood in its place. She pressed her hand back onto the wound and glanced up at Chakwas. The doctor had been surprised to see Shepard and Jacob and Zaeed Massani dragging a turian into the med bay, and even more shocked when she realized that it was, in fact, the only turian she had really treated her entire military career.
She prepped her equipment as the ground team hauled Garrus onto the table, Shepard giving her a quick rundown the entire way.
"Gunship," she said quickly, wiping her face again, leaving more blue streaks beneath her eyes. "Hit with a rocket, and he might have been shot, too. Probably a fifty calibre. I don't know how many times he was hit. He had been on stims for at least a few days beforehand-"
"Thank you, Commander, I can take it from here," Chakwas shooed Jacob and Zaeed away, reclaiming enough space for her and her assistant to work.
Shepard stood back nervously, her hands wringing an invisible nothing in front of her. She glanced around the room, watching the doctor and nurse work for a few moments before cutting in.
"Is there anything I can do to help?"
"You can leave," Chakwas replied, once again making a 'shoo shoo!' motion with her hands. "I need the space to work."
"But I-"
"Commander, I'll tell you what," Chakwas turned to her briefly as she loaded some vile looking medication into a syringe. "You wait outside the windows. If a Collector jumps out of his wounds, I'll call you in here to shoot it."
Shepard nodded and dropped her hands at her side.
That Chakwas. She always did have a talent for reckless insubordination.
As she blindly stumbled out of the room (nearly knocking over a filing cabinet as she did) and found Jacob and Zaeed, both banished from the med bay as well, sitting at the dining table, Jacob checking his weapons for damage and Zaeed biting the end off of a cigar.
"Don't smoke that in here," Shepard's reflexes kicked in before she could stop herself. As the ex-merc eyed her incredulously, she inwardly chastised herself for speaking that way to a legend.
A legend she had studied at great length with a horrified fascination in her earlier years, marvelling at the fact that the man must have balls the size of planets. Really, when she had received the message saying Zaeed Goddamn Massani was going to be part of her team, her jaw dropped. She only kind of secretly hero-worshipped the man, just a little bit, even if he was supposed to be an example of what not to do (see: start a notorious mercenary gang.) She had to fight the urge to gape, to stare, to simultaneously bow down while shouting "We're not worthy! We're not worthy! We're scum! We suck!"
"Sorry," she said quickly, not really knowing what she was apologizing for. "I don't like the smell of smoke. You're free to have it in your quarters."
The merc pulled the cigar out of his mouth, watched Shepard for a moment, sizing her up with his eyes, and pointed to a label wrapped around the base of the cigar.
"See this?" he asked. "It's a real Cuban cigar. Damn near impossible to come by, seeing as there isn't a Cuba anymore. A salarian bookie gave me a case of these as payment for a job. Some deadbeat addict placed one too many bad bets and didn't have the cash to pony up, and when I brought his ass in it turned out, neither did the bookie. He opened up his humidor after I threatened to cut off his first horn, and told me to take anything I wanted. As luck would have it these were inside. Worth far more than the price we agreed on in the first place.
"Last person who told me I couldn't enjoy one of these ended up at the bottom of a Terminus mineshaft," he paused to let that sink in. "But, I like you, Shepard, and your Illusive Man is paying me enough to get myself a lifetime's worth of these beauties," he slipped the cigar back into it's plastic casing. "Now, if I can't smoke it here, care to show me where I can?"
"I-" she stopped and gave the him a surprised look. "Well- Jacob, could you-?"
"Yeah, Commander," Jacob saluted and nervously motioned for Zaeed to follow him. "I'll take you to your quarters."
"And that other job you've got?" she called to their backs. "Forward me the co-ordinates, I'll make it a priority."
You'll make it a priority to not piss off the legendary ex-merc bounty hunter that is living in close quarters with you, she thought.
Said ex-merc and Jacob both disappeared around the corner as Miranda Lawson appeared, her hair and clothing a mess, a scarred old salarian in tow behind her. Shepard frowned at Miranda as Miranda scowled at the back of Zaeed Massani- the XO had tried to start a great argument with Shepard over him, stating that he wasn't part of the mission, he had no right being on the ship, Shepard was just nursing a crush and not thinking of the safety of the crew when she invited him on board. Shepard's response of "Hey, it was really your boss's idea" shut her up a bit, but she had still maintained that insufferable scowl. To get rid of her, Shepard had then sent her off to find Dr. Mordin Solus in the Omega slums as the rest of the ground team went after Archangel. A task, she realized now, that had taken much longer than originally anticipated.
A realization she then expressed with a few choice words in a less-than-professional tone.
"May have been my fault," the salarian cut in. "Commander Shepard? Mordin Solus. Charmed. Asked miss Lawson to help- disease, getting worse. Had to administer cure. Lots of vorcha." He paused and sniffed the air. "Very messy."
Shepard raised an eyebrow at him. "Are you for real?"
"Of course!" he replied. "Succinct, but real."
"I see," she nodded. "Well, you're a doctor, get in there, see what you can do."
"Archangel, yes? Helped him before. Very polite, if I recall. If somewhat impertinent."
"Just go," she pointed her thumb toward the med bay. "Wait." She touched his arm to stop him, eyeing his damaged cranial horn. "You were never a bookie, were you?"
"Never. Could never understand the enjoyment behind betting-" he started, before Shepard cut him off with a jerk of her thumb back toward the med bay.
She sighed, placing her hands on her hips, and looked back at Miranda. The redhead stared at the brunette who stared back at the redhead. Shepard waited, expectantly, for more excuses and gave an exaggerated shrug when they didn't come.
Miranda cleared her throat and spoke with great control. "We should continue with the dossiers-"
"Fine," Shepard cut her off. "Set a course for the refueling station, then to Purgatory afterwards."
"Shepard-"
"I'll be up in the CIC momentarily."
"Shepard, if he doesn't make it out of surgery-"
"He will."
"… we should think about contacting the Illusive Man for a possible replacement."
"Miranda, I don't have time to argue about this with you," Shepard raised her voice, putting on the best that's COMMANDER Shepard to you tone she could muster under the circumstances. "Get up to the CIC, plot a course for the closest refueling station, and get us the hell off of this rock."
Miranda pursed her lips, giving a curt nod and clearly biting back a response she would regret. Turning, she made quick work of the space between her and the elevator, leaving behind only the plangent tone of her heels on the tile. Shepard let out a sigh and glanced into the med bay, where Chakwas or one of the assistants had pulled the curtain shut, blocking her view of the procedure.
So this was how her day was going to be? Have one friend completely dismiss her for working with Cerberus and watch another almost die at her feet? And now she couldn't even stand there and worry. She checked her omni-tool for the time, more for something to do than out of curiosity. Her stomach was tight, her insides felt like they were twisting out of her control and every breath in stabbed at her chest like the proverbial dagger to the heart.
What was the point in this? No mission was worth having everyone she loved either turn on her or die.
\-\
Miranda was still annoyed, obviously. Several hours after the end of the mission she still hadn't called on Shepard for debriefing and in her place, Jacob stood across the table from Shepard, alone, trying to convince her that they had done everything they could, all they had to do was wait, Garrus still needed time to recover.
She shook her head and let out a breath. After she was forced from the med bay, she had begrudgingly gone to her quarters to clean herself off, finding a surprising amount of blue blood smeared across her face. It had shocked her a bit, seeing how she had unconsciously formed a familiar pattern across her brow and nose.
And then the door to the briefing room opened, and the stubborn fucker himself stood there, a smirk on his face, the full smile shining bright in his eyes.
"Tough son of a bitch…" she heard Jacob mutter, but the rest was just noise to her.
She smiled. No, she full on grinned like a madman. That twisting in her stomach fell away, replaced with a euphoric all-over body buzz.
"How bad is it?" he asked, rubbing at his chin. She realized that he wasn't smirking to be a dick, he couldn't pull back his mandibles to smile on the injured side.
"Ah, you were always an ugly fuck," she motioned for him to turn his head so she could take a look. "How does it feel?"
"Like I got hit with a rocket, how do you think it feels?"
She laughed and gently slapped his good side.
"Garrus Vakarian: renegade, ladies' man, stops rockets with his face," she pantomimed.
"If that was an obvious attempt to make my biographical vid that much more interesting-"
"Obviously."
"Please, keep talking me up like that. Maybe one of the studios will option my story while I'm still alive and I can make some money off of it."
"The way you're going? Fat chance," Shepard leaned on the table, arms crossed. She nodded to Jacob as he walked away, leaving her and Garrus alone in the room.
Garrus glanced at her.
"So," he leaned next to her. "We're with Cerberus now."
"It would seem," she gave a small shrug. "I guess I owe them my life, and our mission is pretty important…" she trailed off, unsure of what to say next. It was something she had never experienced before.
"I don't trust them," he broke the silence.
"Me neither," she replied, feeling this was the most honest statement she'd uttered all day.
"I'm glad you still have some sense," he shook his head. She did the same.
"What happened to you down there?" she asked. "I mean, the mercs, the name, it sounds like you've got quite the story-"
"Yeah," he rubbed at his chin, then flinched and pulled his hand away. "But, some other time, I think."
"You all right?" she asked as he pushed himself away from the table.
"Yeah," he replied. "I'm fit for duty whenever you need me, Shepard. I'll go to the main battery and see what I can do from there."
She nodded and watched him duck out of the room. Her heart lurched a bit, not for the first time that day. It had been two years since their last conversation, before he left the Normandy, before those Collector assholes shot her down over Alchera.
And now he doesn't trust you.
So what are the odds that he still feels the way you feel?