"Do you remember me?" He asked, as he took a seat across from her in the small room. She shook her head, even though she never forgot his face. He carried her out of the blossoming hell of Mindoir, out of streets soaked with blood and littered with bodies. But this is not in a situation where she can trust anybody, especially not saviours who disappear after their work is done. He acted like her friend when she was fragile, about to fly apart at the seams, and then she never saw him again. He stopped her from self-destructing at that most critical moment, then left her alone for three years. He`s not her friend, and she knows it.
"My name is Captain Anderson. When we first met, I was Commander Anderson." He paused, searching her face for recognition but she remained stubbornly neutral, her face full of the placid dullness that defines stupid street trash. "I was there, on Mindoir. When it happened. Are you sure you don`t remember?."
She shrugged, readjusting herself in her seat and wiping at the thin trail of blood still leaking down from her freshly re-broken nose. The officers had not been gentle when they arrested her, and she was expecting them to come storming in at any moment. His presence did not make sense, and she knew it, but she was practiced when it came to ignoring her own curiosity in these situations. Better to give him nothing. Her eyes flicked just momentarily to the surveillance cameras, then back to him, remaining blank and slightly glazed. He unplugged them, before sitting down again, fixing her with a penetrating stare. She gave it right back, not flinching, not even twitching. He recognized the hardness, the intense and unyielding core that she had built up since she stopped being a traumatized victim of life. He stopped trying to stare her down and opened the file he had brought with him instead. She recognized it without trying. Her juvenile offender file.
"It looks like you`ve been busy since we last spoke... Shepard." He pronounced the name with a knowing tilt to his voice, fully aware that there was nothing real about it. She had pulled it out of the air, to satisfy the bureaucrats, to hide what she really was from everyone else. And because, it seemed, no one outside of India knew how to pronounce her given name properly. He pressed on, making no further comment about her chosen moniker. "Petty theft, theft over a thousand credits, arson, assault... if it wasn`t for the fact you`re under sixteen you`d be on a prison ship by now. Not to mention that they have a damn hard time finding any evidence against you. Sterilized crime scenes, no fingerprints, security cameras overloaded. Even evidence lockers broken into with the evidence stolen, right out of a police station one time, and no way to find out who did it. I wonder how things keep turning out so well for you."
She shrugged again, not about to play the entrapment game.
"Do you know why I`m here?" He asked. Her silence was getting to him, she could see the vein in his forehead building up, beginning to show through the light brown of his unblemished forehead. She shook her head, remaining mute.
He settled back in his chair, staring at her, trying to decide something. At length he leaned forward again, flipping the folder closed. "I want to help you." He said finally. That did it for her. She burst out laughing, wiping at the sticky trail of blood lining her upper lip again. She wasn`t stupid enough to fall for this social worker bullshit. Lots of people had said they wanted to help her since she was brought from Mindoir to meet the rest of the galaxy. She had believed them at first, thinking that the rest of existence was as pure and chaste as the colony she had spent her entire life on. She had learned that it was not, and the lessons had been vicious, brutal and scarring.
His blow took her by surprise, choking her mocking laughter in her throat and whipping her face to the side. Unbalanced she wobbled on the edge of her seat and then she fell after a moment of cart wheeling arms and soft swearing. He swept the table to the side, so violently that it crashed against the wall.
"Hey, you can`t just hit me like that Johnny-law!" She shouted, holding her now burning cheek with one hand. "I know my rights. Whatever you`ve got on me just went right out the fucking window. I want to talk to my lawyer."
He bent down and hit her again, and this time it vibrated through her bones into the fire of her already broken nose, making her swear violently. The renewed flood of blood filled her mouth as she struggled to stand, reminding her of the circumstances of their first meeting in the most vivid and gruesome way possible. He pulled her to her feet and hit her twice more, so hard that she fell back, her hip striking the concrete floor so hard her entire leg went numb. She glared up at him, refusing to acknowledge the pain but knowing better than to fight back. She would not be able to do anything to him here, where she was a skinny teenaged bum and he was a captain of the great Alliance. Her revenge would come through tearful interviews and pictures of her bruises released to aggressive media. She knew how to play this game.
Not wanting to come off as a pussy however, she spat a mouthful of bloody phlegm on his polished black leather shoes. She expected him to kick her. He didn`t.
"Look at yourself, Shepard." He said, and he used it this time as though it was her real name. "You`re pathetic. Stealing from liquor stores and mewling for an advocate the minute someone stronger than you shows up. Is this what you want? To be the only brilliant petty criminal in the Skyllian Verge? To waste your talent fencing drugs, or sell your body when you give up on life?"
"I'm not a hooker, asshole." She replied.
"Keep doing what you're doing and you will be, if you're lucky enough to stay alive a few more years. Your medical records show repeated rapes, broken bones, bruises and ligature marks that suggest restraint, torture and frequent beatings. Same as most homeless kids out here. In this kind of jungle, there is always going to be someone bigger and badder than you. And they will always be more than happy to take advantage of that." He fixed her with intense brown eyes. "I've reviewed your aptitude tests. If things had worked out a little differently the Alliance would be begging you to let them pay for you to go to Command School. You'd be on your way to becoming an N7 already."
"Well things didn't work out a little differently." She shot back, standing up and retreating a few steps away from him. If he made another move to hit her, she'd be ready for him. She could already feel her face swelling up from his various attacks. "Boohoo. I can't change what happened. I can't change what I am."
"You can't change what happened, but you can change what will. Go to Command School. Leave this behind, and no one will be able to take advantage of you. Apply yourself to something other than fucking around with idiots who are too stupid to realize how smart you are and when you come back it won't matter how much bigger than you they are." She had thought he was joking for much longer than she probably should have, but when he handed her the datapad, complete with an ENROLL NOW icon blinking in the corner, she knew that he was serious.
"Fuck." She swore in her outright disbelief. Whatever reason she had thought her might have for coming into this room... "You guys must be desperate for cannon fodder. What about my criminal record? I might not have gone to jail yet, but there's enough in there to keep me out of any kind of government job."
"Joining the military automatically pardons you of any non-felony crime, provided you serve your minimum four year term." He countered effortlessly. "And we don't train cannon fodder at Command School. You'll do four years of immersive training there and graduate as an officer. We train leaders. Marines."
She glared at the note of pride in his voice. "How am I going to get there from here? I can't afford a place to sleep at night, let alone an interstellar craft ticket. How am I going to pay for Command School even if I could get there? That shit is expensive," she tapped at the pad and it brought up the exact amount, "10,000 credits a year! I don't have any formal education, and I don't handle authority figures well. What the FUCK are you even thinking?"
"I'll take you myself. As for the expense of the education, there are several programs in place to help high-potential subjects from poor backgrounds succeed. I've already signed you up for several of them, they should take care of everything from the moment you get accepted. All else failing, you can always apply for a sponsor. Command School also runs a high school aptitude program alongside the advanced curriculum, after all your Command classes of course. So you'll be busy, but everything should take care of itself if you work hard. I doubt much of it will even challenge you. Like I said," he held up her folder in one hand, "I reviewed your aptitude tests. You'll do fine."
She stared at him, open mouthed and struck dumb for a long moment. Then, finally, she asked the only question she had left.
"Why are you doing this?"
"I kept my eye on you, after Mindoir. From a distance. Even when you ran away from the orphanage and disappeared I kept putting feelers out, monitoring the system, trying to find you before you were recycled through the system and cut loose again. You... haunted me. I read about your colony, the sort of life they led before the attack. I don't imagine you'd ever seen a gun before that day, but you killed two fully combat capable Batarians. Luck? Maybe. But I didn't think so then, and I don't think so now. You've got something, Shepard, something that almost every one of our current force lacks. That spark that makes you capable of doing things that should be impossible. Humanity needs you." He folded his arms behind his back. "So I'm going to try and make sure you do what's right. But I can't force you, the choice is yours and it always will be. Even after you get to Jump Zero, at anytime during the program you can walk away with no repercussions and no debt from the training you did recieve. But once you get there, you won't want to."
He turned and headed to the door as she stared down at the datapad in her hands, that flashed images of proud soldiers in their full armour, each one wearing the N7 engraving like a medal of honour.
"The SSV Arjuna leaves tomorrow at fourteen hundred hours. If you want to be somebody, you'll be on board. If not," he shrugged, "there are junkies waiting for their fix of red sand." After he was gone she sat alone for a long time, scanning pages and pages of stories and information, all designed to make her want to be a Commander.
When she arrived at the ship she tossed the datapad onto his desk and made a face.
"Fine, you convinced me. But you should have someone revise your fucking pamphlets. They make you guys look like a bunch of self-righteous assholes." He smiled at her for the first time, and despite all her efforts to be contrary she smiled back.
"Miss Shepard? Miss Shepard?" The high, nasal voice of her salarian lawyer broke the haze of memory and she looked up from the datapad that held the various forms she was supposed to be filling out. She was not making very good progress, it seemed.
"You looked far away, Miss Shepard. Are you finished with the B4's? I still need your signature and retinal confirmation scans on the E19 forms so we can sue to retain your ownership of life insurance payout. If you really died, than you are entitled to keep that money." Mollan Rhobe had the same lightning quick way of talking that characterized many salarians. At one point it might have irritated her, the way he seemed to rush through everything as quickly as possible but after a few months of Mordin he seemed positively sluggish by comparison. She yawned and shook her head.
"I've still got six pages to go. Maybe we can pick this up tomorrow?" The salarian sighed. She supposed she must seem very slow to him. She seemed slow to herself, at the moment. Fading off into memories when she was supposed to be working. It was out of character, and it irritated her enough to get her up and out of the seat, stretching her stiff legs. "Hey, every moment I waste is another moment you get paid for being pretty."
"Being pretty has nothing to do with anything." Mollan replied, disapprovingly. But her point seemed to have relaxed him and he was humming as he gathered up her various datapads full of forms and began storing them away in one of the unmarked safeboxes installed along the left wall. She had no idea how he kept the dozens of identical containers straight, since he seemed to put her paperwork in a different one every time. She supposed that was the point, and one of the many reasons he came so highly recommended.
Tapping at her omnitool she sent Thane a short message. "Still hungry? Meet me at the Tandoori Palace," and the promised directions to the tiny restaurant that lay sandwiched between more impressive places on one of the cleaner and less unfriendly levels of the Wards. She had never eaten there before, but everyone who reviewed it had nothing but good things to say about it. His response came a moment later.
"Race you."
Immediately, she broke into a dead run, clearing people out her way with little more than a defiant glare. When people who recognized her, an uncomfortably large section of the population despite her attempt to be inconspicuous by cutting and dyeing her black hair blond, she held up a hand to silence their questions. She was Shepard. She was on an important mission. Everyone out of the way. The crowd parted before her like the red sea and she charged on, cutting through alleys and over fences when she needed a shortcut.
Rounding the corner she saw the restaurant, a handholding couple just disappearing between its swinging glass doors. And a familiar, leather clad back that was making its calm, confident way toward them. She skirted back, allowing herself to melt into the shadows and tailed him, wondering how to get in front before he saw her. Thane was too observant to let her dash ahead, even if she kept in darkness. She pursed her lips as he drew ever nearer and sighed. There was nothing to be done. Tucking her head down she slid forward, quick and silent. When he finally heard her and started to turn it was too late. She let out a burst of speed, abandoning subtlety and crashed into him, her shoulder connecting just under his arm as he half-turned toward her, her momentum knocking him off his feet with a startled gasp. She was expecting everything, the shift of his weight as he started to fall, the way his arm clawed at her back, trying to drag her down with him and she neatly sidestepped from under his grip, turning and making a run for the door before he could recover.
Not fast enough it seemed. His hand snaked out faster than she thought possible and caught her ankle. She tripped, going down on her knees and he pulled her back, pushing himself up with the same motion to try and get past her. She caught his jacket with one hand, his arm with the other, and with a wrenching motion pulled him off balance again. He stayed up and she wound her arm around his waist so she could try again. She was still attempting to pull him down to the floor when he surged ahead, making for the door of the restaurant again. He was stronger than he looked, apparently, and he had always looked plenty strong. Shepard felt herself dragged along behind him, her legs kicking ineffectually. There was no way to get any traction on the smooth metal floors. She wrapped her other arm around his waist and tried again trying to plant her feet, only to have her shoes slip out from under her as he pulled them both finally through the door.
They were laughing as she loosened her grip and dropped to the floor, Thane sounding somewhat breathless. She had never heard him laugh out loud, beyond a few quiet chuckles that he always seemed to muffle into his hand. The hostess was giving them odd looks, as Thane extended one hand and helped her up off the floor.
"I did not expect you to get quite so... competitive." Thane commented as Shepard dusted off the seat of her pants and motioned for a table for two. "I admit, your tackle took me by surprise."
"I hate losing. At anything." Shepard replied as they followed the thin girl to a booth in the corner. She gave them menus and opened her mouth as if to say something. After a moment she closed it and left without a word. Shepard laughed as she scanned the various rows of savory dishes, each one sounding so familiar. "I think we scared the help."
"You scare everyone." Thane replied, with a smirk. He looked down at his own menu and his eyes narrowed slightly before he looked back up to her. "Ah, I think you may have to explain some of this to me. What exactly is curry?" He looked down again. "And lentils? And... why don't you just order for both of us?" He put the thing down and she nodded, grinning.
The waitress arrived to take their order, looking more relaxed now at least, and Shepard scanned the menu, her tongue twisting around the elaborate traditional names with ease. The waitress smiled and nodded as she finished with a pot of chai tea and scooped up their menu's before beating a hasty retreat. Perhaps not as relaxed as she looked, then. Shepard frowned, looking back at Thane.
"Am I really that scary?" She asked. A glance in the wall length mirror revealed nothing especially foreboding about her. Well the cybernetic eyes were a little off-putting she supposed. They made her look like there were two sparks of fire burning deep in her eyes. When the light changed she could always feel their lenses twisting and adjusting themselves. Even though her vision was actually better now, sharper and clearer with almost perfect depth perception and much more advanced night vision, it made her skin prickle, to feel something alien moving so deep inside her.
"Anyone who is not very stupid or very arrogant is afraid of you, Shepard." Thane replied. "Or perhaps they are not so much afraid as... cautious. You are a powerful woman, and you wear that in every movement you make, every look you give. It is difficult to miss."
She turned to look at him, abandoning the scrutiny of her robotic eyes and the lenses whirred inside her, fixing on his face. He sat with his back to the window, his dark eyes focused on her. She usually hated it when people looked at her with that kind of intensity, it made her uncomfortable. But with Thane there was less of the invasive prying she felt with others, he was just a naturally attentive person. She thought that was what it was at least.
"They?" She asked, raising one eyebrow. He raised one of his own scaly brows back as though unsure of what she was asking. "You said 'they are not so much afraid as cautious'. Does that mean you're not afraid of me? Are you then very stupid or very arrogant?"
He smiled at her. "I'm not afraid of you because we're friends, Shepard. I would think that means I don't have to worry about you smashing my face in on a whim."
"I don't smash faces on whims. I only do it when I'm out of bullets and have a very good reason to." Shepard protested. She was beginning to hate this conversation, she was getting so defensive. But Thane's words had struck a nerve, as had the reaction of the waitress. It reminded her of another time in her life when people had reacted to her with fear every time she fixed their eyes on her. When humans had looked at her like they might an alien. "I am NOT scary. I smile at everyone. I'm very polite."
"You do. You are." Thane concurred in his quiet voice. "When you are not swearing at everyone, at least. But the world tends to explode around you, Shepard. It's put you on edge, and that makes people uncomfortable as much as anything else. The fact you always look like you're about to take something by the throat and throttle it for the good of everyone. People just don't want to get in your way. But I am not in your way. And therefore, I need fear nothing."
She stared at him for a moment and then sighed, as if dismissing the topic. It was better just not to say anything at all at times like this, when she wasn't sure whether she was angry or why. She really had no reason to be, everything he said was true. It just bothered her that he, and apparently the rest of the world saw it so easily.
"Is something bothering you, Shepard?" He asked. She looked back at him, the same only slightly narrowed eyes focused entirely on her, the same look of calm serenity on his face. Sometimes she felt like he was staring straight into her soul, seeing things he had no right to. If she wanted to share them, she would.
"Yes." She said, even though she meant to say no. "I mean no. Well... kind of. I mean. It's stupid. Forget it."
Smooth, Shepard. Very smooth.
"If you wish me to, I shall. But you've looked... concerned, as of late. Your thoughts wander." He paused as the waitress bought them their tea, craning his neck instinctually away from the clouds of dewy steam that escaped the pots spout. She tilted the pot away so the steam would drift toward herself as she thought. Thane knew her far too well for someone who she had known for so short a time. That was annoying, but she supposed she knew him just as well. They were friends. Maybe it was really this easy; she could just talk about what was bothering her with a friend and not have it mean anything more. She was not showing weakness in the face of a subordinate or breaching protocol. She was being... normal.
"I've been having weird dreams." She said finally. "Like... memories. At first they were just snapshots, nothing important. Days at the Combat School I remember, moments from the first Normandy that were special. Not in the galaxy-saving sense, just things I remember because they were important to me at the time. Little stuff. Then... not so little."
"Mindoir?" He guessed keenly. She narrowed her eyes at him. This was getting ridiculous. How did he know all this stuff that was going on inside her own head? He shrugged under her piercing gaze.
"Your history is hardly a well kept secret. The only person not kidnapped or murdered by Batarian slavers becoming the Savior of the Citadel is the kind of story people love to talk about. News of your exploits reached even me, when every news station was screaming hysterically about it in the days after you defeated Sovereign." He paused. "I understand you were quite young when it happened."
"Yeah." Shepard replied hesitantly. "I mean, yes I was young but I'm not... it's..." She paused, frustrated with her own inability to vocalize what she was feeling.
"I know the Alliance did everything they could. We were outside of their jurisdiction at the time, so really they didn't have to do anything at all. And I KNOW that thinking about it all the time isn't going to do anyone any goddamn good, least of all me. Nothing I can do will change what happened there, no one knows which group it was that attacked and no one ever found the ringleaders. I can't bring anyone to any kind of justice, I accept that. I put all this behind me, years ago. When it comes to that part of my life... it's in its proper place. Mindoir is not bothering me, these stupid DREAMS about Mindoir are."
Thane had been silent through her entire rant, but he remained attentive, watching her face. She bit her lip and sipped at her tea, the heavy flavor of vanilla and spices rolling across her tongue. "And it's not just Mindoir. I've been thinking more and more about the crucial turning points in my life, the things that happened and choices I made that led me here and made me who I am. It's... weird. I've never been the kind of person to dwell in the past."
"You sound like you're developing your own kind of solipism." Thane commented softly, trying his own tea, which he evidently enjoyed. He set the cup down and laced his fingers together, continuing his constant study of her. "I find the mannerisms of humans most difficult to discern, but you seem to be very tense about this. Perhaps there is something deeper at play here."
"Humans are hard to read? I didn't think we had anything on drell. Your faces hardly move at all." She commented. She thought from the way that Thane guessed at everything so easily he was reading her like a book. Maybe he was just getting all his information from listening to her. That would be a first, most people seemed to ignore half the things you said to them.
"Perhaps that is the root of the problem. Your faces are so expressive; it is almost like a cartoon sometimes, with such extreme displays of emotion passing so quickly. The details escape me. It is the difference between a gentle breeze and a hurricane between our kinds. But some mannerisms are universal. Like, say, trying to change the subject in the middle of a conversation." He looked amused, she stuck her tongue out at him.
"I don't have anything interesting to say about it. Stuff happened, it was hard, but I'm here now so I don't suppose it matters. I don't let it bother me, because I have more important things to worry about." She crossed her arms across her chest. "I can't afford to get distracted right now. I can't afford to day dream."
Thane shook his head. "There is still another week until the Normandy repairs are finished. In that time, you may be as distracted as you wish, Shepard. You'll put it all behind you when the time comes, but for now you shouldn't be afraid to realize your feelings are not as simple as you thought."
"What if they are?" She countered stubbornly.
"Shepard, feelings are never simple. There's no weakness in that." He sipped his tea again, smiling at the taste or at her she didn't know. "What did you call this again?"
And just like that, their serious conversation was over. She smiled at him, just as their food arrived, and most of the rest of the meal was spent explaining what was what as he tried everything and liked most of it. Just as it was nice to have him approach the topic, it was nice that he knew when to back off. They argued about who was going to pay the bill until she let him win by saying she had to go to the bathroom and met him outside the restaurant, just as the light flickered on her omnitool saying that Anderson wanted to see her. As soon as possible.
"Thanks for dinner, Thane. And the conversation." She hesitated, torn between what was appropriate and what was expected. That had not been a date. It had not felt like a date, while they were actually doing it. So why did she feel like a nervous kid after the first awkward, unfunny movie date, standing outside of the theatre wondering if they were supposed to kiss yet or if it was slutty to use tongue this early? She settled for a hand lightly on his sleeve. Neutral. Friendly. Non-threatening. That was her. "It helped."
"Then it was my pleasure. Enjoy your time with the Councillor." He replied, resting his hand on her arm in a similar fashion. As she turned to walk away he felt his hand slide down her arm rather than dropping away, brushing the back of her hand in a way that made her skin tingle in a most disconcerting way. When she glanced over her shoulder at him, he was already walking away, his back to her. She did not have a chance to catch a glimpse of his face, though she doubted she would have been able to guess what he was thinking even if she had. She ran her fingers over the place on the back of her hand, feeling the ghost of his fingers still there.
Shaking her head, she turned toward a Rapid Transit post. Thane was right. Feelings were never simple.