A/N: I slightly altered the altercation between Shepard and Finch outside Chora's den. I felt that my Shepard's more detailed history with the Tenth Street Reds and Arturo Alvarez warranted a more extreme emotional reaction than a little shoving. I'm trying to keep as close to the canon with events and conversations, but it's hard when you develop a really strong personality for your character. :P
As an aside, I'd like to thank all my reviewers, particularly Blahdeeblah and Nefla, for your completely amazing compliments. You guys are awesome!
The best way to find out if you can trust someone is to trust them.
- Ralph Tarran, Human Philosopher
"I never get used to thresher maws," Ashley moaned, rubbing cold sweat off the back of her neck with a grimace. Her armour was showing hard wear, scorched soot standing out against the varnished steel. She pushed herself up onto the weapons bench and began fiddling with the seals of her boots.
"There's something about that rumble," Shepard agreed as he pulled off his gauntlets, "it puts a rock in my stomach every time."
"You'd never guess it. I though nothing phased you," Ash laughed and sighed with relief as her boots slid off. She closed her eyes and stretched her toes, savouring the freedom for a few moments before she started with her knee pads.
Wrex had already wandered off to his own corner of the hangar. Despite every assurance to the contrary, he remained convinced of human incompetence when it came to alien armour and wouldn't let Ashley touch his equipment. He did seem to be warming up though, he'd grunted as he passed by which, for him, was the same as a heartfelt, lingering hug.
"People who aren't afraid of thresher maws don't live very long when they come up against them as often as we do," Shepard replied, tossing his gauntlets on the floor since Ash was occupying the bench. He rubbed at his neck, kneading a knot in the thick muscles. He could feel the vertebra sitting wrong all up and down his back, that double-hit from the rocket turret had thrown everything out of whack.
They undressed in silence for a moment. Shepard pulled his breast plate over his head, grimacing as the muscles through his back voiced their displeasure. He glimpsed blood and glanced down at himself. The medigel had taken care of the wound, but half his shirt was coated in cold, congealing blood. He'd barely felt it. He peeled the thin, blood-and-sweat-soaked muscle shirt off without thinking.
"Oh my God!" Ash gasped, pushing off the bench, her eyes wide.
"What?" Shepard looked down, wiping trails of old blood away. "You can't tell me blood freaks you out Williams. I'll never be able to stop making fun of you."
"Not that! What the hell are all of those?" Ash gestured down the length of his naked torso. "Did you spend your childhood fist-fighting varren or something?"
Realization dawned on him and Shepard looked down at himself with new eyes.
All across the left side of his ribs and torso angry red scars stood out over the older, paler ones. Some were deep, evil things that gnarled like tree roots and others were thin and shallow. On his right side a gash that had taken a large but hazy number of stitches to close cut his nipple in half and descended almost all the way to his navel. An old stab wound that had nicked the top of his collar bone wrinkled in the thick muscle of his neck like a sink hole. Others speckled his chest and shoulders.
Unimaginably, he felt himself blushing. It was a horrifically adolescent response, and he suppressed it as best he could. His cheeks cooled, but he could feel his ears burning red as his hair as he looked up and met her eyes. His jaw set, chin jutting as his brow wrinkled in a frown. He could feel the deep line forming down the centre of his forehead, the surest sign he was truly upset and not glaring for dramatic effect.
"Something like that," he replied, kicking Alenko's locker open and pulling out the spare shirt on the top shelf.
"I... sorry," Ash blushed herself as she realized what she'd said, "it's just that you don't see a lot of people with scars like that."
"There wasn't a lot of medigel flying around on the streets of Trinidad," Shepard grunted. He was unreasonably angry with her for reacting the way she had. He took control of his emotions, pulling them back from the downward spiral they were attempting to take.
"Is... was that guy outside of Chora's... did he do that to you?" She asked hesitantly. "You were kind of rough with him."
The memory of Finch's nose breaking under his fist like empty egg shells sent a shiver up Shepard's spine. Or, really, it wasn't the memory of the actual event but the rush of black adrenaline it had given him and the urge he'd had to keep hitting the other man, the buzz in his ears that had blocked out the reasonable world for a long moment. The feeling of his guiding light faltering, giving way to the person he used to be.
"You touched your gun, Shepard."
Ash brought him out of his memories. He paused, with the shirt hanging limp in his hands, and looked at her. His frown, his red ears, the line down his forehead, all melted away and his face settled into a blank slate with only a little grimness around the edges.
"What?"
"You slugged him, and he reeled back spitting blood, and you went for your gun. You touched it, and..." Ash hesitated. "And you never touch your gun, not unless you're thinking about using it. It's something I've noticed about you. When you're bluffing you act like it's not even there, but when you touch it I know things are about to get real."
"That's a dirty joke waiting to happen."
"If you don't want to talk about it, sir, I won't presume. But..." Her eyes flicked down to the scars again, and then back up to his face. "But don't joke. I... permission to speak freely?"
"Granted."
"I don't know how I feel about my commanding officer pulling his gun on an unarmed civilian."
It came out in a rush, in a single breath. Her eyes were wide, a little frightened, as though she couldn't believe she'd actually said it. Her hands twisted together unconsciously in front of her as she waited for his response. This had obviously been bothering her for a while.
"I didn't pull a gun on anyone," Shepard said carefully.
She seemed to sense she was treading on dangerous ground. She broke eye contact and took a deep breath. Shepard waited. It had been a long time since he realized the longer he waited in a conversation the more power he had.
"But... you thought about it." She said finally.
"I think about a lot of things. I think about replacing the mess with a food court. I think about quitting the military to live on a boat in the Caribbean Sea. I think about doing all of that with a super model. I think about sleeping with that super model. But, you know, I don't actually do any of those things," he cocked an eyebrow at her and felt his grin tugging at the corners of his mouth.
"I asked you not to joke," Ash said, her face still serious.
Shepard sighed.
"Finch didn't do this to me, not directly. He was as much of a victim as I was, if you want to know the truth. He just wasn't as good as handling it, and I guess in the end it was easier to become one of them than it was to get away. That's usually how it happens," he shrugged. "It doesn't matter now."
"How can you say that?" Ash asked. "Look at yourself. Are you saying people just got away with doing that to you?"
Shepard stared at her for a moment.
"Where did you grow up, Chief?"
"What does that have to do with anything?"
"Look, you wanted to talk and we're talking. Answer the question or I'll put my shirt on and then you'll really be sorry."
"I-"
"Yes, you asked me not to joke, but that's not really an option, Chief. It's kind of my thing."
Ash bit her lip, considering it for a long moment. Finally she dropped her hands back to her sides and walked back to the bench, pushing herself back into a sitting position. After a moment Shepard followed her and pushed himself up beside her. When the muscles in his arms tightened it made the scars there stand out almost as clearly as the bad ones laced across his torso.
"I grew up in Buenos Aires," she said. "But... you know. Not in the city. In one of the white suburbs."
"Rich kid?"
"Not rich, but... not far off. My mom had money when she married my dad," Ashley tapped her foot anxiously against the side of the bench. "What does this have to do with you?"
"I grew up in Trinidad," he glanced at her, "have you heard of it?"
"Should I have?" She asked.
"See, this is my point, Ash. You and I... we're both military but we come from different worlds. When I was growing up I couldn't imagine that there was anyone in the world who didn't know what Trinidad was. It's a city in Cuba by the way, a sweltering cesspool where the cops don't go and the government pretends doesn't exist. It's ruled by gangs, and gangs don't care about justice or how many stitches it takes to put a kid back together after another tears him apart." He glanced at her again, gauging her reaction carefully.
"I'd heard about the gangs," she said quietly.
"Everyone has. But what they don't hear is that I was never a gang-banger or a thug, never a member. I was just a skinny little runt, usually pumped up with some sort of heavy chemical, fighting in a pit or cutting people open in back alleys." He said it plain. There was no other way to do it. Ash always knew when he was lying.
"I'm not proud of it."
"What happened to your parents?" Ashley asked quietly.
"Don't know. Don't care. I've always been on my own, and the way I reacted to it was..." He gritted his teeth and grimaced as though fighting a bad taste at the back of his throat. "It wasn't... it's not how I am anymore. The person I was would have gunned Finch down without blinking."
They sat in silence for a long moment. Shepard pulled the replacement shirt over his head and rubbed at his hair. After a long moment Ashley looked over at him again, her jaw set.
"Why did you tell me all that?" She asked.
"Because you said you were unsure. I can't have that. You either have to believe that I'm not the kind of person that will actually pull a gun on a civilian or we can't work together. I hoped... knowing what I've come through you'd believe I'm better than that. Now." He put one hand on his knee, leaning hard against it as his tired muscles sagged, and met her eyes, not flinching. "So?"
"I... I guess I know you, don't I?" She smiled, "Which means I know you wouldn't."
"I hope so. Because there might come a day when I need you to trust me, no questions, no objections, no hesitation. And if you can't do that, you'd better tell me right now and I'll get you transferred. I have some pull with some officers around the fringe, I can get you a better post than Eden Prime. An old friend of mine is going to captain the new dreadnought Ankokuji," his face was very serious as he studied her. "It would be a good post."
"I want to stay here," she said firmly, meeting his eyes.
"That's not what I asked you," he said, cutting the air between them with the flat of his hand. "I don't care what you want. I need to know that you trust me, Ash. I need to know that you'll obey me, no matter what I order you to do because you trust that I'm doing the right thing. So... do you trust me?"
They stared at each other for a moment. There was a space between them, between what they had been and the effect it had on them, that was wider than the space between Buenos Aires and Trinidad. Shepard found himself wondering if she could ever really trust him, even if she said she could. He held her eyes, saw uncertainty flicker and die as she set her jaw hard.
"Of course I do," she said, with confidence. "Do you trust me?"
"Of course I do," Shepard grinned. He swung down off the bench, stretching his arms and wincing as he remembered his back didn't like that. He'd have to go see Chakwas and see if the good doctor could snap his spine into its proper shape again. He thumbed the seals that held his greaves to his hips and felt them release, kicking them off and into the pile of his discarded armour.
"I'll get that clean for you, Commander," Ash sounded bright and confident again, more than she had since that altercation with Finch. She didn't even complain about him leaving it in a heap beside the bench, like she usually did.
"Good. Look, Ash, Alenko and I are going to try and grab some real food in between missions next time we're on the Citadel. If you wanted to come that would be... you know. Cool." He laughed at himself.
"Sounds like my invite to junior prom," Ashley laughed too.
"I don't know what prom actually is. My impression is that it's an excuse for teenagers to have sex with each other."
"That's... pretty accurate actually," Ashley shrugged, "but it's also an excuse to drink and wear pretty dresses."
"I never needed an excuse to do any of that," Shepard grinned toothily, "any of it."
"I'd love to see you in a prom dress, sir. So yeah, I'll come grab some grub with you and the L.T."
"Good. I'm glad."
"So am I."
The repost was just about changing the spelling to the in-game canon. Sorry about the distraction, an old friend of mine shares the name and she spells it Ashleigh so it was kind of automatic.