It is repetition of affirmations that creates something and someone worth believing in. Once that belief becomes a deep conviction you will find all things become possible.
- Admiral Constance Vough
Zaeed stared at Shepard the entire half hour shuttle ride back to the Normandy. He made no attempt to disguise his attention and he was sure Shepard noticed, but he didn't react to it in the slightest. Most of the trip he just played with his omni-tool like the rest of the world didn't exist. His face was set with the usual grim expression, those weird scars glowing in the dim light of the shuttle's belly.
He must be used to attention like this by now. He wasn't the kind of man who inspired neutral opinions in people or slid under the radar. Smart people might love or hate him, but Zaeed had discovered that people who didn't take Shepard seriously tended to wind up dead.
He liked that about him, it was the kind of thing he could respect about a man.
All that aside, Zaeed spent most of the shuttle ride thinking about killing him.
He wouldn't, obviously. Whatever else the man might be he was damn convincing when he wanted to be. He'd made his point, and besides if there was one thing Zaeed had learned over the past few weeks it was that Shepard was the last best hope of mankind. He'd heard how much the Illusive Man had funneled into bringing him back from the dead and he thought that it was probably money well spent.
What was happening with the Collectors and the Reapers changed things for the whole galaxy, including himself. It was a much more complicated world, where loyalties and priorities all ran into each other and became jumbled, confused. Zaeed was happy to be a grunt at this point, he didn't know how he would have dealt with this if he was still in a command position. The only person he had seen who seemed to have any idea of how to deal with it was Shepard. He couldn't speak to the Illusive Man and how well he may or may not be handling things but he knew, he had faith, that Shepard was figuring it out.
That did not stop him from hating him. Hate and respect were very different things and they had no trouble coexisting peacefully within him. So he sat in the shuttle, stared at Shepard, and thought about killing him. It would have felt amazing to pull his gun and bury it in Shepard's stomach, or blow a hole between his eyes, or shove the door to the shuttle open and pitch him into the vacuum without his helmet. Then he would take control of the shuttle, newly equipped with particle cannons in his fantasy, hunt Vido down and shoot him out of the sky in a blaze of brilliant fire.
He didn't understand him. Shepard was hard, he knew that for a fact, and he would do whatever it took to destroy the Collectors. So why then, had he risked everything over a bunch of filthy pissant miners? Shepard didn't know shit about him, he could have turned on him, shot him, killed him for gods sake. And beyond that, wasn't he supposed to be a 'mission first' sort of soldier? He'd killed an entire system for the Alliance, over three hundred thousand lives gone in a flash of blue light.
The shuttle docked and Zaeed was gone before Shepard could rope him into one of his pep talks. His little room wasn't the most inviting place, but it was better than anywhere else as long as the garbage chute wasn't chugging and spitting. And it was private.
Zaeed prowled the narrow confines of his quarters like an angry varren. His thoughts kept circling back to Shepard and his miners. It had the effect of making him more angry rather than less, dark thoughts multiplying as he paced back and forth. Maybe he should kill him.
He wouldn't. But maybe he should.
He was expecting it when the door slid open and Shepard appeared, though he wasn't expecting the bottle in his hand or the two glasses.
"I found this in my quarters," Shepard opened conversationally, setting the two glasses down on one of the metal shipping crates. He pushed the pile of throwing knives Zaeed had left there away and cracked the seal on the bottle. "Five hundred year old scotch. On my old wage I'd have to work half a year to afford something like this. If I can say one thing about Cerberus I'll say this, they know how to make a man comfortable."
"I don't want to talk about it, Shepard," Zaeed growled.
"Okay, that's fine. Do you want some scotch?" Shepard held the bottle over the first glass but didn't pour. His mechanical eyes were chips of glass and metal, the revealed nothing of the thoughts that were twisting around in that mind of his. They made most people uncomfortable, but Zaeed met them without flinching.
"You don't talk."
"Right."
"And I drink your five hundred year old scotch."
"Right again."
"Fine, pour it then," Zaeed picked up one of his knives. "But if you try to pep-talk me I'm going to cut you."
"You would be amazed to know how many times I've heard that exact sentence," Shepard smirked and poured. He'd brought a bottle of water with him, and he added a few drops of it to each glass before he handed them over.
"You drink like an Admiral," Zaeed growled as he accepted his glass. "Scotch doesn't need water, ya ponce."
"You drink like a merc," Shepard replied, "which makes sense, but still. A few drops of water activates the flavour."
Zaeed laughed, but he tipped all three fingers into his mouth, letting the smooth liquor tumble around on his tongue a moment before he swallowed. It was good. He almost wished it wasn't, so he could send Shepard away with a sneer. Instead he motioned for more. Shepard polished off his own glass and gave them each a generous shot.
"Aren't you on duty?" Zaeed asked four silent drinks later. He found his cigarettes and shook one out before offering Shepard the pack on reflex. Shepard shook his head no and to Zaeed's amusement produced his own.
"I can drink on duty as long as I don't get drunk. This isn't really a military ship so it's not like anyone's going to call me on it anyway," Shepard did accept his lighter. He turned the battered zippo over in his fingers, tracing the engraving with one finger.
"Lawson might," Zaeed smirked. "I've heard you two are at each others throats."
"I don't care what Lawson says," Shepard replied, rolling his eyes and exhaling smoke through his nostrils.
"Really? I thought she was your second in command?"
"Garrus is my second in command. Lawson's only here because the Illusive Man says she has to be here."
That was interesting, if not entirely unexpected. No one could fail to notice that Lawson spent a lot more time on the ship and a lot less time in the field than anyone else except possibly Taylor. Shepard didn't trust Cerberus, not even the ones that worked for him. Zaeed filed that away as information that might be worth holding on to.
They drank and smoked in silence for a while. Shepard looked relaxed. He pushed himself up with his hands and sat on the shipping crate, his legs dangling. The bottle was half empty and Zaeed was starting to feel a pleasant buzz in his temples that made his thoughts fuzzy and slow.
"So say what you came to say," he finally broke down. He'd thought he could freeze Shepard out, but Shepard was as good at this as he was at anything.
"I thought you were going to cut me," Shepard said, his lips twisting into something half way between a smile and a smirk.
"I said I would cut you if you try to pep-talk me, so you'd better be careful. But I know you came down here with something to say, so spit it out," Zaeed held out his glass, "and give me another shot of that."
Shepard filled his glass almost to the rim and did the same for himself. He didn't look even a little bit drunk, his back was held in ram-rod straight military posture.
"Could you really have let all those people burn to death so you could have your revenge, Zaeed?" Shepard's voice was not disgusted, or even really judgemental. He sounded curious.
"Damn right I could," Zaeed replied, brandishing a finger at him. "You know how many people Vido is going to destroy because you let him get away?"
"No. Vido might get capped by one of his lieutenants tomorrow, or have an aneurism, or slip getting out of the shower for all I know and then someone else would step into his shoes and kill just as many people as Vido ever would. I don't pretend that I know the future, and you shouldn't pretend you care about the people he could potentially hurt. We both know that's not why you wanted him dead," Shepard fixed him with those hard mechanical eyes. "Don't insult my intelligence, Zaeed. I'm smarter than you and what's more than that I'm basically bullshit proof. So don't waste my time."
"Okay, yeah, I don't care. I want him dead because of what he did to me," Zaeed glared at Shepard, "I think that's a good enough reason."
"A good enough reason to want him dead," Shepard agreed. "If it had been that simple I would have held him down for you and handed you a gun to finish it with."
That surprised him.
"But it's not a good enough reason to sentence a whole mines worth of innocent people to death. Even you have to realize that at some level," Shepard drank, his throat pumping alluringly. One carefully placed punch and it would all be over. Zaeed doubted Cerberus would pour another two years into bringing him back.
He doubted they had the time. So he didn't, but he thought about it.
"I wouldn't have regretted it."
"That makes sense. There's no point in regretting what you've already done, but looking back on it do you really think it would have been right to kill all those people to satisfy yourself?"
"Why do you care so much?" Zaeed asked, a hot flush climbing up the back of his neck. "You killed an entire star system, Shepard. This isn't the time for high ideals."
"You're wrong. This is the only time for high ideals." Shepard sighed, finishing off his glass and pulling out another cigarette. "We're fighting for our survival, and when you give up everything human about yourself in the fight you're not really surviving anymore are you? If you give up everything human about yourself you've already died. Believe me, I know."
"But you killed a star system," Zaeed raised an eyebrow.
"I tried to warn them, but in the end I couldn't. It's something I'll have to carry with me for the rest of my life. I didn't have a choice, but I accept the responsibility of what I did. I- we- had a choice on Zorya. And when you have a choice you have to make the right one or you might as well put down your gun and let the Reapers come." Shepard was looking at him, his mechanical eyes boring through skin and flesh until it felt like he was looking into his soul. "This is the greatest fight any of us will ever know and if humanity is going win, really win, we need to bring the best of ourselves to it instead of our worst. Our enemies don't care who we are or what we believe, all they want to do is destroy us. If we give up our humanity we've already been destroyed so even if we win, we've already lost."
Zaeed stared at him, his words mixing with the warm fugue of scotch that was invading his senses. He motioned for more liquor, hoping it would give him time to think of a response that would wipe that self-righteousness away. His mind was a blank.
"I've never seen this side of you before, Shepard," he brought his glass to his lips.
"It's been away for a long time. Making the choice I did on Zorya helped bring it back," Shepard filled his own glass. There was only a thin layer at the bottom of the bottle now but he still didn't seem even a little bit drunk.
"When I'm sober I'm going to come up with an argument that'll shut you up," Zaeed promised fiercely. "Boy scouts don't win wars, Shepard. Killers do."
"If you can come up with an argument that'll justify doing whatever it takes I'll thank you for it. Being like you is a lot easier than being like me," Shepard smirked at him again. "But I don't think you will. Like I said, I'm smarter than you Zaeed, and I've spent a lot of time thinking about this. Killers might win wars that boy scouts lose, but some wars aren't worth winning. It's better to die well than live as an animal. Believe me-"
"Yeah, I get it, you know," Zaeed rolled his eyes. "Fine, you've convinced me. You did the right thing."
"I don't need you to like it," Shepard swung down, tipping the last of his glass down his throat. He divided what was left in the bottle between them, a half finger in each glass. "I don't need you to like me. But I need you to accept it."
"I don't like it," Zaeed promised him, "but if I hadn't accepted it, you'd already be dead."
"Says you," Shepard grinned. It was the same stupid grin he used to wear on the vids all the time and it looked out of place in his nest of orange scars and under his jet black hair.
"Whatever," Zaeed studied the last of the scotch. "Are we going to toast or what?"
"To revenge," Shepard said. "If I ever get a chance to make this right in a way that doesn't end with a thousand innocent deaths I promise I'll take it."
That was also unexpected. Zaeed studied him for a moment, but he appeared to be quite serious.
"To revenge," he echoed, "if I ever get a chance to help you stick it to the Illusive Man I'll take it for you, Shepard."
He looked surprised.
"What makes you think I want revenge on the Illusive Man?" He asked.
"You might be some sort of genius, Shepard, but you've got a lousy poker face when it comes to Cerberus. Do you want the toast or not?" He held his glass up.
After a moment Shepard touched his rim to his. They both drank. The scotch was good, smooth and woody and it tasted like home, like earth. Like the real reason they were all out here, throwing their lives away on this insane mission. It was good enough to make everything worthwhile.
Shepard took the glasses and the empty bottle and headed for the door, leaving smoke and the taste of whiskey behind him. Zaeed watched him go.
He might have accepted what he said but he didn't like it. He liked Commander Shepard though, almost against his will. He wasn't the sort of man who inspired neutral opinions and after that talk he couldn't find it in him to hate the man. Liking and respect made ever better partners than hate and respect. He could do this. He could fight for this man. He could die for him. He might even die believing in something, and that was something he thought he'd given up on a long time ago.
For Nefla, since she asked for it, I have Shepard's face code: 121 PKB VC2 12B HPQ IEB SS8 19W FK5 7RB 43D 7
What a handsome fellow!
I know there's been tons of Zaeed, Jack and Garrus so far, but they were totally my favorite characters in ME2 and I didn't know what to do with the others until later in the game, after their loyalty missions. I'm still eager to hear if anyone wants to see a particular character, since I'm having trouble deciding which ones I should write about.