Be happy, and love. There are no greater goals in life.
- Metren Vergene, Turian Mystic
Happiness could be a disadvantage. If he had been less caught up in his blissful memories of the Presidium not half an hour past he might have caught a glimpse of the children tailing him. The red hair alone should have given him some clue, it stood out against the lush greens and blues of the Presidium with some force. He might even have caught a glimpse of the handlers who were watching the children watch him, hard-eyed men who kept mostly to the shadows with one hand always under their jackets, cradling concealed weapons.
He might have seen any one of these things, and if he had things might have been different. But he didn't, so when he opened the door of the cab and saw someone already sitting there it was quite a surprise.
"Sorry," he said automatically. The woman turned toward him, the hood of her sweatshirt falling away and revealing the long braid of red hair that had been tucked away underneath and Shepard felt a stab like icy knives in his belly. "What-"
He never finished. Something heavy came down on the back of his head, splintering his thoughts into a thousand little pieces. He felt a strong pair of hands shove him forward and went sprawling bonelessly across the narrow seat beside the mystery woman. The world was red as blood, red as his hair, red as HER hair.
"Jesus, Miro," the woman cursed, "he said he wanted him in one piece."
"He is in one piece," the strong hands shoved him again and Shepard felt the car shift as someone heavy climbed in behind him. He was dumped unceremoniously off the seat and onto the floor of the cab by their feet. "He just never said what condition that one piece had to be in."
The woman sighed in obvious disgust.
"What..?" Shepard managed again, his words thick and heavy on his tongue. They echoed, pounding like drumbeats against the inside of his skull. Someone kicked him. Shepard spat a mouthful of blood across the floor as the world went from red to black, and then he was gone, swallowed by a hole as dark and encompassing as death.
He woke somewhere dark and musty and spent a moment blinking in confusion and dismay before he realized there was a bag on his head. His hands were tied behind his back and when he stirred, attempting to sit up, sudden nausea and vertigo seized him with force. Shepard moaned, closing his eyes and feeling throughout his body for the various sources of pain. The back of his head felt sticky and swollen, whatever his kidnappers had struck him with had apparently cut his skull fairly bad. He could feel the collar of his uniform clinging to his skin, smell the dried blood clotted there. His tongue ached where he had bitten it, and he felt something tender in his chest when he breathed that felt remarkably boot-shaped.
Not good. Definitely not good.
He remembered the red hair with sudden force, the thought smashing through his pain and confusion and solidifying the situation for him. He forced himself into a sitting position and after some painful manoeuvrings of his shoulders and neck managed to tip the bag off his head. The light sliced at his eyes like razor blades and a flood of tears obscured his vision as Shepard carefully slid his bound hands down, past his hips and with some difficulty managed to pull them around his stiff legs. The cuffs were good steel, impossible to slip through. For most people at least.
Shepard gritted his teeth and positioned his left hand carefully under the heavy sole of his combat boot. The Reds were still amateurs after all this time, no one in their right mind would have left him with his boots on. He would have been disgusted, but there wasn't room for anymore hatred in him. He already had more than enough. He tucked his tongue against the roof of his mouth to keep it away from his teeth and bore down on his foot. The metacarpal bone in his thumb snapped like a twig, and Shepard grimaced, a short, angry breath hissing through his clenched teeth. He slid his broken hand gingerly out of the handcuffs and snapped the empty ring closed beside its brother on his right wrist.
The cell was just an empty room, a vacant apartment if the layout was any indication, and too filthy to have been vacated recently. A stripe of clean floor showed where he had been dragged through the dust and Shepard counted boot prints. At least three people had been in and out recently, two men and a woman going by the sizes of the tracks. He had been relieved of his omni-tool, but he found the manual panel installed in the wall with relative ease. It took him barely a minute to hack it.
He was wrong. He did have room for a little healthy disgust.
There was no way to access the extranet from the panel, unfortunately, but he did manage to open up the security feeds and access a blueprint of the apartment. He was currently lodged in the second bedroom. Someone was outside the door, identified as a friendly blue happy face on the crude security feed, and three more were in the master bedroom. A final happy dot was fluttering around in the kitchen.
Shepard cursed. They had taken his pistol, obviously, and been thorough enough to find the knife tucked away in his boot. He had one broken hand, a mild concussion, and no idea how he was getting out of this one. He closed the panel and chose a seat against the far wall, opposite the door. There was no fighting his way out. He was going to have to rely on his brain.
Not the worst option, but there were a number of terrible, unforgivable things Shepard would have done for his Widow rifle at that moment.
He had been meditating, regaining control of his battered body and banishing painful distractions, for almost half an hour when the door slid open and a surprised face peeked around the corner. Shepard opened his eyes and the two of them stared at each other for a moment. It was the woman from the taxi, though in this light and with no cudgel coming down on the back of his head Shepard recognized her for what she really was: a girl no more than eighteen. He raised one eyebrow at her, his blue eyes calm as a forest pool and she stiffened, closing the door between them. Shepard smiled and waited.
It didn't take long.
"Arturo," he said conversationally, his voice light and confident when the door slid open again, "I thought you were dead."
"Did you?" The voice was like spiders down the back of his shirt, like razors of ice, like broken fingernails on a chalkboard.
"Well, hoped is probably the more correct term," Shepard amended. He didn't let the tension coiled around his heart show on his face. He stayed perfectly calm and looked up.
There was a time when Arturo Alvarez had been the most frightening man in the galaxy. He still had a remarkable ability to intimidate, even as a weedy thirty-something with almost no hair and three black teeth standing out of his smile. His was the face of cruelty and pain, the face that had hung over him as unbelievable, unbearable things had been done to his body and mind. Everything Shepard knew about evil, truly heartfelt and malicious evil, he had learnt from this man.
"You're even uglier than I remember," Shepard said, pushing himself to his feet with his right hand. He kept the left hanging casually by his side to hide its angry red swelling. His broken hand was a disadvantage but he was glad he'd done it, part of Arturo's planned drama had clearly involved him bound and bloody on the floor. Instead, Shepard was pleased to observe that he was almost a full three inches taller than the other man. Not much, but enough.
"Hmm," Arturo smiled and ran his hand over his barren, sun-freckled scalp. "I lost the genetic jackpot I suppose," he said carelessly, "but I do well enough for myself without good-looks."
He smiled indulgently at the girl by the door who was still standing halfway between the hallway and the bedroom.
"I can see that," Shepard felt his jaw tighten up as dark memories threatened to overtake his serenity. He calmed himself with a few slow breaths and crossed his arms over his chest, again taking care to hide the state of his broken hand. "Why exactly am I here, Arturo? Have I not made my feelings for the Reds clear?"
"You have," Arturo laughed, "Finch's nose is still crooked from when you sucker-punched him outside Chora's Den."
"So what is this?" Shepard asked, looking around the little room. "Are you going to try to kill me? You remember what happened last time, don't you?" He fixed the other man with his best menacing stare, all cold blue eyes with nothing merciful behind them.
"Hard to forget," Arturo's laughter faded, "since it's been the deciding factor of my life thus far."
"What do you mean?"
"Come on," Arturo threw his hands up, real anger surging through him. "A fifteen year old junkie killed my top lieutenants in a back alley and ran away. What do you think that did to my cred with the rest of the gang? I've spent eight years making up for you, X."
"As I recall, you were the one who did the running," Shepard sneered. "And don't call me X."
"Maybe," Arturo shrugged, "it doesn't matter. Now that I've got you here I'm going to prove that I've got what it takes to lead the gang. I'm going to kill you now, while you're in your full glory as fucking saviour of the galaxy, and then I'm going to kill everyone else that stands between me and the head of the table."
He produced the pistol then, a small, low-powered piece so innocuous that Shepard couldn't even name the manufacturer. He held it between them almost casually, watching the light playing off the brushed steel of the barrel.
"You can beg if you want," he said with a small smile. "I'd like it if you did."
"No dice, I'm afraid," Shepard laughed as though he were in full armour and shields with two high-powered soldiers behind him. "In fact, I think I'm going to mock you. Is this really the way you're going to make it to top shit-head? By getting your cronies to kidnap someone and then shooting them point blank while they're defenceless? That's almost as intimidating as beating and raping children."
Arturo frowned, but brushed off Shepard's words with a shrug.
"I'm no hero," he said easily, "or even a real badass. I'm smart. That's something I always saw in you to, so you must know that smart and cowardly works better than stupid and brave. I had high hopes for you once, X. So sad that we came to this."
"I told you not to call me that," Shepard said, taking a menacing step forward, though he hesitated when Arturo raised the little pistol and pointed it at his chest. "And smart only really works when it's paired with brave."
"You would be the authority," Arturo admitted, "except, wait... the coward is the one who ended up with gun in the end. And that's all that really matters."
"Because I'm sure your toadies won't spread ANY rumours about what a pussy you are," Shepard smirked over Arturo's shoulder at the aforementioned toadies. They looked back at him with eyes he recognized, eyes more like lizards than human beings. Arturo glanced over his shoulder and Shepard took the opening, moving with liquid speed.
His left hand was a mass of swollen flesh, useless for anything other than battering. It hit Arturo's gun away, the shot going wide and embedding itself in the wall. His other hand curled just slightly and Shepard slapped Arturo Alvarez with all the strength of his pivoting hips and shoulders behind his cupped hand. The other man stumbled and Shepard moved with him, his elbow folding over the arm that held the gun and pinning it against his chest as he kept the other man between him and the lackies.
"You know how I survived fifteen years on the streets, Arturo?" Shepard hissed. "It wasn't by being smart, or brave, or lucky. It was because I was always ready to do whatever it takes."
Arturo blinked hazily up at him, his eyes registering what was going on as the pain of his suddenly ruptured ear-drums faded. They were close enough to kiss, Shepard could smell the taint on his breath, half-digested eggs and old cheese. His lip curled back in disgust.
"I should kill you," he whispered. "I should have killed you when I was young, and stupid, enough to justify it to myself. Now," he sighed in disgust and reached over, extracting the gun from Arturo's suddenly numb fingers. "Now I see you for what you really are. You aren't smart, or frightening, or savage. You're nothing."
Her released the arm he had pinned and gave Arturo a shove, sending him sprawling back into the arms of his companions. A couple of them went for weapons, but Shepard already had the little gun leveled at them.
"One of you might get a lucky shot off," he warned them, "but I guarantee I can kill all five of you before I bleed out. I have killed Reapers and star-systems, fought in half a dozen wars on hundreds of planets. I'm Commander Shepard," he pulled himself up straight, "and you are a bunch of fools that follow that guys orders. Tell me, do any of you think Arturo Alvarez is worth dying for?"
The four lackies exchanged doubtful looks. The girl with the braid was looking at Arturo like she'd never seen anything so pathetic and sick before in her life.
"Do you want to come with me?" Shepard asked her. There was still a little something human in her, something Shepard recognized as being as battered and run-down as himself and with just as much potential to be something more. Her mud-brown eyes met his blue ones hesitantly and she glanced over at her companions.
"Don't look at them," Shepard said sharply, "look at me. Things don't have to be this way for you anymore than they had to for me."
"Don't listen to him," Arturo wheezed.
"Oh shut up," one of the men holding him shoved him away, and Arturo collapsed on the floor between them. The speaker looked at the girl and shrugged. "You should go with him, Menendez. It's not every day that Commander Shepard gives you a free pass."
"I don't want to," the girl said softly. "This is where I belong."
The speaker shrugged and then looked up at Shepard again. He reached into his pocket and produced a key and the metal wrist-ring that housed the hardware of his omni-tool. He threw both of them at Shepard. He caught them awkwardly, pinning them against his chest with his useless, swollen hand.
"Get lost," the man said, jabbing a thumb down the hallway in the direction of the door.
Shepard gave Menendez a long look.
"If you ever need help getting out..."
"Yeah, I'm sure she can find some way to get a hold of you," the man interrupted. "You're a knight in shining armour, Shepard. Now get lost."
He went, moving cautiously and keeping the gun between them at all times. Every prediction he'd made was accurate, he followed a hall of dirty numbered apartment doors and climbed a dimly lit staircase to the roof. A car was parked there, already scrawled with filthy graffiti. Shepard climbed in, punched co-ordinates into the auto-pilot and leaned back in his seat for a moment. His body was a road-map of pain, but his thoughts were miles away from that. They circled around the girl, Menendez. He sighed, rubbing at his face with his right hand as the car glided up, toward the docking bays. He sent a message to Chakwas, telling her to expect him in the medbay presently, and that he would appreciate a little discretion.
Then he settled back and relaxed. It was a mistake as his muscles uncoiling just made him all too aware of the sharp pain riding his back and shoulders.
Happiness could be a disadvantage, but it had its uses to. He let his mind wander back to happier times and places as the car soared away from the dirt and the grime and the memories of everything that had happened to him.
"Shepard," Kaidan was even paler than usual as he slid through the gap in the doors before they were fully open and crossed the medbay with a few swift steps.
"I said discretion," Shepard said mildly, shooting Chakwas a look over his shoulder as she typed at her terminal for a moment.
"Don't look at me," she replied, indignantly. "I am the soul of professionalism, as you well know."
"Scuttlebutt," Shepard sighed. "I'm fine, Alenko. Chakwas just has to wash this gash on the back of my head before she shoots me full of medi-gel."
"What happened?"
Chakwas truly was the soul of professionalism. She excused herself silently and discreetly, making sure to close the blinds that looked out on the mess hall as she went. Kaidan watched her go out of the corner of his eye as Shepard examined his newly set and healed hand, flexing the thumb against his palm. When Chakwas was gone Kaidan turned back to him and Shepard pulled his gaze away from his lap and his hand.
"I got ambushed," he said finally, "by a bunch of Reds. And... Arturo Alvarez."
Kaidan recognized the name, of course, and he blinked in surprise.
"Here?" He asked. "On the Citadel?" He ran a hand through his hair and down, across his face. He sat down on the cot beside him and put an arm around his shoulders after only a moment of hesitation.
"It's not so bad," Shepard said. "Broken hand, cut on the back of my shoulder and a little cartilage under my ribs got kicked out of place."
"That's not what I'm worried about," Kaidan said. He sounded unimpressed.
"I didn't kill anyone," Shepard said after a moment, leaning over and rubbing both hands over his face with a sigh. "And I could have. But there was this girl... I remember being like her. And when I offered to take her with me she just..." He sighed.
"You can't save everyone," Kaidan said softly.
"I know that," he said softly. "I've always known that. But it doesn't make it easier when I fail."
Kaidan didn't say anything. To his surprise, Shepard found he didn't have to hear anything either. The warm weight of Kaidan's arm around his shoulders, the comfort of his presence, all of that was enough for him at that moment and he appreciated it more than words could say. He sighed, and let himself surrender to normality, resting his head against Kaidan's shoulder and breathing deep. Even his scent was comforting, military and familiar.
It was a good moment. Shepard sighed in relief, feeling the angry tension leave his back and shoulders. Kaidan leaned back a little and Shepard looked up at him. It seemed natural when they leaned in toward each other and their lips met, Kaidan's grip on his shoulder tightening, Shepard's hand moved to his other arm and drew them closer together. Kaidan's other hand rose and stroked the line of his cheekbone lightly.
Their lips parted and Shepard sighed, his eyes opening. They looked at each other in silence for a moment and Shepard felt himself smile, with real joy, for the first time in hours.
"I like this," Kaidan said softly.
"So do I," Shepard grinned. "Let's do it again."
They were interrupted by a polite cough from the doorway and looked up. Professionalism only stretched so far, Chakwas was grinning like a loon from the doorway. Shepard sighed and looked away, a tinge of colour touching his cheeks. Kaidan stood up after a moment and Shepard felt his body craving the heat of him again already.
"Sorry to interrupt," she said, "but I do have to clean that wound."
"Right," Kaidan blushed. "I'll ah... see you later Shepard."
Shepard nodded. Both of them avoided the doctors eyes as Kaidan passed her and left. Shepard finally looked up as the doors slid closed behind him.
"Don't say anything," he warned her.
She shook her head, still grinning wildly. After a moment of scowling Shepard surrendered, and let a smile break across his face. Chakwas laughed delightedly, like a teenager, and clasped both of his hands in hers.
"I'm so happy for you," she said. Shepard looked away and grinned, shrugging his shoulders. "Any chance at details?"
"No," he gave her a warning look.
"Aw," she tried to look sad, but nothing could overwhelm the smile on her face. She hummed as she cleaned the wound on the back of his head and Shepard had to smile, in between grimaces of course. It was good to know that even at the end of the galaxy it was better to be disadvantaged and happy than miserable and focused.
I always felt the game really failed when they chose not to elaborate on or resolve any of Shepard's past options.