The crew had been walking on eggshells for days when they pulled into the Citadel for dry dock. The issues Shepard has with the quarian assault on Rannoch had come to a head when the Reapers finally showed their face among the geth. It had been an uneasy thing, the peace Shepard had forged.
There had been a very tense moment after the shore party returned bearing Legion's still and silent body between them. The quarian scientist had begun agitating to get access to the "hardware" as soon as the dust began to settle on the Reaper corpse shelled to charred metal and circuits on the planet below. Shepard's response had been both pointed and pungent.
"You think this shore leave is a good idea, Doc?"
Chakwas completed her scan of Jade's right leg and signed off on her medical clearance. "That should do it. We've needed this leave for a long time, probably since Mordin died. Each time someone dies, or Cerberus beats us to an objective, or the Reapers gain more ground, it presses us all a little harder, and none more than Shepard. If nothing else, we need this leave so that maybe she'll get some rest."
"I hear that. I don't think she's gotten more than a couple of hours a night since I came aboard. I've seen people crack under less strain than she's been under." Jade stood and took the piece of plastic the doctor held out to her. "What's this?"
"You can't stay on the ship while we're in dock. Shepard thought you, and the rest of the crew deserved to stay someplace a little nicer than Alliance barracks. This should be enough to cover a modest hotel room and meals for the duration."
Jade looked up. "You sure?"
Chakwas nodded. "Go. See something other than the Presidium Ring and the docks."
Jade was still a little shocked by this show of generosity when she disembarked. The lights of the strip were garish, the colors and combinations of neon slightly off from what she expected, somehow. There was a throbbing beat that soaked the air and vibrated through the deck plates. It blended with the hum of conversation in dozens of languages human and alien. The scent of street vendors hawking dextro and levo fare, the press of millions of bodies and the strange, metallic scent she had come to associate with space stations and ships all combined to deliver an olfactory body check that was, paradoxically, welcoming and alienating at the same time.
Jade wove her way through the throng, a small bag slung over her shoulder. She scanned the crowd area constantly, looking for the small, yet clean, temporary lodgings Chakwas had recommended. Convinced she was in the right area, Jade found a spot out of the way of traffic and pulled up the information on her omni-tool. She was still trying to get her bearings when a passing pedestrian nearly bowled her over. She felt long fingers ghost over her ribs as her assailant reached to catch her before she toppled.
"Careful there, if you fall here you're likely to get trampled." A smooth, dual-toned voice crooned in her ear as the turian carefully set her upright. Warmth flared in her face then, like a living thing, crawled down her spine to settle low in her stomach. Jade cleared her throat and gave her body a mental order to behave as she disentangled herself from the strange alien.
"Well, that would probably be easier to avoid if people would watch where they're going." She raised an eyebrow at him and straightened her jacket, fingers lightly brushing the butt of her Beretta, snug in its shoulder holster. "I mean, it's not like there isn't a whole sidewalk for folks to use."
"Certainly, but how else would I have met you?"
"What? They don't have bars in this place?"
His laugh was warm honey in her ears. When the fuck did you become a xenophile, Harmon? Wait, Joe pulled the same type of shit when you met him, didn't he. Guess you've got a type, dontcha? Wonder why he doesn't have markings like Garrus or the Primarch.
"Excellent point! I would ask if this was your first time on the station, but clearly you know what's available." The laughter was clear in his voice, but his eyes had begun tracking the crowd again. "Well if you're ever looking for a decent bar in the area, I recommend the casino."
"I'll keep that in mind." He began to move back into the flow of foot traffic.
"Hey!" She shouted after him. "You gonna give me back the credit chit you lifted?"
That honeyed laughter rolled out again and he flipped the chit back at her. It flew, winking and flashing in the alien lights until Jade snatched it from the air, grinning slightly at the turian's audacity.
She shook her head and returned to her omni-tool. After another moment of searching she found the lodgings and reoriented herself. Fifteen minutes later, she was installed in a small, but clean, room. Small is an understatement. I've had closets that were bigger than this place./i. She tossed her bag on the bed and stripped off her jacket and shoulder rig and hung them on the back of a chair.
She did a double take and broke into laughter that continued to plague her for hours afterward. Nestled in the shoulder holster was a child's plastic water pistol. She'd caught him lifting the chit, but completely missed the swap. It had been such a smooth play, she couldn't even be mad. Still chuckling, Jade went to take advantage of the room's generous hot water supply and private bathroom, luxuriating in the sort of solitude she hadn't known since she woke on Lazarus Station.
"So there we were, just the four of us in an honest-to-god foxhole with about fifty pissed off Russian mercs screaming for our blood and Duke leans over and tells me: 'You know, this reminds me of Budapest.' All I can do is glare at him and Bit-Monkey calls back over her shoulder, still dropping mercs, 'You and I remember Budapest very differently.'"
The Normandy's enlisted crew had commandeered one of the hole-in-the-wall cafes that lined the far end of the strip for their shore leave headquarters. After the incident in the mess in the wake of Eden Prime, they had been wary of Jade but countless hands of Skillian Five and hours of conversation with Donnelly, Daniels and whoever else wandered by in Engineering later, they had begun to accept her as one of their own. It didn't hurt that she could tell them stories they hadn't already heard a million times before. Stories that had nothing to do with Reapers, or lost families, or a galaxy-spanning war that felt unending and unwinnable more often than not.
"I canna believe those were their real names, Duke, Bit-Monkey?" Donnelly was already three sheets to the wind and he glared blearily at her over the rim of his Glenlivet. "What kind of parents would do that to a child?" He winced and shifted his glare to the redhead next to him. "Och! What'd ye do tha fur, woman?"
Daniels met him glare for glare and Jade laughed, breaking the standoff before it came to blows, or anyone lost their clothes. Those kids just need to get it over with. Maybe I should lock them in a broom cupboard on the way out.
"As far as I know, no child on Earth was ever saddled with the name Bit-Monkey. So you can rest easy, Ken. Those were their call signs. We all had them. Bit-Monkey was a tech whiz. She could write code and hack a system better than some of the pros. And Duke? Well, he was tall and blond, and blue eyed, and muscular, a real ubermensch. But what really clinched it for us when we were handing call signs out was that he was married to a redheaded gymnast and Olympic javelin thrower."
"You're shittin' me." Vega, while not technically part of the enlisted crew, still managed to spend a fair amount of time with them. "You named him after that too noble for his own good cartoon character?"
"Nice to know someone's up to date on their pop culture history. Yeah, we had a couple of folks with call signs from G.I. Joe." Jade shrugged. "It seemed to fit."
"It's not distant history," Specialist Smith raised his hand at the waiter for another round. "The networks resurrect it every couple of decades or so. The timeline for it's nearly as convoluted as the Doctor's these days."
"'Sides, you can find just about anything on the extranet." Vega looked into his glass, suddenly melancholy. "Or, you know, you could, before."
They all sat in silence a moment, the war, temporarily pushed aside in favor of the illusion of normalcy suddenly back at the fore, larger and more desperate than before. The somber mood lasted until Donnelly, on his fifth or seventh or fifteenth whiskey toppled face first into Daniels' chest.
That broke the brown funk that had descended on the café and soon ribald suggestions and stories were being traded easily from table to table again.
Jade felt the gentle buzz of her omni-tool, followed by a loud ping from Vega's. She glanced at him before opening her own message. She was in motion before even finishing it, headed for the door with the beefy lieutenant hard on her heels.
Shepard had fallen off the grid.