Shepard went from asleep to alert in seconds, all without moving a muscle. It was still early, the sky awash with pastel pinks and purples. Her brain tried to sort out her surroundings. It wasn't so much that she'd woken up in a forest—she'd done that plenty of times—but that she wasn't sleeping alone. She hadn't woken up with someone's arms around her since… well, since Ilos, but that was a memory she preferred to keep locked away.
The stink of smoke and pine still hovered around her senses. Underneath, she could faintly smell popped heatsinks and woody cologne. She was still reclining against James's chest, but his arms had moved from last night. One arm rested heavy around her shoulders while the other curled around waist, his hand against her stomach. One of her hands was atop his, her fingers falling into the spaces between his.
It was too intimate.
She should get up.
A frigid wind swept through the forest, and Shepard huddled further under the blankets.
"Sleeping beauty's finally awake," said James. Shepard replied with a sarcastic laugh. "Good sleep?"
"Yes, but not enough. We better make a move."
He unwound his arms from around her and she instantly missed his warmth—no, the warmth. Not his warmth.
She unzipped the sleeping bag and stood, stepping away so James could get up too. She stretched her arms up over her head, fingers spread wide, and wiggled her body to get all the muscles working and the cricks out of her joints. She turned, still stretching, and expected to see James doing the same. He was still in the sleeping bag, staring at her with contemplative eyes.
"What?"
He ripped his gaze away and stood. "Nothing."
Shepard shrugged and pulled two MREs out of one of the bags. She tossed one to James, who wasn't paying attention, and it hit him in the chest. He fumbled to catch it before it fell to the ground.
"What's wrong with you?" She'd never seen him so uncoordinated, even when he wasn't paying attention to what he was doing.
He ripped open his packet, head down. It felt like he was avoiding looking at her. "Tired. Let's just eat and go."
She rolled her eyes and sat on the ground before ripping open her own packet. They didn't bother to heat their MREs with the flameless ration heater; Shepard simply scarfed down the food, hoping that eating it faster would mean she'd taste it less.
Shepard heard the roar of a shuttle before she saw it. James heard it too. He stopped his munching and looked up. She motioned for him to take cover. He nodded and stuffed the rest of the food in his mouth as he shoved himself up against a tree. Shepard crouched under low-hanging branches. Biotic static curled around the nodes in her body, ready to wreak havoc if needed. She heard the faint clicking and whirring of James's rifle as it unfolded to its full size.
A dark blue shuttle appeared above them, and Shepard froze. It barely brushed the tops of the trees as it slowly swept the area. Shepard and James waited, motionless and silent. The shuttle continued its search, banking down into the valley, and Shepard was able to see the Alliance logo emblazoned across the side.
Something nagged at her thoughts, something important. The sound of James unzipping a bag interrupted her. He'd pulled out a flare. She launched herself toward him and snatched it from his hands.
He glared at her and tried to grab the flare back but she jumped out of his reach. "What are you doing? They're Alliance."
"Alliance shuttles don't fly that low during search and rescue. It takes too long to cover a large area."
James looked away and Shepard took the opportunity to drop the flare back into the bag and zip it up. She sat on the bag, watching the shuttle through the trees. James grumbled something under his breath and leaned against a tree near her, arms crossed over his chest. Shepard glanced at him. He glowered at the shuttle, watching it fly back and forth of the valley. He was probably waiting to see if she was wrong and had cost them the chance for rescue.
The shuttle started to ascend the mountain on the other side of the valley when James turned to look at her, his eyes wide with an epiphany.
"They didn't pick us up on thermal sensors."
Shepard nodded. "You wouldn't fly low and slow if you had thermal, and all Alliance S&R shuttles have thermal."
"Never been in an S&R shuttle," said James.
"I have."
James looked at her expectantly but she didn't elaborate. She continued to watch the shuttle through narrowed eyes until it crested the mountain and disappeared over the other side. She didn't know exactly who wanted her dead this time, but it was someone with money. Bombs, poisons, and wrecking transports were one thing; having your own Alliance-painted shuttle was another. The long list of people who wanted her head on a platter had gotten significantly shorter.
Shepard stood, confident the shuttle wasn't going to come back. James had already started to clip and buckle his armour into place, so Shepard packed the blankets and sleeping bag away. In less than two minutes, they were underway, Shepard leading their trek southeast.
The mountains across the valley looked like craggy green faces underneath white helmets. Shepard couldn't help thinking how easy it would be for someone to be hiding over there, watching through thermal binoculars and testing the wind for a sniper shot or a rocket launcher. She doubted that's what was happening, but she wouldn't be surprised if it was. The crazier assassins liked cat-and-mouse games.
The sun climbed higher until it was finally overhead. Sunlight speared through the trees, melting patches of frost and warming her whenever she passed underneath the rays. What pleasure she should have felt from walking in such beautiful surroundings was drowned out by her worrying over rations and shelter.
"We should move closer to the river," said James, interrupting the silence.
Shepard didn't even slow down. "Why? We're already following it."
"Emergency cabins."
"What makes you think there'll be any near the river?"
"Water is one of the first things people look for. There'll be one near water."
"We've been following the river since yesterday afternoon. I haven't seen a cabin."
There was a double thud and Shepard looked over her shoulder. James had stopped and dropped the bags to the ground.
"We've been too far up this goddamn mountain to see a cabin, Shepard."
She stopped and turned, her arms crossed and her weight on her back foot. She raised an eyebrow at him.
"It's probably another seventy klicks to Vancouver in a straight line, but we can't go in a straight line." He gestured at the mountain above them and the ones that lined the other side of the valley. "With two of us, we have maybe three days' worth of rations left. If we cut down on food any more, though, we'll be lucky to do fifteen klicks a day on this incline. We'd be faster on the flat ground and we're more likely to find shelter near the river."
"I don't like giving up the high ground," she said, her tone flat.
"I don't like the idea of dying." He glared at her, his eyes squinting even more as he stood in a pillar of sunlight. Finally, he sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose like Anderson did whenever he had to deal with Shepard's stubbornness.
Shepard continued to watch him, unmoving. When he looked at her again, it was with so much patience that she almost felt bad for arguing with him.
"If the bad guys have shuttles, we don't have the high ground, no matter where we are. I've been through hell since I met you and I still haven't put in a transfer request because I trust that you won't get me killed." He sounded tired. "Trust me for once, Shepard. I've been camping with my tio since I was a kid; the river is our best chance for getting out alive."
She was stunned. She'd assumed he was still following her out of duty. Surely he knew that just one person had more chance at surviving with the emergency bag's limited rations than two. She'd met more than a few marines who would have left her in the middle of the night by now.
"Okay, we'll go down to the river." She waved her arm in a large arc toward the river and bowed slightly, inviting him to take the lead.
His eyebrows shot up almost into his hairline. The tightness around his mouth softened and he gave her smile. She'd never noticed before, but the scar across his lip made his smile adorably lopsided. No, not adorably—interestingly. That was a safer word.
"Every time you open your mouth, I never know what Shepard I'm going to get," he said, picking the bags up again.
"I like keeping you on your toes. Just one question, though: What's a tio?"