Neuroses

Commander Shepard was sitting at the mess table when the bells sounded. Kaidan rounded the bulkhead and was startled to see her sitting there, elbow on the table, cheek in her palm, index finger of her opposite hand tracing invisible patterns on the metal table. Usually she was on the bridge or CIC at this time, and he wondered what she was doing there. He also wondered when it was that he started keeping up with her schedule. They'd known each other for less than three weeks now.

He cleared his throat to get her attention. When she looked up at him, her eyes were dull. He immediately crossed the threshold into the mess and sat beside her, noting the darkness under her eyes. Ever since she and her team had returned from the sky way, she had looked rough. He hadn't been able to get any information out of Wrex. He might as well been talking to a wall. A wall of scaly muscle. Tali had only relayed the information Shepard had included in her report, including the hacked terminal and nearly getting killed by a gun-wielding Jeong.

And having an alien culture downloaded to her brain probably hadn't helped matters any. At least she looked one hundred percent better after that ordeal. He truly thought she may faint after the asari commando, Shi'ala, had stepped away.

"Commander?" he questioned.

She smiled warily. "Kaidan."

"Are you—are you alright, ma'am?"

Before she could answer, Williams rounded the corner with two trays of food, setting one in front of Shepard, who dug in immediately not bothering to answer his question right away.

"You try getting your brain fried and then melding with an asari commando," she told him in between mouthfuls. "And then having to keep from killing a bunch of mind controlled civilians." It was quiet a moment while she gulped her drink. "Opinions?"

One out of three. They'd all had to avoid the colonists while getting slimed by the Thorian Creepers things. And he still felt guilty about Reynolds. Especially after the Thorian was taken care of and Reynolds wife had been the one to patch both her husband and Kaidan up.

Kaidan thought Shepard may have asked only to change the subject, but Williams dutifully informed her, "Gotta admire those colonials. That's about the worst place for a colony I've ever seen. Given the option, I'd get the hell out of dodge. Especially now that they're cut off from ExoGeni."

"I'm glad there aren't many aliens like the Thorian," he intoned. "I don't think my stomach could take it." He was still sick. Watching an alien plant give birth to an asari was the most horrific thing he had ever seen. And he was a Marine. If he ever did get around to giving his mom grandkids, he sure as hell wasn't going to sit in on the whole birthing process. God. The smell. He shuddered. Even though his stomach was letting him know in no uncertain terms that it was time for food, he ignored it. Food tasted a hell of lot better going down than it did coming back up and marine rations tasted worse both ways.

"Hey, commander, the next time we touch down, let's try not to park the ship in a colony of mutant zombies," Joker said as he hobbled up to the table. He shuddered and shook his head. "Just thinking out loud here."

Shepard snorted. "Could have been worse."

"Like what?" he challenged, raising a brow.

She looked right back at him and didn't bat an eye. "Threshers in the middle of the colony. Fifty-one marines pounding dirt. Only one comes back."

Williams looked at her food. Alenko's eyes were anywhere but on the Commander. Joker shut the hell up and hobbled to the galley to fix his chow. Same shit. Same shingle. When he came back his green eyes gazed at the marines, assessing their moods-they were just as fowl as they had been fifteen hours ago after coming on board and smelling like garbage. Well, this'll be interesting. Shepard was almost done with her meal. It was the messiest Joker had ever seen her. Crumbs littered the table; there was gray gravy on her chin; and her hands were shaking as she shoveled food in her mouth. She didn't seem to care that anyone else was around. Unlike Alenko, who looked green around the gills. Joker secretly hoped she would get some on the biotic. It would be an interesting experience. He wondered if Alenko would sit there like a good marine or run like a girl. Or just throw up. Maybe he'll scream like a girl, run and puke. Alenko was incredibly fun to play with when it came to food.

Williams was picking at her chow. It looked like applesauce was the meat identifier which made the gray meat she was picking at some kind of pork. Ew. Space pork. Unless Williams was doing the porking… Joker firmly put that idea away. Flirting aside, he had better things to do than think about a damn MaRINE. He had his hand and his sock. And it wasn't like he was specifically born to breed. Shattering a hip while fucking didn't particularly appeal to him. Getting head however…

"So what did the Council have to say about your report?" he asked, reigning in his thoughts and tired of the eerie quiet that had settled over the mess. That and he really wanted to know.

"Basically that I'm abusing my Spectre privileges by assisting my own kind, and they wanted to study the Thorian," Shepard told them. All three looked at her as though she had sprouted another head. She shrugged. "We'll be picking up the matriarch's daughter. I want her opinions on the information that was downloaded to my brain."

"Rumor has it that you had awesome asari sex," Joker accused pointing his spork at the Commander. Shepard choked and looked scandalized. Kaidan glared at the man for being so disrespectful. Williams stifled a laugh that ended up becoming a snort.

She blinked. "If that was sex, that was the worst sex ever," she commented dryly. "I got the entire Prothean history and culture downloaded to my damn brain." She thought about it for a moment. "And anyway, there was no touching. No sex." She took a bite.

"What about the Consort?" Kaidan wondered out loud. Shepard spit out her food and glared at him.

"We're not even going there." Shepard shuddered. "God, she was all hands," she all but whined. Williams didn't bother to hide her laugh this time, and Kaidan couldn't help but smirk.

"What happened with the Consort?" Joker wanted to know with a raised eyebrow. Wasn't that an asari prostitute on the Citadel?

Shepard dug around her collar and came up with a strange looking pendant. "I got this for my troubles and a bunch of words that will probably never make any sense to me. If she'd propositioned me for sex, I probably would have thrown her in the lake. Alenko looked like he wanted to when she grabbed his ass."

Joker snorted, filed the information away for later. Ah, blackmail. Alenko had the good will to look scandalized.

"She had some good advice, Commander," Kaidan said trying to hide his blush.

"Above my pay grade," was all Shepard said before shoving another mouthful of food down her gullet. At least she looked better. Her eyes weren't so dull.

"So what was it like?" Williams asked suddenly, and tapped her temple with a slender finger indicating the mind meld with Shi'ala.

Kaidan frowned, his dark eyes flashed a gentle but firm warning to the Chief. Wasn't that a personal question? An intimate question? He didn't like the idea of Shepard being intimate with anyone. And that bothered him more than he liked to admit.

Shepard drank deeply from her mug, then sat it down and considered the question. "It was…" She paused, collecting her thoughts. She knew what it wasn't. It wasn't pleasant and it had been painful, like the beacon on Eden Prime. And Shi'ala hadn't made it any less painful. Whispers ghosted across her conciousness every time she thought about the connection she had made with the asari commando. It wasn't something she would willing do again.

"Well," she told them finally, her eyes shifting from one person to the other, "it-it was really fucking weird. Voices, sensations. And it hurt like hell." She shuddered, remembering. She lowered her thick black lashes, studied her plate. It seemed only then that she realized the mess she made. "Like waking up after brain surgery."

Kaidan paled. He was the only one in the room that knew what that was like.

"Like 'thousands suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced'?" Joker inquired. She raised her eyes to find him watching her, his face a façade of neutrality.

She rolled her eyes as she brushed the crumbs from the table to the floor. Roomba 2340X was there immediately to vacuum them up. "If you can shut them up, you're welcome to try." She gave a shrug as she watched the little robot do its thing and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. She wiped at her chest, flicking crumbs at Kaidan. He silently thanked every deity he knew to thank that he had not gotten a tray. There was no way he would be able to eat someone else's used food. He balked at the very idea, but kept his face calm and his body rigid. Besides, only Joker knew his thing about food. And damn him the pilot was about to say something!

Then she called up her omni-tool, studied it as the amber glow cast shadows across her face, then powered it down and stood, grabbing her tray.

"When you get done eating, Joker, set course for Artemis Tau. The coordinates Admiral Kahoku gave us," she ordered. "After what happened on Feros, I'm checking everything out. I don't care how obscure the lead is. We follow it. If we have to scan mother-fucking ore to look for clues, we'll do it. We can pick up the doctor on our way out of the cluster, if she's still there."

Kaidan watched as she walked away, heading for her quarters. His eyes slid over her curves before he realized what he was doing. As his brain caught up with him, he also realized what she had said.

Ore?

Quote above from Star Wars. As if no one knew that…

Roomba belongs to whoever it belongs to.