INTERSTELLAR LINER
UKV EMERALD DAWN
APPROACHING MURASAKI RELAY
MID-JANUARY 2188
"Almost nobody dances sober, unless they happen to be insane."
THE YOUNG WOMAN wove her way through milling fellow passengers, hands in pockets, holding a bottle in each. A black hoodie and equally dark shades covered head and eyes respectively, a baggy, too-large T-shirt underneath hiding her slim, well-muscled figure. Dark pants and solid boots sheathed shapely legs as she made her way back to her cabin. Her entire attitude was of complete self-confidence. She stopped, nodded at the massive and familiar figure glaring by the door. He nodded back, tapped a control, and the door immediately shushed open.
The sole occupant of the room looked up at her entrance, smiled and then put his head back down.
The room they occupied was on a cruise ship called the Emerald Dawn, and very expensive, very exclusive. The room was clean, huge, tasteful, and a little sterile. All whites and blues, the "Alliance Room" they called it. All she cared about was that it was comfortable and quietly private. It was defensible and had two exits, one currently guarded by three hundred and fifty kilos of krogan.
Her companion was a big man with dark short-shaved hair, a chiseled face that seemed emotionless and piercing eyes that were anything but, grey in some light, water-blue in others. His nose was straight, his jaw strong.
The hair was new, he'd let it grow out, along with a trim – still stubble - goatee. Fading silver scars slashed a shirtless, hard-muscled torso. He had a lot of scars, an intricate crisscross that looked like a roadmap of pain, every one earned honestly.
On his right deltoid, he had a krogan tribal, a shamanistic sigil that marked him as a spiritual protector and defender of the krogan, the only human ever to receive it. It also served as an unmistakable badge of identity that made him a sacrosanct person on any krogan world. He had made their future possible, and krogan remembered their saviours.
Soft music played in the background, the old stuff he liked. It sounded jazzy, the one music form Humans had – other than 'Classical' – Beethoven and Mozart, stuff like that – that was also popular with non-Humans. Apparently asari were positively maniacal over classical jazz.
Her 'real' name was Jennifer Haydn. As far as she knew – and the Shadow Broker could uncover - she had been an only child, her parents mid-level professional agricultural administrators from Earth, stationed on Eden Prime for their company, both deceased. Her father's name had been Edward, her mother's Cynthia, their child had been named after her grandmother.
To the Galaxy's law enforcement – and more luridly sensationalist media outlets - she was known as 'Subject Zero'.
As far as she was concerned, both of those people - Jennifer and Zero - were dead and buried.
To herself, her lover, and posterity, her name was simply… Jack.
On the screen on the far wall, another droning documentary about him, the 'greatest hero of all time' and all its accompanying bullshit. They showed his interview in the hospital over and over and the few after, the ones she hated, because she was usually in them. He made a point of including her in the few he'd given. She'd been pissed because they kept calling her a 'teacher' at Grissom, when she'd only been hired as a "Special Consultant", as the Alliance rep had put it. No matter what people thought, being a teacher was a helluva lot more than just knowing a particular subject.
Shit. Popular media had a way of making large masses of people stupid in the least amount of time. Ninety percent of it they made up and the rest they just got wrong.
Jack made a point of turning the screen off.
She set the bottles on a small table, poured a drink from each, peeled off the hoodie and threw it at him. He merely batted it aside with a lazy swipe. He was lying on a large bed, feet on the floor, wearing only a pair of comfortable trousers, no socks, no boots.
"Should you look this relaxed?"
He dropped his left arm over his eyes.
On the inside of his wrist, he had a small tattoo, done in a medieval font: a single zero.
It had been a surprise, and she had thought it touching enough to cry over. A little. In a strange way, it made them more… official, somehow, although she didn't doubt how he felt about her. Such things were long in the past.
"You know I never relax; just thought I'd give it a shot while you were gone. This is as far as I've managed."
"Well, you got the look down, mostly. How's it feel?" Amused.
"Odd. I can see why some like it, though."
Shepard took the proffered amber drink, inhaled its aroma with pleasure, took a long sip.
"Eighteen?" Jack shook her head.
"Twenty-one. Captain's personal reserve. Spared no expense."
"Especially when it's my expense account?" Another sip, savoured and appreciated.
"Especially then." He rolled his eyes. "Uncork it, Shepard - they were only too happy to offer it up gratiuito, considering who was askin' for it."
She kicked off her boots, planted herself on his lap, gulped a big gulp of her own drink.
"You realize you're never gonna have to pay for anything ever again - right, Mr. Second Coming?"
He snorted. Like he'd done it all by himself. Like any 'hero', he'd climbed to such lofty heights via a mountain of corpses, both enemies and allies, dead friends, dead loves, dead family. Heroes were forged through death, and he was sick of it. He'd never done anything with that 'goal' in mind. He hated the label. He was not a hero, no matter what they called him. He had been necessary, that was all.
He'd left all the meaningless medals they'd hung on him behind. His victories were carried in his heart, on his skin, in the eyes and regard of the people he cared about.
Jack squirmed on him until he grunted, asked,
"I know we're being sorta all incognito an' shit, right?"
A nod.
"How did you plan on doing that with a big freaking krogan guarding the door?"
"The krogan will soon be everywhere," he intoned darkly, imitating a rather serious EarthNet commentator. She snickered, got herself comfortable, peeled off the baggy T. She was wearing nothing but ink under it. He eyed her up appreciatively, smiled. One hand brushed under a firm little breast, stroked over her smooth, hard tummy, stopped on a hip.
"It was Grunt's idea. Nothing wrong with some extra security. He's only going as far as krogan territory, anyway."
She nodded, pursed full lips in a lazy smile as she ran a hand over her head. She'd gone back to 'bald'. "Felt like it", was the only reason she gave when asked, her actual reason more practical. No one could grab it in a fight. One too many husk almost dragged her down because she'd let it grow.
Jack was as relaxed as he'd ever seen her, was glad to see it. She scratched her ear absently, around a shiny new silver amp. They'd been custom-made, especially for her.
"They still bothering you?"
"You kidding? I eat amps like candy." She scratched-rubbed it again, relented. "It's just a little irritated. I never had amps that bugged me this long before. Maybe I shouldn't have volunteered to try the new L70's quite so fast." She rubbed her other ear.
He smiled. They were called '7-zeros' for a reason. She'd designed them.
Jack had almost all new amps. She'd burned them out, digging him free from under a hundred tons of Citadel rubble. That chunk had broken off another piece that had crushed half of the city of Rheims in France, but he'd had a brigade of angels on his shoulders. The heavy muscle, bone and skin weaves he'd acquired during his mission against the Collectors also paid for themselves. The section he'd managed to reach before the Crucible had fired had emergency bulkhead kinetic barriers and independent eezo generators, which helped it survive reentry and keep him in one more-or-less reasonable piece.
Rheims hadn't been as lucky.
Jack had been on the first shuttle to find the site, and she had not waited for emergency crews to arrive.
Apparently great stress or great anger or both ramped Jack to extremes because her first chunk of biotically-thrown Citadel had been estimated to have been almost three metric tons.
The amp on her left ear had blown at that, but she'd barely noticed. She had dug until she found him, every massive lift frying another amp, causing her to bleed and stagger, but she never quit - with her last ounce of biotic strength, had thrown a barrier over them both as it started to rain hot ash from other disintegrating and falling debris. She dropped it only when unconsciousness seized her, moments after emergency crews had finally arrived, and both had been on the razor-edged ledge of death.
According to reports, Jack had to be pried physically from Shepard, and his hand had to be broken to get him to release her. Somehow, even suffering the trauma he had, he'd known it was her.
If that hadn't convinced either of how they really felt, nothing ever would.
Shepard 'died' more than once in the emergency shuttle, but he'd been revived, his cybernetics and nanobots doing their job, and had then spent four months in an exclusive salarian hospital, guarded by a troop of hardened elite specialists from nearly every Citadel race.
His 'honour guard' consisted of the re-formed krogan Aralakh Company, still commanded by Grunt, asari "Death Mistress" commandos and five Justicars, including the famous Samara, turian Blackwatch, salarian STG, human N7's, geth Primes and quarian First Strike Marines. Drell for the hanar, elcor 'tank' soldiers and even a squad of volus E-troopers.
The most surprising had been the contingent of batarian Hjak'rakar, their proud elite First Guard, sent by the new leader of the batarian Cooperative, Grozen Pazness - bearing a message of forgiveness and understanding for Aratoht, and a humble request to be permitted to help guard the 'Galactic Hero'. Released from the Hegemony's grip, batarians were stepping up and showing a different side indeed.
Admiral Hackett had, despite some quiet protest assigned them to protect the wing Shepard recuperated in, and the batarians had stood with fierce pride at every door and entrance with complete professionalism, and Shepard slept in complete comfort and total security.
He'd wondered what all the fuss was about.
Jack spent two months in the same hospital, the same wing, and after a while she was put in his room at her rather vehement insistence, where she spent her waking moments watching him, talking to him in his brief bouts of consciousness. They had learned a lot about each other in that period, speaking of things they'd mightn't otherwise, but after everything they'd been through and done and endured, keeping secrets at that point in the game seemed stupid and self-defeating. After she had recouped, she'd alternated being at the hospital and the Academy (at his insistence), trying to help get it back in some kind of order, redesigning her amps for herself and her students.
Both had required two months of physical therapy to really get up and moving again, and Shepard and Jack then spent a solid fifteen days at Pinnacle Station wrecking every combat curve in the place, but both felt better now. Better than better.
Jack's surviving students – proudly calling themselves "Zero Squad" - had sent her the medals they'd won (both active and posthumously) when she'd been finally cleared.
Legend had it she cried for a solid twenty minutes and sent them back with one of the most profane letters ever penned by a single individual.
The framed letter hung above her desk in Grissom Academy, courtesy of her now-graduated class.
It was also apparently required reading for all new students.
"They are brand new – cutting edge. You're not exactly a lightweight in the biotics department, either." He yawned, more relaxed than he'd realized. "I had meant to ask," Shepard began, reaching up from her hip to gently rub her other ear, "where those bursts of power come from, on Purgatory, in France – you peak higher at full strength than most asari matriarchs."
Jack smirked at him, stretched like a cat.
"Asari are over-fuckin'-rated. Do you know how many stinkin' amps and e-nodes I have in me? I had to install a deadening-drug sheathe on my jugular just so I could function." She tapped the faint scar on her throat under her left ear. The original had been more jagged, some 'back-alley' surgery done years before she'd met him. During the Collector mission, she'd gone to Chakwas to have it fixed and upgraded. During her stay in the salarian hospital, a far more sophisticated one had been installed. Jack had considerably more control over it and her biotics now. No more waking in the middle of the night in the midst of room-wreckage.
One salarian medtech, tracking both her current and potential output, said in his report that Jack "was now the most terrifying biotic" he'd ever encountered.
She arched an eyebrow at Shepard.
"Now I only peak that high when I'm nearly frozen or really pissed off."
"Right. We tattoo that warning label right here." He stroked his hand back across her stomach, found a small bare patch. "'Keep Jack warm, keep Jack happy'."
She squirmed on him again, gave him a saucy smile.
"Add 'satisfied', too."
"Hey – I may be the Commander Shepard, but even I can't do the impossible."
"But you're gonna try, right?"
"Oh, hell yeah."
Both laughed, and it was a measure of how they'd grown together that the laughter came so easily. Jack got up, topped off their glasses, came back and seated herself as before.
He saluted her with his glass, sipped.
"Should we have done this without tellin' anybody?"
"We told bodies."
"You know what I mean, jackass." A semi-hard punch to his stomach. He grunted for effect, and she knew it was fake, so she punched him again. It was like punching a bulkhead.
"Everyone that needs to know and can keep their mouths shut knows. Everyone else…"
"…Can go to hell." She finished for him. She sat her drink on the small table near the bed, laid down on him, chin on his sternum. He did the same with his glass after a last sip, stretched his arms over his head, yawned.
"You okay for this?" She asked with a perceptive concern only he ever heard. "I mean, after everything…"
"You ever wonder why I don't dance?" He asked, and she nodded, willing to follow his tangents. They usually went somewhere, eventually. That didn't mean she wouldn't get a shot or two in.
"Because you can't. For someone who moves so well every other time, you just suck at it." She paused, thought a moment. "Well, okay, you dance fine when it's just you and me…"
He just snorted softly, poked her lightly in the side.
"When I was just an Alliance grunt? My favourite part of the job." Sardonic. "Going to some social function on Alliance PR because I was the "Official Face of Humanity" – hell, then, now. Having to stand and listen to this or that boring rep or ambassador after I just spent three days on an op on some hell-planet, pissing blood for two days of it because some damn Blood Pack krogan charged me and slammed my ass through a metre of plasicrete, or sleeping sitting up for a week because an Eclipse bitch twisted my guts and spine with a singularity and damn-near pulled both out through my eye sockets."
Jack winced with sympathy. She knew what that felt like. She remembered a few missions when they'd went after the Collectors. She'd seen him in the medbay after fighting that Vasir bitch on Illium and him withstanding three Vanguard charges. How many bones had she broken? He was one black bruise from crotch to throat for days – despite Chakwas and her machines.
"Y'know when you're a 'hero', you're supposed to be a standard, whatever the hell that means. No matter where I'd go or what I'd do, or say – every goddamn twitch, look, gesture and word was being watched and analyzed. And judged." His hand idly stroked her back as he spoke, would trace the long scar on her spine, stop, come slowly back up. She almost felt like purring.
"I was supposed to 'represent' this or that or some bullshit ideology. But, hey, it's not that big a deal, part of the job, part of being an Alliance hero, I signed up for it - it's what Gunny Ellison at Boot called a 'fame anchor' – all you could do was hope it never weighed you down too much."
She looked at him skeptically. He shrugged.
"Gunny was like that."
She nodded, indicated that he could continue.
"So… you learn – in public, at least, to be that standard. You never say more than you have to, or should, never move more than you have to, never blink, never trip. If you do any of those things, that's what PR people are for – 'official explanations'. If you're standing there with busted ribs, you smile anyway. I was the Shepard on the posters, that asinine propaganda." She nodded again. She'd seen them, and sneered. "But… that Shepard? He's gone. That life, that person he had to be – dead in orbit of Alchera."
He chuckled, but there was no humour in it.
"Frankly, I don't miss him. I'm glad he's gone. I could stand being a Spectre. No bullshit, no red tape, no goddamn judges, no empty heroics."
He was quiet long enough for her to look up.
"I've been dead too many times," he started again, after a small smile. "I've given my 'full measure' as Anderson…" Another pause. He did it whenever he used that name, and she'd learned it was out of respect, and an always-lingering quiet grief at the loss of a man he had both admired and loved like a father. "…called it. What do I owe? Whose standard do I have to follow now?"
"That's why you don't dance?" She paused, then amended, "At least in public?" Her tone said she didn't quite see how it figured in.
"Sorta. I dance in public, and everyone sees it. So now, when I dance, it's only with you – and only for me, for us." He smiled. "I've earned that much, haven't I? I can start trying to live for things for a change. Can't I?"
She laid her head down, ear over his heart, listening to its strong, steady rhythm, then nodded, agreeing completely. Earned it and then some.
"I guess we're both different now." She laughed softly to herself. "Took us long enough."
"How's it feel?"
"Like I've …grown up, finally. I think. I hope. I don't feel… aimless."
"Were you drifting, Jack?"
"I sure as hell wasn't going anywhere but to hell. Didn't care. Didn't think I needed to do anything else. Doubted I'd last long anyway. I wasn't going anywhere, I was just …going."
"I can understand that. Where do the dead call home?"
She looked back up at him, concerned at the melancholy tone in his voice. He smiled at her.
"That's just how I felt for a long time. I like to think the Butcher is dead. I'd prefer it. The past, however, never dies. I'll always be the Butcher. But I think now it'll be on my terms."
"Embrace the label?" She pondered it.
"No. Define it to suit you."
"You're pretty fuckin' smart, you know that?"
"I'm pretty, too." She shook her head. She liked his looks just fine – and he wasn't pretty by any stretch.
"You'll do." She sighed. "Yeah. The past. Can't escape anything."
"Escape what? You earned every ounce of attitude you have, lady. What we were may shape us, but what we are now matters more. People won't be dealing with the Subject Zero of years ago. They'll have to deal with the Subject Zero now, wiser, better and stronger than ever."
"You think?"
"Yup. She's a helluva sight scarier now than she was then." He chuckled, his chest rumbling with it. "Let 'em consider that."
Jack pressed herself to him. Damn romantic asshole. She looked back up. Her chest was getting that hot hurty-feeling it got when her feelings for him started to overtake her, that scary-wonderful hurt she anticipated and feared.
"I know I don't say it…" she began. "I've never said it – well, not that you've heard it." He waited, let her work it through. "I feel it though. I'm in it, and full of it and all that, and fuck me do I seriously have the hots for the feeling…"
"What's the problem?"
"I'm a damn coward. You say it to me, but I don't have the guts to say it to your face, when you're awake. It's like, if I do, it'll go away or you'll change your mind. It's so goddamn stupid. It should be the easiest thing to say. But it scares the crap outta me. I mean, I fuckin' mean it, y'know?"
"I know. You kinda just said it already, actually." She buried her nose in his chest, replied with a muffled,
"It's not the same."
"I also don't say it that much either, you notice. They're the most overused words in the history of humanity." He told her. "I don't want you to say them because you think you have to, Jack. I don't want to waste it, but I don't want you to doubt it."
She turned her face out, took a breath.
"I don't. I don't."
"I don't either. You say it when you like. I'm not going anywhere."
He kissed her head. She counted his ribs with light strokes, one, two, three. They lay that way for a good while, just enjoying each other, the silence, the together they shared.
"Are you okay with this? You did have responsibilities I thought you enjoyed." He asked eventually.
"It's called a sabbatical. I'm on it. I'm going where you're going, period. We're gonna be normal - once - whatever it takes, so you can shut the fuck up."
Another kiss to her head. Strong arms came down and encircled her, squeezed.
"Stop it - you're gonna make me cry with all this mushy stuff."
She bit him on his stubbly chin, laughed softly. It was sweet music to his ears.
"Where are we goin' anyway?"
He waved an arm to encompass the ship.
"Wherever this tub ends up."
She scooted up to look him in the face, kissed his lips a good while, then asked,
"An' then?"
"Wherever the next one goes."
She snuggled back down on him, and he sighed, tension draining from him. He was exactly where he wanted to be – and with whom.
"How long have we got?" she murmured into his chest. This was all the reality she needed.
He gathered her close again, but she was never close enough. She growled contentedly as he did it.
"As long as it takes."