THE CITADEL

LOCALE UNKNOWN

DATE UNKNOWN

"I could tell I was at the gateway of a region half-bewitched through the piling-up of unbroken time-accumulations; a region where old, strange things have had a chance to grow and linger because they have never been stirred up."

JACK WAS HAVING A VERY NICE DREAM.

Usually, all she'd had were nightmares, and if they weren't nightmares, they were either empty, pointless mind-rambles that went nowhere, or distorted freakshows, remnants of a brain once soaked in too many chemicals and induced terrors. She'd one time had a dream that felt like it had lasted for hours, of her cleaning a shotgun over and over and over, an obsessive thing that affected her for so long that she switched to assault rifles for almost a year as her primary weapon. When the dream switched to those, she went back to shotguns.

She'd preferred sleep without dreams, a short black gap in her life where nothing happened, and rest the only thing to be gained.

Then Shepard had to come along and ruin it.

She had some sweet dreams after though, was liking them better now – like this current one, and even if some dim part of her mind still found them strange, it didn't dampen her enthusiasm for them. He had this thing he did; well – it was a combination of smaller things combined into one thing that he did and damn it was nice and she resented he didn't have hair for her to tangle her fingers in and pull…

Toe-curling nice, that's what it was.

This dream could run as long as it liked.

Like all dreams however, it refused stay where she wanted it, drifting away into other things, slid images and events by her as if they were something her brain thought she should study, snippets of the past she hadn't thought on in a while…

Miranda? Come on, not Miranda. She did not want to dream about other women. Especially not that silly bitch - always parading past Shepard in those stupid catsuits, her intent unmistakable – because, c'mon, why else did she spray-paint the damn things on - combat? Yeah, right … followed by the squeaky buckethead, and that slutty yeoman of his, not to mention the damned Shadow Broker, and every other female in the cosmos throwing themselves at him. Big man. Big damn hero. Whoopee-fuck'n-doo.

The odds had been, had she been interested, pretty damn heavy against her. Not that early on Jack herself had any intentions, she was there entirely for her own reasons. At first.

Even after being on the Normandy for a while, watching it all from her shadows and silences, she'd been pretty sure big hero asshole would never look at her twice, or even once - and she didn't care that he didn't. Why the hell would she?

His reputation didn't impress her. Reputations were bought and sold every day. All it took was a slug or two in the head.

People, though, every once-in-a-while? They could surprise you.

He kept taking her on missions, saying, "I need a biotic on this one," and leave Miranda to stew on the ship. Cheerleader would insist she was as able as Jack any day and Shepard would just give her a look of "you think so?" and Jack would feel like liking him just a little bit more.

He'd ignore the Buckethead's blatant hero worship (she kinda doubted he even noticed it to start with, really) and, it turned out, had only ever been friends with Blue – hell, she had made it possible for Shepard to have stopped Saren and Sovereign, and literally to have been here, alive, now - at all. Of all the shit Cerberus had ever done, bringing Shepard back was the only thing for which they could ever be lauded.

As far as T'Soni was concerned, Jack would always be quietly grateful to her. She owed her. They all did.

Besides, Shepard might have been a big knightly hero to the Galaxy at large, (those stupid ads even showed him in medieval-looking armor at one point!) but watching him buzzsaw his way across a battlefield, she could easily see from whence the "Butcher" title had come. Terminus pirates called him the "Human Wrecking Machine", for a very damn good reason.

She knew he didn't buy any of the bullshit they said about him. He was the Ice King in battle, though. Originally she had thought that was all he was – she'd heard the stories from the pirates, mercs, all over. They had all kinds of names for him, but the one that kept cropping up – 'machine'. He was this kind of machine, that kind of machine, but always… machine.

For a brief time back then, she believed it.

In the middle of some fiery shitstorm, his cold voice would come over her comm and she'd shiver despite herself, and it took her a while to really get it, to reconcile it with the man who would sit in the dark with her after missions, comms off, neither saying anything, just enjoying the dark and silence – and she knew, he actually needed it more than she did.

It was the first thing she'd ever shared with him, she realized. Even with his reputation, she'd given him her shadows to hide in. A man would come down and sit in the shadows with her. Not a machine.

A man.

Unlike many, a man she had begun to respect.

The Machine fought the battles. The Machine had been the Butcher and the Spectre and the Relay Destroyer and the Reaper Exterminator. In battle, the Machine commanded and you listened, because when the Machine Spoke, it gave you only two choices.

Obey. Die. That was it.

The Voice of the Machine came when she – hell, any of them - was tired or afraid or about to give up and force her – and them - to focus.

She'd obey. Scramble behind him as he'd dodge nimbly through a room or some open space planetside, or through cramped corridors, some station or starship, with fire coming from everywhere and his face and voice were stone, calm and in charge. How else did he get a veteran badass like Massani or a damn hyper-willful krogan like Grunt to fall in line so damn quick? Never mind that picky turian or the frozen-assed Justicar.

He barked, they followed, and pirates, mercs, Collectors and anyone else stupid enough to get in the way got punch-fucked straight into oblivion.

It was, she realized later, precisely why the Machine existed. It kept them – and him - alive.

It allowed the man – the man inside him – to give them and himself – her – reasons to keep on living.

A fight she could do, coordinated combat scenarios with squad strategies and tactics were something else. Teamwork? Not her thing. But there she was, falling in line, going where, when and how he said. Her. Depending on someone having your back? Also not her thing, but man… it was an odd feeling to have someone behind you and know they would back you up.

Everything we went through, she'd heard a voice from the past say, must have been worth something!

He'd been just looking for a reason. Something that matched the horrors they all went through to give her the power she had today, the life she had today. She'd never articulated it, but she owed Aresh. Owed them all, all the dead at Teltin. She didn't believe in any of that mystical bullshit, but somehow she hoped that they knew she'd done it for them, too. In her own fucked-up way, maybe she had been looking to balance the scales.

So she'd followed Shepard straight into hell, and she could say that she was proud to say she'd done it. She never would have thought so, but she was proud of her role in wasting the Collectors. She was proud of her students and proud of her role in smashing the Reapers and proud that she had saved Shepard at the last.

But, yeah - it was that voice of Shepard's that got her first, she admitted. There was no arguing with that voice. That voice had spelled doom for countless enemies, had rung the death knell of the Reapers.

Then he'd come down into her cubby and use the other voice, the smooth voice that came calmly from her shadows, that never judged her, that knew what shit was like, knew what it was like to feel so utterly alone inside yourself.

She'd lived her whole life with the notion that her suffering had been unique, but now she knew that, despite how one came by their wounds physical or otherwise, suffering was the same for everyone. Pain hurt the same, loneliness cut as deep no matter if you were human, blue or had a big hump on your back. Cerberus had tried to strip her of the ability to empathize, to make her a machine, but they'd ultimately failed. They'd taught her to hate, to enjoy rage, to lust after pain. They could scramble her feelings but they couldn't excise her humanity. They could only bury it. Those few times in her life when she'd almost been content… it'd be ruined by her busted, scrambled psyche.

Her outlaw colony, his Mindoir…

She'd driven him off, her doubts and desires equal measures, both smothering her in his presence, and had not seen him for two days, hated every moment, then had come to her own 'revelation'.

Shepard – that bastard – had understood. How could he not?

Then…

…that night before assaulting the Collectors and her whole life had felt compressed into her throat as she stepped into that elevator with all her baggage for the shortest-longest elevator ride of her life. She had been ready and willing - sort of; scared shitless that it could go wrong and she had read him wrong and was just making another massive mistake – as if Cheerleader and every other female on the ship would suddenly spring from a closet or something and laugh at her.

But she wanted it so badly, needed it so insistently, had started to believe.

Then the Loathing climbed into that elevator with her, started with its litanies: who the fuck was she to offer herself as if she were some prize worth the having? For all her bravado, she knew shit about anything even remotely resembling 'normal' or 'sane' or all that stuff other people seemed to be so easy with, so well-versed in.

He was the hero.

No – Shepard was The Hero.

You, Jack? You were called Zero for a good reason. You're nothing – hollow little abused girl, knowing nothing but how to wallow in hate and rage and wearing your misery like a crown and robes, parading it like it mattered to anyone but you.

On and on, that never-ending refrain of the Loathing.

Then she was standing in front of That Door.

She didn't hesitate. If she did, she'd turn, run, and never stop.

Just a few steps… she'd stopped, saw him standing there, broad back to the door, reading some report and she just screwing up her resolve and kept walking…

…and then he turned to her, with that damn stone face.

"Didn't expect you," he'd said. No, why would he? She must have read it all wrong.

She 'gestalted' the room suddenly, seeing every detail, saw the crushed helmet on his desk and the row of medals and citations and awards from twenty different worlds and species… whatever had powered her feet to bring her here, that stupid manufactured resolve vanished as fear scrabbled up her spine and started yelling obscenities into her brain. She couldn't tell him anything, offer him anything, she felt inadequate, small, mean and unworthy.

What was worse, she'd wondered – to live in a dark hole all your life and never see the light, or get a tiny glimpse and never be allowed to see it again? She couldn't stand that. Better to have nothing, than just a maddening taste. Even if you lived in a cell forever, it was a least a place you understood, not a glimpse of freedom you couldn't.

She felt as if she were beginning to dissolve, to come apart from the inside out.

She then mumbled something stupid about "thinking" and "needing" - so sure he'd laugh and tell her to get out.

"You're the one who ran away," he said, but it wasn't a recrimination, wasn't an accusation. Just a plain statement of fact. She had, she wanted to now. Was it a …challenge?

"I know. Maybe it wasn't right. But I'm trying." She had been too, hadn't she? She really had been trying – her. She was there, she went to him, she offered.

"No more questions," was all he said.

Something slapped Jack's brain at that. Her fear staggered back, stunned. The Loathing was smacked stupid.

There was no word for it. To this day she didn't know what it was, why that had been the best thing he could have said to her. The right thing.

She felt the floor under her feet for the first time. Her heart slowed down, it just beat stronger rather than faster. She smelled that clean metal and leather masculine smell that was uniquely Shepard, breathed it in like a draught of pure oxygen.

She'd just taken the biggest risk of her life. She'd let him see her.

"No more questions," he'd said.

She hadn't heard that though. Had she been wrong? Because it sounded like…

"Welcome home."

She cried and clung and he let her. She didn't know what else to do, she hung onto him as if letting him go would dissolve the universe back into that liquid dark that had been slowly drowning her.

He took her to his bed, finally, and she had tried to kiss him, do anything to tell him how she felt and all he did was pull her into his arms and hold her closer, just kiss her softly and offer her just the chance to be there, as herself.

The fuckin' Butcher of Torfan. If they could have seen him then…

No sex. Nothing like that. Just his iron arms and her liquid fear. That hot-hurty feeling began then, but she didn't understand it. He could have taken advantage and he didn't. He would never understand how much that meant to her. She hadn't then, either, but now she did.

She would have let him and he wouldn't.

It hadn't been time then. Jack didn't know enough yet, and neither did he.

"You don't owe me anything," was all that he'd said there in the dark, on his bed in his arms.

After the Collector mission, however… well, different story then. She knew better then. Not enough, but enough, y'know? Enough to displace the fear, and the stupid, stuttering, hobbling doubts. All that they'd said, all that he'd told her, and then that dance*.

To the day she died, Jack would always think of that song and that dance as the herald of the day of her really-real birth, the day she crossed the terminus from shadow to light, from 'Jennifer' and 'Zero' to just plain Jack - as scarred and odd as it might appear to outsiders – she had become someone who loved and was loved.

Holy fuck yeah.

Their first time?

No hurry, no rush, just intensity – hands and lips and skin and exploration and tastes. It had …weight, was as real as daylight, all mixed with lust and need, depth of feeling she doubted either had ever really let out before. He held her and touched her as if she were something so …utterly new to him, the texture of her skin seemed to fascinate him to no end, her scars treated as reverently as the rest of her – and Jack discovered what it was like to be an object of actual desire by someone with no intent other than to give her as much pleasure as possible.

At first, she almost ruined it, stopping him often, brainlessly (to her mind) scared about being touched here and there, as if he'd find her scars or her ink repulsive or maybe he'd believed too much of her so-called 'past'; the idea that he just wanted her, scars and all – well, it was an alien one to her, in the back of her mind she just couldn't believe it.

With Shepard, though… that first time, and the times after - to be completely engaged in lovemaking, for him to be an active and caring participant, never pushing her. When her fear would get the best of her and she'd say stop – he stopped.

No recriminations, no demands, he didn't sulk or insist or needle her. He would wait.

"Here I am," he'd tell her softly. "Here I remain."

In those times, though, when she winched up enough courage to trust him completely, to just go for it, to be his girl, as corny as that sounded - she'd just shut her eyes and feel, and she remembered her only cogent thought – like some sharp-edged revelation - had been, strangely: this is how humans feel being really human.

Sex had always had no meaning to her. It was an empty mechanical motion, like eating, a tool or a weapon. Sometimes, every once in long while it felt passingly good.

Shepard, though, he acted like sex was a gift she was giving him, a privilege that was hers to give or keep; he had no 'rights' to her, to 'it', no claim or deed of ownership, treated her body and herself like it was something he had to earn with caring, respect and trust.

Did that bastard have any idea what that kind of thing did to a girl's psyche?

Happy? Jack didn't know from happy. If this was it though, she could learn to live with it quite comfortably.

Some angry insect started buzzing in her head, and Jack really wished it'd piss off and leave her alone, because it was making the happy go away.

When the pain started to kick in, she realized that the dreaming – pleasant as it was – needed to stop and cruddy reality had to be given its due.

When the agony rolled over her, she twisted and yelled, and thought for a split-second she was back in France frantically digging for Shepard, her amps exploding inside her. One had gone up so hard it had broken five of her ribs, punctured and collapsed one of her lungs. It hadn't stopped her, and the one that shattered her shoulder and collarbone didn't either. The pain then had blinded her, but it hadn't stopped her, even though it had been some of the worst pain she'd ever felt.

This was worse. It felt like she was about to be torn in half and she screamed in anger and fought it.

When it stopped abruptly, Jack felt herself on a soft surface and her eyes snapped open. She was gasping for air, saw the dingy confines of …wherever she was. It smelled like the ass-end of a bad neighbourhood. Her eyesight was fuzzy, her tongue felt thick, and her mouth felt like she had been gargling acidic sand.

"Jack – I'm back." She heard from somewhere to her left. The voice sounded familiar. She heard heavy boots stomp-wandering the room. She shook her head, trying to get that sloshing sick feeling to drain out of her skull. Someone very tiny was inside there, furiously kicking the backs of her eyeballs, tossing grenades down her throat.

"You seen my Brawler? The one I got off that Suns prick?" Stomp, stomp. "Nevermind – found it."

No. That voice was impossible.

"Jack, fuck's sake – get your bony ass up – we got shit to do."

No goddamned way!

A strong hand grabbed her, shook her. She was still having a hard time focusing her eyes on anything in particular.

"Jesus buggering Christ! You high? I told you not to slide any shit before a score!" That hand twisted her head. "Where'd you slap it this time? Don't see nothing on your jugular…"

She managed enough strength to bat the hand away, growl something inarticulate.

"C'mon! We don't have time for this crap!"

Another strong hand joined the first, grabbed both her wrists, hoisted her to her feet, spun her to face the face that had spoken, held her up as she swayed. Her eyes clearing enough for a decent look, she saw a young face that had a broken nose, a scar on his lower lip, a strong jaw, one eye brown, one blue – curly black hair tied up with that stupid black skull-and-rose bandanna he wore too much, a week's worth of stubble and a crooked smile that always made him look like he was about to either tell you a joke or shoot you in your face.

Jack must have looked really surprised, because he laughed, bent close to look in her eyes.

"You still in there, or what?"

She nodded with a wobble, shocked, feeling her strength coming back in small increments.

"You sure?"

She shook her head, not sure at all. This, him, all of it. Impossible.

"Right. Let's try…." He pulled her to him to drop a hard kiss on her lips, and so bewildered, she let him. He pulled back, looked into her eyes, said gently,

"Hey, Scrawny – Lone Dog's home. Come on back."

She managed only one word:

"Murtock!?"

*see Where We Are, There We Are