Shepard knew it was only psychological but the return journey from Bekenstein in the Boltzmann system to the Widow system, home of the Citadel and the nearest mass relay, seemed to take a lot longer without a specific mission to focus on and plan. People tended to forget that about space travel; that while the mass relays could transport you half way across the galaxy in the blink of an eye, not all star systems had a relay and travel between different star systems of the same cluster could take weeks, months or sometimes even longer.
Fortunately Professor Solus could use the travel time to study the Collector data acquired on Freedom's Progress and develop a counter measure to utilise against the seeker swarms. Shepard hoped that was what he was doing anyway. Last time she'd walked through the labs he'd been distracted with trying to cure Joker's Vrolik syndrome.
Either way at least the salarian had something interesting to occupy his time. Not everyone was so lucky and she found herself sat on the bed in her private cabin surrounded by datapads as she studied the latest dossiers provided to her by Cerberus and tried to plan her next move.
They were a strange mix; mercenaries, criminals, assassins, and then right in the middle of the worst scum imaginable: an asari justicar. Shepard paused at that file, wondering just how insane the Cerberus operative responsible for compiling these dossiers must be. Justicars were rarely seen outside asari space, she knew little about them apart from what could be gleaned from the most likely exaggerated pop culture vids and comics. What she did know however involved a strict code that would demand the asari kill half the other candidates for their past mis-deeds.
While Nikki would love someone a little more moral and honourable on her team than the majority of contenders, it wasn't worth the risk of a massacre, assuming that she could even find the justicar. Her movements since leaving asari space were hardly untraceable, her actions far from discreet, but each new destination seemed completely random, utterly unpredictable. With a sigh Nikki relegated the dossier to the maybe pile, if by some miracle she stumbled upon the asari in the course of her travels then she'd consider it, but she wasn't going to waste time trailing across the galaxy on a wild goose chase looking for her. She'd done enough of that when hunting Saren.
Reaching for the next datapad her attention was caught by the digital photo frame on the bedside table and she picked it up instead, lump forming in her throat as her fingers traced the faces of her wife and child.
If she could even call Trish that anymore.
She hadn't heard from the other woman since their reunion so she still had no idea where they stood.
Shepard longed to reach out and message her but Trish had asked for time to think things through so time was what she'd get. Nikki wouldn't be the first one to break the silence, no matter how tortured and uncertain it left her feeling.
Trish's image vanished as the frame cycled to a new picture, revealing Nicholas sat in the commander's lap as she read her son a 'towy'. It wasn't the greatest photo in the galaxy, but it was the only one of the two of them. She dearly hoped they'd get a chance to rectify that one day.
It was strange to think that she knew next to nothing about him, had only known about his existence for barely two weeks, and yet he already occupied so much of her heart and thoughts. She longed to get to know him better, to be there for him, to watch him grow, to teach him to ride a bike, to pass on the nifty trick her dad had taught her about using your fingers for the nine times table. For every little, insignificant milestone as well as all the big ones.
She also knew she was going to miss most of it. Regardless of how things went with Trish, she was still a spectre. Still had responsibilities and duties beyond her family. No matter how much her heart claimed there was nothing greater. But if she couldn't be there for him, then the least she could do was try to make the galaxy a better place for him.
With another sigh she forced herself to put the photo frame back, refocusing on her current reading material. There weren't any cool animal noises to make but the characters were nearly as diverse as the kiddie's storybook, a fact she found somewhat surprising considering the pro human sentiments of her sponsors.
The drell sounded promising at least. Trained by the hanar primacy in the art of killing from the age of six, the last set of marksmanship scores before he left to go freelance had him surpassing even her and Garrus. That reminded her, the turian still hadn't been cleared for combat. She didn't want to think about it, especially since Garrus was a friend, but the tactical part of her brain knew it was probably a good idea to have another sniper on the team. Just in case.
So far Krios was certainly the best candidate so she kept reading. Confirmed kill list: tiny. Suspected hit list: massive. Based out of Illium, a mere two relay jumps away from the Citadel. The only negative she could see was a recent diagnosis of Kepral's Syndrome. Cerberus suggested using the promise of a lung transplant as motivation for recruitment (surgery to take place AFTER successful mission completion of course) but Nikki was more concerned with whether or not the disease would progress to the debilitating stage during their journey.
She'd have to talk to Chakwas. Both about the drell and Garrus. For now Krios' file was added to the 'probables'. Nikki even going so far as to add a note with his location to her personal tactical galaxy map for when she was working out efficient flight plans to achieve the most goals as quickly as possible later.
With the next file she didn't even get past the first sentence. [Kai Leng, former N7-] That went straight on the reject pile. Leng was infamous among Villa graduates. It might seem a moot point when she was already working with Cerberus, but she had to draw the line somewhere. It got her thinking though, if N7s weren't (theoretically) out of bounds... what was stopping her from recruiting past acquaintances of her own?
Well, the fact N7's rarely chose to leave the service unless they were medically discharged or too old for active duty for starters. Still... nothing said she had to stick to recruits from the Cerberus dossiers. Maybe she'd ask Anderson if he had any ideas when they landed on the Citadel. The crew needed some shore leave anyway.
...
[Hey, are you free to talk?] Nikki's heart soared upon finally receiving a message from Trish, before abruptly crashing back down as she read it and found the nerves coiling tight in her gut. Could be ominous, talk about what? She pushed the feeling aside as best she could as she typed a hurried: [Can be, give me a couple minutes.]
It took a moment to spot Garrus and Grunt among the crowded market place, quickly hurrying over to them to find the turian giving an impromptu lesson on what the various available weapons mods actually did as they scrolled through a kiosk terminal. She let her squad mates know what she was doing so they wouldn't panic when they realised she had vanished and rapidly moved on, hunting down a nearby alcove where she could hopefully talk in peace and pressing her back firmly against the wall so no-one could sneak up behind her.
"Hey, how you doing?" Shepard asked as soon as the vid call connected, slight smile jumping unconsciously to her face the moment she saw Trish.
"Not too bad. I'm not interrupting anything am I?"
"Nah, just doing some shopping on the Citadel. Garrus needed some new armour and then we got distracted." Nikki dismissed casually. She noticed a slight undercurrent of uncertainty in the other woman but didn't have time to question it.
"Distracted with what?"
"Oh you know... boys and their toys, girls and their guns." It was so easy to fall back into old behaviour patterns and the banter slipped easily off the tongue.
"Nikki! You're not thinking of cheating on me with another weapons manufacturer?" Trish cried in mock outrage.
"Maybe." The spectre singsonged. "Rosenkov's latest version of the Karpov pistol does have higher damage output than Kassa's Razer X."
"Oh the sacrilege! You can't even choose someone like Elanus Risk Control, it has to be Rosenkov, our mortal foes."
"Of course not, Elanus can't hold a candle to your products, I'm hardly going to downgrade my gear. Don't worry though, the Polaris is still my one true omni-tool." Trish laughed but Nikki felt her smile fade somewhat as she contemplated her next words. She didn't want to ruin the light heartedness but she had to know. "So... if you're accusing me of cheating, does that mean we're back together now?"
"I... I'm not sure, it's still complicated."
"Right, Melissa..." Nicola sighed despondently, trailing off when Trish shook her head.
"No, it's not that, she... Well, let's just say we aren't together anymore."
"Did she hurt you?" Despite the overriding feeling of sorrow she'd been wallowing in recently, Trish still nearly found herself laughing at Nikki's immediate change in demeanour.
"No more than I hurt her." She assured quickly before poor Melissa woke up to a vengeful spectre at the end of the bed. "Look can we please not talk about her?"
"Well I'm on a space station, I can hardly talk about the weather. You got any suggestions?"
"I believe you wanted to talk about us." Suddenly the commander wasn't so sure about the accuracy of the word 'want', particularly when the other woman continued: "I'm really sorry Nick, I just don't think I can jump back in like nothing happened." The soldier swallowed thickly, eyes darting away. "But... maybe we can start over?"
"What exactly are you suggesting?" Shepard asked, hope and caution filling her in equal measure. "You're talking to a thicko marine remember, might need you to spell it out."
"We start fresh, no expectations. We get to know each other again, see what's changed and where it takes us."
"I've not changed Trish, I've not had time." She exhaled deeply, eyes momentarily closing as she fought her conflicting emotions before forcing a smirk on her face. "But sure, means I get to woo you again right?"
"Woo." The civilian snorted. "Is that what you call it?"
"Yeah." The smile was much more natural now. "Why, what would you call it?"
"Stumbling around blindly with no idea what you're doing and getting lucky sometimes."
"Come on I'm not that bad, am I?"
"You're lucky you're so adorably cute when you're floundering."
"Hey! I'm a big bad spectre, I don't flounder."
"Mhmm." Trish raised a disbelieving eyebrow.
"I'll have you know that I can charm birds from trees." Nikki claimed with a straight face.
"That wasn't charm, it was bribery. They wanted the bread."
"Bribery huh? I can work with that." There was a chuckle but their conversation was interrupted by the sound of gunshots. Trish immediately looked concerned but Nick just forced her head backwards with a frustrated groan. "Seriously!? I'm supposed to be on leave."
"You could always let C-Sec handle it, you don't have to get involved." Trish offered without much hope but the soldier already had a pistol in her hand, a few quick taps of her omni-tool resulting in her being enveloped in the familiar orange glow of tech armour.
"They'll take too long to respond. Besides, twenty credits says my crew's involved somehow. Fifty says that if they're not Garrus is already heading that way to investigate. I'll message you later but I've got to go." She had in fact already been moving but now her hand hovered over the necessary controls to sever the omni-tool's connection.
"Nick... please be careful." The spectre simply shot her what she clearly believed to be a winning smile.
"Aren't I always?" The call ended before Trish had time to respond.
"No, not really." She sighed as the familiar tendrils of worry started worming their way throughout her chest.
...
Author's note: I'm not dead! I would dearly love to say that updates are going to be on some kind of regular schedule now but I wouldn't want to lie. All I can promise is that I definitely won't be abandoning this story. In fact I already have a short scene involving Nicholas written that will be taking place during ME3. Those reviewers who thought he was going to be a handful when he grows up... Oh yes!