Windows are shattered with indiscriminate gunfire in what seems to be an attempt to flush her from her position. She rushes over to Tony and shoves him to the floor before they get hit by a stray bullet, hitting the floor to make a desperate scramble for her dad's bag of weaponry. She turns it upside down to spill everything out and see what she has on hand, slinging the straps of the sniper and assault rifles over her as she slides the extra guns over to Tony. She's hoping to relocate to another tall building and continue sniping to weed the forces thin. She mutes her broadcast connection.
"I need you to carry these for me. They've breached the building, we have to move out and work our way down."
"Th..they're here?" Tony asks, the words trailing slothfully as the paralysis of fear creeps in to burn from within.
Jane nods, fighting desperately not to think about it before the vines snake around her.
"We're going to be okay." She looks over at him as she beams a reassuring grin. "You'll make it out okay, Tony, I promise. I'm a marine, remember? Means I'm your shield, and they don't train assholes tougher than me. There's another unit of Alliance marines at the bottom. We're going to rendezvous with them."
Upon looking back at her arsenal, she grabs one of the suppressors and takes a look at the rare geometry to see what weapon it fits on to. Ideally, a pistol is best, but it doesn't screw on. She takes a knife hidden in a sheathe in her boot and carves a chunk out of the pistol's grip so that the knife and her knuckles rest more comfortably against it, taking an aim at the wall as she fires. She grimaces at the loud sound—she's just given away her position if there are batarians scaling up the stairwell now. She quickly adjusts the frequency of her omni-tool and uses the thick bag as a makeshift glove to hold onto the suppressor, holding it up against the pistol barrel as she rests her foot to prevent any jostling out of the position. She cuts the suppressor with her omni-tool before she looks over at Tony, cursing within her mind when she can see how pale and panicked the poor fellow is.
"Keep watch on the door. I'm going to weld this suppressor on and then we'll go. Are you familiar with this building?"
Silence, as she works. The searing heat still warms and bites through the thickness of the bag, praying with every fiber of her being that this hare-brained idea is actually going to work. She sets the gun aside to cool as she heads back over to Tony, pulling him up into kneeling by his elbow before she gives him a firm shake of the shoulder. It's a poor attempt to break him free from his mind. He looks up at her with a blank look, as if he's in disbelief.
Another window is shattered, making him jump in his skin. She stuffs the other pistol she'd given him earlier back into his hands, taking it upon herself to work his fingers around it and lift his arms so that he's aiming at the door. She squats and clambers back over to her project, not having the luxury of time to debate Alliance regulations when it comes to modifying firearms. She takes aim at the wall and squeezes the trigger—grinning with pride when it's significantly quieter. The suppressor won't be durable and it's a gamble when it'll all break, but it's better than announcing where she is for the entire army to come flush her out.
"Stay behind me," she orders as she rushes up to him, yanking him roughly onto his feet. "Check your fire, shoot only if you need to in self-defense, but let me handle anybody we cross. Okay? No heroics. Let's go." She holds her knife up against the carved pistol sheathe and aims forward, steeling herself with a breath, trying to ignore the rocks sitting on her chest as her heart pounds away at her ears. The approach to the door feels like she's run a marathon by the time she reaches it. She grimaces when there's significant jostling of weaponry bumping into each other, behind her, and she glances over at Tony as he struggles to hold onto them.
"We'll have to leave that shit behind. The uh..." She looks down at herself, then back at him. "Leave everything but the shotgun and your pistol. Take that box of cracklers with you too, the noise will come in handy to throw them off. Don't ever fire that shotgun without bracing the stock against your shoulder, okay? Or you'll snap your wrists."
"Y-yes ma'am."
"Jane," she corrects, taking aim back at the door as she listens to the rustling behind her. "Put your hand my shoulder and give me a tap when you're ready. Hold onto my shoulder and try your best to keep up with me, okay? We're going to be moving quickly. Don't stop for anything or anyone. Is that understood?"
"Yes ma-"
"Jane."
"am-Jane. Jane ma'am."
Somehow, somewhere, there's a bubble of laughter dwelling in her chest, reminded of the time she too was broken, in a dare-say equally stressful time. She carefully hovers her hand near the button to open the door, holding her breath as she tries to listen for what may have laid beyond it. Nothing near the vicinity. It's difficult to make out anything in the screaming in the background, though.
"Take a deep breath," she quietly coaches. She decides to engage her omni-tool and unmutes her connection, speaking into it to goad the enemy. "Come get me, fuckers. I'm at the top of the building. Elevator's the fastest way up if you want to stop me from picking off the rabble." She mutes the connection and presses the button to open the door, feeling as though she's dragging dead-weight from the hand clinging onto her shoulder for dear life. She clears corners and jogs down the hallway, heading for the stairwell entrance instead.
"We're going to take the stairs all the way to the bottom?" Tony exclaims in dread, his voice quivering in a shell of a whisper.
"Not all the way. Keep moving. Take out one of the cracklers." Jane pulls and enters the stairwell, holding her hand out behind her hip until she feels the crackler press into her palm. She lights it up with her omni-tool and lets it drop down the stairwell as she glances over the railing, smirking when she spots batarians poke their heads out to see what dropped. She takes aim and fires before she steps back and uses her body to shove Tony against the wall, twisting and rushing back for the stairwell door. "Back inside, go, go. Make a run towards the elevator."
"What? Aren't they going to come up?"
"They won't be able to fit all their asses in there and there's no way they know which floor we're on, so they're going to be scattered. And I've got a few ideas in mind to confuse them. We'll be ready for them and pick them off, slow and steady. Come on."
Wherever this bravado is coming from, she isn't sure, but she's always trusted her confidence and her gut when she's able to keep moving on her feet. She picks up her pace and breaks out into a run as she sprints down the hallway for the elevator, opening up every door until she finds a closet, pushing Tony inside the cramped space.
She holds up her finger to her mouth and pushes his forearm down as she whispers. "Lights out, turn your omni-tool off. Transfer your connection with your agency to an ear piece, if you have one. Otherwise, disconnect for now. Get down into kneeling. I'm going to hack into one of the office computers and we're going to speak into my omni-tool to make them think we're in there, get them facing away from us. You followin' me?"
Jane looks around the closet and takes a tarp off one of the shelves, throwing it over them to help suppress the noise coming from here and any ambient lights squeezing out through the cracks in the weary door. She listens intently as batarians yell at each other in the distance, and doors sound as though they're being broken down instead of just opened normally. The units are frustrated, desperate, by the sounds of it all. She lights up her omni-tool and encourages Tony to lean over as she scrolls down a list of computers, starting the hacking process as soon as he points to one.
When the screen is transferred to hers, Tony helps her navigate until they connect to the computer's mic. She looks at him, mouthing: "Ready?"
Tony smiles nervously. His hand is quivering immensely as it comes up to wipe his mouth, before holding it over his lips and squeezing his eyes shut. He nods.
"Don't worry," Jane begins to speak, quickly adjusting the volume until she's able to hear her voice more clearly, and the footsteps in the hallway come to a sudden stop. "Stay here, I'll be back tomorrow. You'll be alright here." She holds her breath, listening again, readying the pistol when the floor creaks slither further away from them. "Reinforcements will be here soon, Tony. The Alliance will crush them. I have to go rendezvous with my unit."
As soon as she hears a door being kicked open, she mutes her connection, throws the tarp off of them, and quietly opens the door. She picks off the ones in the back and catches sight of two entering the computer room, desks crashing over from the sounds of them flipping it over to sniff her out. She holds out her hand for Tony to stay and rushes to toe off her boots, sneaking up the hallway and stepping over the body as she flattens against the wall, listening to the ruckus inside the room. The batarians are talking, and she doesn't understand why her omni-tool isn't able to pick it up or translate their language. Only some words make it through.
Perhaps these pirates have their own slang of their original language? Or does this assault come with the blessing of the Batarian Hegemony, pulling their languages off networks in intergalactic space with the intent that they will not be negotiating with the council anymore?
Either way, Jane doesn't intend to be negotiating with anything but her guns.
They sound frustrated, a random shot out at a window, more things being flipped or thrown. There's a smashing of something, and a quick peek shows that it must've been the computer she connected to. She readies her knife when one is storming on the way out, probably finally seeing some of the bodies there. As soon as there's one in her peripheral vision, she sinks her knife into his neck and pushes his gun down, the rifle's searing heat warming her hip as it fires at the floor. She squeezes her pistol underneath his arm pit and braces her wrist against his rib cage as she peeks out through the side of his bleeding neck, using his body to absorb the fire from the other two in here.
Adrenaline rushes in and yet with a heart hammering in her throat, in fear, there's a calmness in this storm inside of her, a vindictive righteousness sated when she shoots the other two and watches their bodies crumble against desks, hands desperately grabbing at useless things in the final vestiges of life, their blood smearing and pooling. Her knife squelches when she shoulder-checks the batarian shield off her, her gaze panning over the carnage before down at herself.
"Jane..." Tony's voice breaks her away before she herself falls into shock, having never killed this close before.
Her brain won't stop racing with the sensations, the warmth she felt, the agonal breathing that flooded one of her ears as his body twitched. It didn't matter in the moment. It all happened so quickly. How is she now realizing everything that's-
"Jane." Tony's hand snaps over her wrist, tugging her a little. "We have to go. I hear more of them in the stairwell. What do we do next, ma'am?" Tony lets go of her, fixing his own grip on the pistol she gave him. Muscle memory trains her to move, stuffing her pistol in her waistband as she reaches over to help adjust his guide, tuck his thumb, support his wrist.
"We'll set off some cracklers here." She jogs over to collect her boots and rushes them on, sheathing her stained knife back in the boot. "We'll take the elevator and climb up on the roof through the maintenance hatch." When she laces her boots she heads back to him, unsure why he's looking at her all confused, like he's expecting something. "Give me the shotgun for a sec. I'll fire it once, make some more noise that we're on this floor." She takes the shotgun from him, bracing the stock as she turns around and aims at the closet they'd hid in. "Ready?" When she looks back, her eyebrows pinch in confusion. "Tony? Where'd you go?" She runs back, clicking her tongue off the roof of her mouth when he finds him shakily traversing about the room she'd fought in. She sternly strides to grab his shoulder and pull him away, until he takes a pair of glasses out the shelves. He slides them on as he looks back at her, pressing his fingertip into the rim. A small light comes up on the corner of the glasses.
"The viewers have already been warned long ago that this... All of this will be disturbing to see. But the people need to know. They need to see what's going on here."
Jane bites her tongue, suppressing her opinion. She agrees, but looks away. She never wanted Liara to witness this part of her job. It won't be a surprise if Liara looks at her with fear, terrified to see what atrocities her lover is capable of. The only difference between Jane and a pirate right now is that she's the one breathing. She doesn't dare look in a mirror to see just how much blood has splattered on her, with how damp and warm her uniform is, the cooling blood crusting and flaking off her face with a simple wipe across her forehead, chafing the back of her wrist. But she has to keep moving, she has to do whatever she must to keep breathing.
They climb back out into the hallway, where reflexes whip out her pistol when a couple of batarians emerge from the stairwell, and she doesn't have the luxury of time to truly fix her aim as she begins to fire until the pistol stings and bites her palm from the heat. The batarians grab at their throat and gut, painful ways to die.
She can't find it in her to care to be merciful. Not after what she's seen them do to civilians.
In panic, she drags Tony unceremoniously for the elevator, forgetting that the enemy earlier had fired away unsuppressed weapons. The pirates already know they're on this floor. She can't afford to keep making these mistakes. The Alliance trained her better than this, to stay several steps ahead, to analyze the battlefield and—for fuck's sake, though, this is different than fighting with armor and shields, having storage containers as shields rather than fucking bodies.
She pushes Tony to one of the walls beside the elevator and holds out her hand for him to stay there, taking out her knife as she stands directly in front of the doors, waiting for the elevator to respond.
"Keep an eye on my flank, at the stairwell," she commands. She takes a step back as she holds up her pistol when the elevator dings to their floor, squeezing her trigger as soon as the doors open to take out the two that'd entered the shaft. She enters the elevator and looks up for the hatch, cussing. "You guys don't have fucking maintenance hatches in these elevators?"
"No, I tried to tell you that earlier when you told me your plan..." Tony answers quietly, looking into the elevator with a concerned look for her. He's trying desperately not to look at the bodies on the ground, the pool of blood slithering out towards him.
"When?" Jane asks, confused. She doesn't remember. Her head snaps over when she hears the stairwell door opening, quickly yanking Tony into the elevator as they fire away, squeezing themselves into the corners for some paltry cover. "Hit a button, any of them! Get us out of here Tony!" She blindly fires over her shoulder, kicking away at the corpse's feet to bring them into the elevator before the doors close in. She panics and launches a kick at Tony's stomach to shove him back into his corner when he comes to walk into the center of the elevator, where holes are punching straight through the doors. He doubles over with a groan and she grins apologetically, a bizarre bubble of laughter clawing out of her when the elevator whirs to take them down. "Sorry, bud. Better a kick to the balls than a bullet, yeah?"
"Yeah, sure," Tony wheezes, forcing himself up as he slumps against the wall. "What do we do now? I hit the main floor... They're bound to be there."
Jane looks down at the dead bodies, chewing the inside of her lip. How much more is she going to subject Tony to? But it's survival. They have no choice, if they want to live. She sighs as she slings her rifles off and sets them aside, kneeling as she begins to work on pulling up one of the bodies. "We'll have to hide beneath them."
"B-beneath the...?"
"Yes."
There's a cold numbness lurking, threatening to overwhelm her. Jane is trying to hold onto everything that tells her this is wrong, looking up at Tony. She's numbed by the horrified look etched on his face, though, and exhaustion is prickling at her, lulling her. She's going to be prone to making more and more mistakes, the more tired she gets.
Somehow, it's easier to look at the corpse than at Tony.
"My dad is leading a unit of others on shore leave here. He's the one that sent me a warning that the batarians breached this building, so he's somewhere either on the main floor or just outside. We just have to make it outside. It'll all be over soon, Tony. We just... Have to do this, if we want to live."
Nothing. The elevator keeps dinging as it races down the floor. They're running out of time. She doesn't wait for a response, leaving it up to him as she begins to crawl underneath the corpse and pull it over her, working her pistol in again under the arm pit. She grimaces at the grotesque sensations of warm blood drenching her back, pooling onto her stomach from her front.
Somehow, the smell of these aliens are more putrid than anything else, even if the odor isn't heavy. It's ghastly, clinging to her nostrils, filling her with a rage every time she's mindful of it. It disgusts her to do this, use underhanded tactics like this. The Alliance has trained her to fight with skill and honor... But maybe that's why guerrilla strategies are left for the classrooms in officer school, to teach other alternatives when skill and honor are no longer enough to achieve mission objectives and enact military necessity for success.
Reluctantly, Tony follows her lead, his coughs poorly suppressed, his grunts and whines in the back of his throat as he breathes cusses on how fucked up all of this is.
And Liara is watching all of this.
Jane won't be shocked if the first thing Liara does when they reunite is dump her ass for all of these inhumane actions. Even Jane is having trouble swallowing the pill that she's doing all of these things. Her romantic notion of what it means to be an Alliance marine is slowly being chiseled away, and she's finding it harder and harder to hold onto all her ideals, all the things she's ever envisioned herself to be.
The best marine anyone has ever seen, able to overcome anything through precision and execution of calculated, humane tactics.
From the start of this fucking siege, she's been utilizing nothing but deceptive tricks and savage techniques. Best marine her ass, she's well on her way to being coined the most vile marine anyone has ever seen.
Enough. She needs to stay afloat. She can't become her own enemy right now. If nothing else, she needs to make sure Tony survives this. He's a civilian. He shouldn't have been dragged into this in the first place, and she must rectify that mistake. He must have a family, must have children, someone who's also forced to watch this alongside Liara. But the difference is, Jane chose this life. Tony hasn't.
Every ding heralds that dreadful feeling to grow stronger in the pits of her stomach. Her heart soars to pound at her throat when the elevator slows to a halt, where she struggles to keep the vomit dwelling in her chest. Distant fire alarm her, and she holds her breath when the doors hiss open. There are voices shouting in the lobby among the hail of gunfire, and she recognizes her dad's voice among them, ordering the pirates to stand down or surrender.
Right, that was a thing. They were supposed to encourage the enemy to surrender first. Not just sink knives in throats as soon as they obliviously stepped through a door.
By the sounds of it, nobody is interested in it though. She risks moving her head to steal a peek from the side, immediately springing into action to take advantage of the opportunity of the batarians' backs facing her. She stuffs her pistol in her waistband as she reaches over Tony's carcass to grab the shotgun he was carrying, bracing the stock on her shoulder as she jumps up on her feet and charges straight for cover that allows her to flank the enemy.
Some spot her, and panic deludes them into relinquishing their position to protect themselves from her, only to be picked off by dad's unit.
That vindictiveness inside of her grows. A cheer is barely suppressed in her chest when she side-steps out of her corner and braces the shotgun against her shoulder, firing and catching two batarians in the legs. It snaps, crumples, multiple holes shredding through their pants, and their screams of agony flood the lobby.
Dad's face, his expression, what is that? It's hard to read. He seems to realize it's her, though, and his unit is safe to move up into the lobby with the majority of the batarians injured, seemingly crying for mercy in their tongues. She slings the strap of her shotgun over her shoulder and takes out her pistol, striding quickly for them when she spots someone in dad's unit taking a backpack off to search for medical supplies.
It takes all of her discipline not to spit in the pirate's face before she takes aim dead-center of their freakish four eyes and fires.
Someone's yelling, incoherent and garbled. She looks around to see if it's another batarian missed, taken aback and almost flinching with surprise when dad suddenly comes up in her face and grabs her wrist. Her stupor falls apart upon realizing he looks pissed, her eyebrows furrowing with righteous anger when he filches the pistol from her hands.
"Fucking bullshit, dad. We shouldn't be treating their wounded. They're getting exactly what they deserve."
"That is not up to you to decide," he hisses lowly, out of the others' earshot. "We adhere to the galactic laws and principles of war. You are not above those laws."
"They're committing war crimes by executing civilians, justice should decree they get a taste of their own medicine. Not us treating those surrendering with dignity. Fuck that. There's been no fucking dignity from what I've been seeing through my scope. Laws and principles? Have you seen them listen to any of that bullshit? This is military necessity."
"That is not up to you to decide," he growls. "I am the commanding officer here and that falls on me to determine military necessity. Do you want the Alliance to throw your ass in jail, kid? That civvie there is recording all of this. It's blasted on the news. The entire galaxy has all the evidence falling right in their lap, you wouldn't even get the right to have a trial by jury with your every action here confessing your guilt."
"What the fuck am I guilty of?" Jane exasperates, her jaw slowly dropping, stunned that dad is even admonishing her for this. "These pirates don't give a fuck about law, dad, they're slaughtering these civilians."
"And you're turning into them."
Fury explodes and she steps up to him, snarling in his face. His warnings for her to stand down fall on deaf ears. Another marine jogs up to them.
"Sir! The pirates have unleashed varrens in the streets! With all due respect, sir, we must head to the landing zone now. We need those reinforcements."
"We're retreating?" Jane balks in disbelief, her gaze snapping over to the Rear Admiral. "Tell me we're not doing this, dad. We have to do something."
"We can't do anything."
Words still falling on deaf ears, her rant picking up. "We can't just stand by and keep fucking watching this! Varren eat their victims while they're alive. We can't let them, w-we have to do something." Her eyes begin to burn, hopelessness gripping her as dad turns away, unable to look at her in the eyes anymore. "Dad! What the fuck are you doing?!"
"Fall in line, soldier. This unit risked their necks just to pull you out of this mess you've dug yourself in. Continue to disobey my orders and I will see to it personally that you will be punished." His head snaps over his shoulder, his glare sending chilling goosebumps surging down her spine. "We are only five, Lieutenant Shepard. We're not capable nor equipped to clear an entire colony. We will only be throwing ourselves into the body count if we head out into the streets. We have to secure the landing zone to ensure our reinforcements can-"
"So you're sacrificing the civilians!" Jane seethes. "What does their safety mean?!"
"Stand down," dad pivots sharply and storms up to her, both of them snarling. "I am not asking. I am your commanding officer and this is an order, Lieutenant Shepard."
She refuses to back down, that ugly vindictiveness coming out with a smirk. "You can no longer order me around, sir." She takes a step back and slides the shotgun strap off her as she gently lays it down on the ground, hooking her hands on the lip of her blood-soaked uniform shirt. She pulls it off, unsheathing her knife to slice off the symbols on the shoulders. She shoves the shirt against his chest, where it falls when it lets go. She picks up her shotgun, heads back to the elevator to collect all weaponry, and ensures she's heard loud and clear when she runs out of the lobby to head for the streets.
"I'm not Lieutenant Shepard anymore. My name is Jane Shepard."
Fuck the Alliance.
Fuck the pirates.
Fuck the varrens.
Fuck her fucking muscles, fuck being tired.
Rage is her motor, pain is her fuel. She doesn't care who sees. She doesn't care about the evidence. There's a tiny voice in the back of her head trying to urge sense to return, in hopes to calm her down and help her see that dad is right. But abandoning these civilians is wrong. It doesn't matter if they don't have the firepower. He wants to hide behind Alliance laws and honor? Honor dictates that the marines lay down their lives to protect the civilians.
So, what, all that drivel they taught in school was all just lies?
Hounds rampage the streets in hordes. They attack indiscriminately, bloodthirsty fangs sinking even into the pirates that should be their allies. They're untrained, bones and ribs poking out to display how starved they've been. Civilians run away screaming in fear, some hopelessly trying to fend off a hound with chairs or garbage bins.
There isn't a heart left to break when Jane is forced to end the misery of people who've been torn apart by the time she reaches them. She keeps close to the walls as she stalks down the streets, taking aim with her assault rifle and bursting down any hound that diverts to come for her. She yelps when one sneaks up to her, it's large paw slicing the side of her thigh, and immediately retaliates with her knife into it's eye, having learned the hard way how tough their skulls are. The hound shrieks in pain and she takes aim, squeezing the trigger over and over again until she feels the lick of heat against her forearm, heavy breaths heaving out of her.
But not the varren.
She waits until it stops twitching to ensure it's dead, forcing to take a break as she leans against the wall. Despair overwhelms her as she numbly watches hounds tear into people. Her arms are shutting down. She looks down at herself, unable to distinguish who's blood is who's, her entire body feeling as though it's in flames. It's then she realizes there's a large gash in her left forearm, exhaustively tumbling into a building and cutting up bed sheets to tie and stop her wounds from bleeding.
Amber lights up in her peripheral vision. Something sinks to the pits of her stomach as she reads Liara T'Soni on the screen. Right. Tony isn't here anymore, she isn't on the news for the galaxy to watch. That's for the best. Jane ignores the calls, one after another, focusing only on putting her foot forward, one after another.
But the next time a civilian pleads her to end their misery, she caves. She answers the call, wandering down the street without an aim or goal beyond putting down every rabid hound, condemned to using her pistol when her injured arm rejects her own orders. Karma. She steels herself, for some reason a voice coaching her to be stone-cold and expressionless when she sees Liara's face in the corner of her eyes. Jane transfers the audio to her implants, listening only to the archaeologist's shaky breathing.
Neither of them say anything. What's there to say?
Another civilian, another life to end. She's no longer the hero she used to dream of. Something inside of her cracks and she crumbles as if she's just particles of dust holding together. She wanders inside of a shattered building, tiredly collapsing inside of a closet as she shields her eyes with her bloodied hand, a sharp jolt searing over one of her eyes when she bumps something. She searches and finds a small handheld mirror, inspecting a shard of glass impaling one of her eyes, blood trickling down her cheek. What's first aid for this shit again? Don't pull it out, stabilize the object. She doesn't see anything in here to make a donut to cushion around the glass. She closes her good eye and holds her hand over her face, securing the glass shard between spread fingers.
"This is so fucked up," she warbles. "Why are they doing this, Liara? I don't get it. Why us? Why these people? I can't save anybody anymore. I'm killing them instead. This is all my fault."
"No it's not," Liara breaks her silence with an urgent whisper. "None of this is your fault, Jane."
"I'm the one that told them to fight." Her eye burns, and there's a vicious recoil inside of her sternly demanding that she not. She's not the victim here, she has no right to cry. "If they all retreated, they wouldn't be suffering like this. There would be something left to save. It's all over now. The Alliance is gonna come here, and there's nothing left for them to rescue and evacuate."
"There are. They're loading people in the shuttles."
Jane's head shoots up. "What?"
"They've landed. The news is reporting all pirate vessels have been neutralized in space. Alliance reinforcements are sweeping across the sectors now. It's only a matter of time now."
Horrified screams alarm her, and she clambers out of the closet, summoning the last vestiges of the strength she no longer has as she comes up to the shattered window. Her arm shakes from fatigue as she lifts her pistol, her shots missing over and over again as she fires to stop a varren attacking a pirate. And then she realizes what she's trying to stop it from. Her arm falls and she watches emptily, her vindictiveness having drained a long time ago.
Dead bodies collect on the street of all manners of species. It's hard to discern who is who, dismembered limbs scattered. She grimaces and a repulsive shudder shoots down her spine when she looks over at another hound breaking the ribs of a pirate and tearing into the batarian's stomach, his eyes still lucid, his throat crushed by a paw so that he's no longer able to scream.
"There isn't a soul left saving here," Jane murmurs, scanning for any civilians. There are none left alive. None hiding in other buildings.
"There's you," Liara quietly urges. "Jane... Please..."
"What for? They're going to put cuffs on me. I've disobeyed my commander's order." She scoffs. "I thought dad was different, but he's just like all the other uppity superiors."
"He wanted to protect you from this."
"I don't give a fuck," she hisses. "We're marines. He's always been the one that fucking prided on that. We serve the people. We lay our lives down for these people. What the fuck is our family tradition, actually, then? Is it just for the medals, the prestige? What the fuck does honor matter when we're leaving people to die? What's honorable about that? I'll welcome the nightmares of this over the nightmares of abandoning the people."
Liara falls silent. At least there's some kind of emotion blooming in Jane again, even if it's more anger. Her fingers ache in protest when she holds her pistol tighter, bits and pieces of the carved grip rubbed off by her thumb. She struggles to hold it together as she listens to the shaky breathing on the other end of the line. Finally, Liara breaks the silence after what feels like years are passing through here.
"Tony Giordano has made it safely, and he's praising your heroics. The news anchors collectively agree. Everybody is praying that you are safe out there."
A laugh bubbles out of Jane, but it's just the sounds of another rabid animal. "Heroics? What the fuck have people actually been watching? Maybe the news plastered some overlay over his recordings. Don't blame them. All that shit was real fucked up. I hope he shut his glasses off when we hid under the bodies." She pokes her head out the broken window, looking down the street of the last civilian she'd killed. "There's nothing heroic about what I've done here."
"You saved a lot of people, Jane."
"I've killed a lot of people too."
Another shaky breath, a choke. Liara's voice crumbles, and Jane lumbers back inside the building as she falls in the closet, squeezing her eye shut as she listens to Liara struggling not to cry, sighing. "If you do, I will. I can't afford to right now. I need to bunker down here, have my signal lit for the cavalry to find me." A fucking janitor's closet. What a barricade. "I need to listen for the varren. What's the news reporting right now? What's the state of Elysium? How long until the Alliance is able to do a full sweep?"
"They don't have that information yet. They got Tony to board one of the shuttles."
"If there's no information to even guess then it's that bad, then. A few more hours for sure." Jane takes a mop out and flips the bucket on the other side so that she can sit on it, propping her shaking wrist on her knee so that she can at least keep the pistol aimed forward. Even with an unsteady hand, there's no way her shots can miss at point-blank range. Her head lulls down, scanning her injuries, the makeshift bandages soaked crimson. The lure of sleep is pulling harder and harder over time. She forces her head back and uncomfortably lays against the shelf, staring at the ceiling. "I must've lost a lot of blood."
"You have to stay awake," Liara urges, panic creeping into her tone. "Talk to me, Jane."
"About what? I'm not exactly at a hotel destination right now, hon."
"Anything. Just keep talking, please. You need to make it out of this alive."
"Right," Jane rolls her eye with a snarky drawl, agony biting her for her injured eye trying to roll along in tandem, and she closes her good eye again. "I forgot the Alliance still needs to toss my ass in jail before I get to die. Protocol and process, right?"
"You need to make it out of this alive for me, to come home to me. And they won't do that."
"You heard my dad, right? We weren't exactly quiet at the end."
"They won't do that," Liara assures. "They're calling you a hero, Jane. They-"
"Have to make an example of me for disobeying orders, regardless. They aren't obligated to publicize it." She huffs, chuckling bitterly. "Hero... Dreamed of being one all my life, worked my ass off to be the best of the best. Don't feel like it one fucking bit, and if this is what it means to be a fucking 'hero', then I want no part of it."
Hesitance grips Liara's tone, her voice softening to a hush. "What do you feel like you are?"
There's not a single doubt about it. Muscle memory kicks in and her body tenses as soon as she hears a shard of glass kicked out in the lobby, with audible and aggressive sniffing. Her finger hooks over the trigger as she raises her arm up to aim at the doorway. A ruthlessness surfaces as she smirks over the promise of putting down another rabid animal.
"A butcher."
Now she's beginning to feel like she's just a rusty cog in the gears of fate, helpless to do anything and forced to move along with the machinations at play. She's a ghost whom nobody listens to. Whom nobody wants to listen to.
Insanity just about sums up the aftermath of Elysium. All said and done. The Alliance are heroes, every single one of them. A military funeral for one, praises for doing a good job for... Doing their job. A ceremony for her to showcase the regalia and power of Systems Alliance HQ Arcturus Station, perching her up on a stage for news to blast out to the galaxy how humanity has prevailed against vile evil-doers, with politics taking advantage of this growing volatile tension between batarians and humans in galactic space.
By the way, sorry for the catastrophic losses, those who've lost family and livelihoods.
Back to the matter of business!
The Alliance have defeated the depraved batarians in honorable combat. Really? Is that how they perceived all that supposedly wonderful evidence of what Jane did?
What a skewed definition of honor, then.
The criminals who have surrendered have to answer to the law now. What justice could possibly be enacted for those who suffered agonizing and slow deaths? Jane thinks even a death by firing squad would be too merciful, but they should be treated like the pigs they had treated their captives. Hell, even their own allies, like the varren. What a fitting death for those masters that got mauled and eaten alive.
Insanity just about sums up the aftermath of the awards ceremony, where Jane's achieved a Star of Terra and—ooh~ a fancy new rank for all that bullshit, too!
Just one, though. Need to lose a limb to jump two ranks.
Real shiny, this medal pinned to her dress blues. Someone must've breathed on it and polished it with a special-fiber cloth, too expensive to wipe an ass with. That's what she deciphers even from Liara's polite and diplomatic description of the pin, thanks to the darkness shrouding Jane as both her eyes have needed to be bandaged in order to help her injured eye heal. An arm is linked under her forearm, gentle fingers cupping her wrist to help guide her on where to move in this dreadful ceremonial after-party.
Someone please drop a fucking nuke on this place.
"I need vodka," Jane states adamantly, needing to buzz up the beetles crawling under her skin, repulsed by this festivity as the Alliance throws publicized speeches for the galaxy to gobble up about honor and sacrifice.
What fucking sacrifice? They weren't the ones that sacrificed jack shit. They were the ones that forced sacrifices on innocent people.
"Just a little bit longer," Liara whispers in her ear. "We'll leave soon. I'd wager you'd like to celebrate in private instead," a beat. Her voice turns into a subtle melody, as if it's supposed to be music to the butcher's ears. "Lieutenant Commander Shepard."
"I don't want to celebrate at all," Jane grumbles. "There's nothing to celebrate."
All Liara has to say to it is a reluctant sigh. Moist lips press to the butcher's jawbone, before there's pressure resting on the side of her head. "I understand you're hurting... But I hope one day, when you've healed, you'll see yourself the way we all see you right now. You really are a hero."
No, she really is not. And how can anybody heal from that? All she thinks is that it'll just hurt less with time, because her shit memory will eventually forget the things that hurt this much.
It's an age old argument that Jane has sensed depressing the fuck out of Liara, though, and so she bites her tongue before she renews it. Right now, she needs Liara—not just to guide her blind ass around, but to keep her as far the fuck away from dad as possible. She doesn't want to hear anything from him right now. He made it clear where they stand. It's not united, nor is it as father and daughter. Whatever praises and medals the Alliance throws at her has nothing to do with him, and he has no right to celebrate with her, to hold pride that his flesh and blood has such a prestigious medal. No doubt politics will play a hand in aiding him in his career now. Look, everybody! His daughter has a Star of Terra, must've been thanks to him for raising such a valorous individual!
Fucking ugh, she wants to vomit.
If there was a way to just siphon blood and change her type completely so that she wouldn't be biologically related to that guy, she'd agree to such an operation in a heartbeat. Fucking coward. Hiding behind rank, behind orders. If she ever makes it to the rank of Rear Admiral, no way is she ever going to follow in his footsteps of all the shit he ordered to do in that battle. Reinforcements should've been more than capable enough to figure out how the fuck to land on their own, if ground forces were supposed to figure out how the fuck to fight.
"Come this way, let us go to the bar. It's noisy there," Liara suggests, and Jane blindly turns her head as she searches a cheek to kiss for this godsend to help her drown her thoughts.
"Love you," she mumbles.
A sharp inhale. A firm press on the lips, etching resolve in the kiss before the words are breathed with reverence. "I love you too, Jane."
The way Liara holds onto her arm then is as if to anchor her so that she'll never be cast out into the ocean to drown ever again. How Liara is still able to say those words is beyond the butcher. She doesn't think there's anything to love, especially not after all the brutality that has been witnessed by the galaxy, and still somehow heralded as heroism. She personally thinks all these people are off their rockers, their hope blinding them, rushing to excuse her barbarism on Elysium. Or perhaps they're so pissed off at the batarians and what they'd done, that everything she did is minor compared to them. Justified.
Politics has never been her forte and she's not seeking to remedy that any time soon, electing to drown out the news and gossip circulating among the other Alliance officers in here. She's guided to sit on a stool and tenses when she no longer feels Liara, immediately melting with relief when she hears another stool scraping closer to her for shoulders to brush against each other.
For some reason, her eyes begin to burn, and the injured one protests in agony over the brimming tears. She carefully presses her bandages in to soak up the tears, only for Liara to grab her wrist and tenderly pull away before she antagonizes the healing process. Lips press below Jane's ear, and that scary thing Liara can somehow do comes up again.
"I really do love you, Jane," she says, as if she's somehow sensed those inner doubts. That darkness eating away inside.
All Jane can think to do is nod. She doesn't know what to say back. She still has the doubts, wishing they could be easily blasted away. It feels wrong to doubt Liara, feels dirty. Jane hates it, but she can't change it even if she tries. She isn't aware that her body has locked up until she feels pressure against her shoulder, breaths warming through her dress blues with a mouth pressed to the new symbols on her uniform. She's desperate for a distraction. The bar isn't loud enough to drown her thoughts. She blindly searches and collects Liara's hand in her lap.
"What are you wearing?" Jane asks, smirking a little when she swears she's feeling deadpan eyes fall on her right now. "What? I'm just curious what formal wear is for the asari."
"Mm hm."
"I swear."
"I believe you," Liara expresses flatly.
"I gotta know how to take off-"
A swift and decisive finger comes up and settles on the middle of her lips, before her jaw is cupped and her head is turned for a kiss to silence her. She can't help it, and chuckles bubble in the kiss. She can perfectly imagine the roll of eyes as Liara shakes her head in the kiss. Jane breaks it to trace her way to the aural so that nobody else is able to hear her, if anybody's even looking at them right now.
"How much longer do I gotta stay here? Let's take a flight back to Thessia already. Didn't you wanna show me the University of Serrice next?"
"It's a party for you, you should probably stay until it's over."
"What is that logic? If I'm not having fun in my own party, then I'm allowed to go home. So let's go. I got my shiny medal, a new bullshit rank, and..." She taps the bar counter, raising her voice in hopes there's a bartender around. "A bottle of your best vodka to go, please!" Her eyes sting when her grin lifts her cheeks, looking where she thinks Liara is, knowing full well that flat look hasn't changed one bit. "Didn't you say you've been missing out, hon? I thought you wanted to get me drunk."
"Jane..."
That tone. That tone that knows exactly what she's doing, why she's doing it, punching a hole straight through the deception to zero in on the truth. Jane falters, her grin falls, her head lulling down to hone in on the sensations of a hand squeezing hers firmly, in solidarity. She sighs and caves in.
"Please, Liara. I don't want to see or hear Elysium anymore. I don't care what the Alliance wants to do with me right now. I don't care if they're drafting up posters of me to blast out to recruiting centers. I don't care about any of that. They've already taken me off my tour, but there's nobody reaching out to me to get me cleared so I can get back to serving. I wouldn't be surprised if this is all just for show for the public, before they privately discharge me for sayin' I ain't Alliance anymore."
Something bumps into the other hand on the bar counter. It sloshes on her fingers, before the shot glass topples over, off it's balance.
Enraged, she rips away from her stool and starts storming off, uncaring of who or what she bumps into, unable to hear anything else besides the screaming within her mind. It rests on the tip of her tongue, clawing up her throat.
There's almost a moment of retaliation when she feels that familiar arm slip underneath hers, fingers weaving between hers and squeezing to try and squeeze some kind of tranquility back into her. She can't. There's a weight on her chest and it's burning in her lungs, she just wants to scream aloud, to say fuck it all to everything she's been grinding for and tell all of Alliance what she really feels.
A measure of serenity breaks through wrath as Liara's voice fills her ear, a supportive arm wrapped around the small of her back to take control of her hips and pull her in more decisive directions.
"I've a place in mind to take you to, to take your mind away from the place it is trapped in."
Relief overtakes Jane again. Thank whatever fucking gods or goddesses exist to have at least aligned the gears of fate so that she has Liara by her side. She fumbles about and kisses something, feeling heat creep into her face when Liara seems to be laughing out of awkwardness and embarrassment. A gentle palm frames and caresses her cheek, pulling her into a kiss that feels fragile, as if all this between them may fall apart tomorrow. An ominous feeling. Selfishly, Jane doesn't bring it to question, isn't brave enough to air it out. She can't do this alone.
Guided outside the ceremonial hall, where voices no longer thunder around them, a blissful peace fights to quell the war being fought inside the mind as she hears bird calls, singing and chirping. There's a warmth that embraces what little is left of her face, the bandages lighting up slightly with a dull amber glow. Twigs crunch beneath their feet, their heels clicking resoundingly against what seems to be a stone path. It still catches her off guard, how technology is able to simulate a sun, how architects calculate all the details to really immerse people in a synthetically-made nature. She wishes she had the talent or creativity to pull off things like this. Maybe then she could put herself to use by healing people instead of hurting them.
Her vodka bottle is clutched in her free hand for dear life, a parched thirst begging for her to open it and down it all right here, free from prying eyes. There's a yearning inside of her to see Liara, her face, her eyes, what she's truly feeling behind them as she hides it all with words, keeping the attention away from her.
There's no way she isn't hurting too.
"I should be comforting you," Jane mumbles her realization. Her heart sinks to her stomach when the asari sighs, soon followed by a forced chuckle.
"No, you are doing exactly what you should," Liara hums. "Allowing me to comfort you."
"You saw fucked up shit, love."
A sharp breath. Firm, frank words. "So have you."
"Yeah, but... But if you were in my shoes, if I saw all of that happening to you, I..." She sucks in the corner of her lip, chewing painfully hard as her realization soars to new depths, unearthing many layers to all the pain that must be tormenting Liara right now. "I don't know what I would do. I wouldn't have been able to do what you do—I still wouldn't be able to."
"You give yourself too little credit, as always," Liara whispers affectionately, guiding Jane to sit on a bench where the chill of metal bites through her slacks. Hands rest on her shoulders, warm lips pressed to the tiny part of her forehead not masked by the bandages. "All of us have been witnesses to your determination to do what you believe is right. That is why you are the one they awarded the Star of Terra to, Jane. Tony still kept recording after you... Parted ways with your father's unit. They had their share of heroic deeds, but none have fought so hard that they were truly willing to lay down their life and limb for every passerby."
"Heroic deeds," Jane scoffs, shrinking a little in her seat when Liara clicks her tongue the way she always does whenever her opinion is a stern opposite.
"I understand both sides, understand why you and your father have thought and acted in the ways that you have. Neither of you were in the wrong."
"He left-"
"What did you see, when you went out in the streets?"
A nip of the tongue, the iron taste of blood flooding her mouth as she reluctantly grumbles. "Nothing left to save by the time they'd unleashed the hounds."
Liara inhales starkly, though her tone softens with sympathy. "If you had seen what he had to do in order to secure the zone for reinforcements... All those who were able to escape the genocide would have perished. Including you. You had fought to buy extra time for those who were trying to escape, and he had fought to ensure that you all retained those means to escape."
The bottle is taken away, though soon there is a hissing as if a cap is being unscrewed. Surprisingly enough, something that feels like a small shot glass is pushed into Jane's hand, manipulated so that she's holding it upright. A smile is unwillingly forced from her, chuckling when the unpracticed pouring from the bottle ends up splashing some vodka over her fingers. Liara's quiet apologies are kissed away, which ends up spilling more vodka when Jane's shot glass swings aside, and the two share a brief laugh before their foreheads press together.
"I understand you are hurting, how, and why," Liara murmurs. "And it did hurt me to do nothing but sit and watch, to see you fight with your own nature, your hopes and dreams; to see the nature of all the scars you bear on your soul, and the ones you've been excusing away as ill luck, bumping into crates."
Jane grins, pointing at her injured eye. "Okay but technically I did bump into something if I had a shard of glass sticking in there."
A sigh. Liara slips her hand back over the marine's wrist to stop her from swinging about, and the weight of the shot glass grows again as liquid is precariously poured into it. "I understand where you are coming from, Jane—why you will say and do the things that you do. But I want you to understand that wherever you are, I will go."
The bottle still sounds like it's being poured, but it no longer feels like it's in Jane's glass. The weight of words sink in, and she silently reflects on them. She doesn't know what to say, struggles to come up with something—Liara has always been so good with her words, so good with being able to find that measure of seriousness that can't be dismissively joked away. Then, out of nowhere, tears begin to burn behind her eyes when she hears and feels the clink of another shot glass. Liara's actions always have had a way to just... Speak straight to her heart. She still struggles to think of what to do to reciprocate, chuckling half-heartedly when she hears Liara drink and cough, complaining about the vodka's burn under her breath.
Jane throws her head back to down her shot, coughing as it sears down her chest, and turns in her seat to thumb up the side of the bandages of her good eye. She grins a grin that shouts there ain't nothing Liara can do right now to combat her sheer stubbornness, but what Jane sees re-ignites the war inside of her again.
Liara isn't looking at her like she is the Hero of Elysium.
She looks afraid instead.