FIC: Architects of Their Own Fortune (14)
Title: Architects of Their Own Fortune
Author: Jewels (bjewelled)
Fandom: Mass Effect
Disclaimer: Mass Effect is Bioware's. And don't they do well with it?
Summary: Rumours abound: the Omega 4 relay has been used, and signs lead to Shepard being involved somehow. Someone has to investigate, and who better than one of Shepard's former crew? On top of all that, ship crews are disappearing, and it can't be the Collectors. So who's responsible, and why?
From The Beginning
~*~
Fourteen: Live With It
~*~
Miranda wasn't sure what she was expecting to happen, but she wasn't expecting the cruiser that had been hovering off their bow to abruptly move to a different orbit, putting them neatly out of weapons range, at the same time as she received a hail from Shepard saying that the shuttle was returning. She was intensely curious. She knew something must have happened down on the planet, something important, but when she stepped off the shuttle, onto the deck, Shepard barely glanced at Miranda as she unlatched her weapons, handing them off to a crewman waiting to take them back to the armoury.
"Tell Joker to take us to the Citadel," Shepard said, tightly. She'd removed her helmet, her hair clinging damply to her forehead, and her jaw was tight enough that Miranda was surprised she couldn't hear her molars cracking under the pressure.
"What happened down there?" Miranda asked.
Shepard closed her eyes briefly, and tilted her head, and Miranda regretted asking. "Carry out my orders," she said. Her voice was soft, but firm. Miranda knew she wouldn't ask a third time.
"Yes, Commander," she said.
Shepard nodded slowly and walked past her, ignoring the other crew members who were approaching to stow the shuttle. After Shepard had left the deck, Miranda turned to Garrus and Commander Alenko, who were still there, handing over weapons and unlatching armour plates.
"Well?" she prompted, backing up her query with a raised eyebrow.
"Vast conspiracies," Garrus said, and grunted. "There are a lot of those around these days."
Miranda scowled at the non-answer, and looked at Alenko. He didn't seem particularly inclined to help her. She briefly wished that the Normandy were a military ship, and she could just order Garrus to tell her what had happened. If she tried, he'd probably laugh at her.
"I assume you'll be leaving us at the Citadel," she said to Alenko, and folded her arms. "And that you'll report back to the Council about everything that you've seen so far." She shook her head. "If Shepard were smart she'd kill you or keep you locked up."
Alenko looked at her for a long, searching moment, then smirked slightly and shook his head. "I have no interest in what your crew is up to, Ms. Lawson, now that you're not affiliated with Cerberus. Trust me on that one."
"I don't trust you at all," she said, "But apparently Shepard does. I suppose that'll have to be good enough."
Alenko looked past her, to the elevator doors through which Shepard had left the deck. "Sure," he said, somewhat distantly. "If you say so."
~*~
The AI didn't try to deny him access to Shepard's quarters, so presumably she either had expected company, or she hadn't thought to specify his exclusion. Inside, she was lying on her bed, still in her hardsuit, staring up at the ceiling with a dull, vacant expression. He recognised the look of one so far past the point of endurance that they honestly no longer had the energy to get emotional.
Kaidan had spent more than a few hours in that state after she'd died.
"Come to tell me that I made the right decision?" she asked, without looking at him. "Or maybe the wrong one?"
"Which would you like to hear?" He leaned against the wall next to her fishtank, looking down at her.
"The one where everything from about two years ago to today is all a dream, there are no such things as Reapers, Cerberus, or Spectres and I'm just another Alliance grunt counting the days til her next shore leave." She rubbed her hands across her face, leaving faint pink blotches on her skin where she pressed too hard.
He stepped forward, crossing to the side of her bed and sitting on the edge. He'd already changed out of his armour into the plain black clothes that he'd been wearing before, and he didn't make the mattress dip nearly as much as the fully-armoured Shepard did.
"When did you last sleep?" he said, and reached out to prod her shoulder. "Roll over."
Shepard pulled her face into a brief grimace, but did as she was told. "I don't need as much sleep as I used to. The tech does a pretty good job of filtering out the fatigue poisons."
"So does a dose of noxedrin. People still go crazy with no sleep." On her side now, she'd exposed the power plant. While the armour wasn't exactly standard issue, apparently based on experimental tech that Kaidan was certain wasn't on general sale, it was similar enough to standard issue gear that he had no trouble finding and depressing the manual override, sending the power plant into shutdown. It slowly stopped giving out the low frequency hum that you never really noticed until it was gone. He ran his hands over the joints of the hardsuit until he felt his fingertips brush the releases. He started with her gloves, pulling them and the gauntlets off her arms. Her skin was pale, clammy and cool to the touch. "So when did you last sleep?"
"When did we come back through the relay?" Shepard didn't sound like she was giving him the smart alec response; she seemed genuinely curious.
Her torso armour unlatched at the front, splitting open like a clamshell, and it took a little shuffling around to pull over her arms. Kaidan had no idea where she stored it, and just set it aside on the deck for the moment. Her boots came off easily enough, still covered in the dust and dirt of the Sanctuary, and she lifted her hips obligingly when he prompted, wriggling out of the last few pieces of armour. Underneath, she'd been wearing the standard abbreviated tank top and shorts that easily fitted underneath a hardsuit without interfering with its medical and tactile packs.
Someone had remade the room since they'd left it last, perhaps through the efforts of Shepard's yeoman. The bedsheets were tucked in tightly, and it took Kaidan a moment to pull them loose enough that he could pull it over Shepard. He slipped in next to her, still fully dressed.
"You made the right decision," he told her, as he dimmed the lights.
"Yeah," she said, the words carrying on a sigh. She'd already closed her eyes, lulled by the low lights. "Now I'm no better than a bunch of kidnappers." She shifted closer, and he wrapped an arm around her waist. "You're going to be reporting back to the Council, I take it?"
"Yes. Care to join me?"
Shepard harrumphed softly. Clearly not.
He kissed her neck. "Promise me you'll call me if you need me. Do you still like Massenet?"
Shepard made a noise that could be construed as agreement. It was the work of a few words to the AI to make the sound of a violin come floating through the air. Kaidan had no idea if she fell asleep after that, but if she didn't she gave a remarkably good impression of it, and she didn't stir when he whispered in her ear, so he allowed himself to fall into slumber not long after.
~*~
The Citadel hadn't changed since Shepard had last been there. For some reason, part of her thought that everyone should have been aware of their great victory over the Collectors. Instead, their arrival brought the same bored-sounding docking clearance. She supposed she shouldn't have been too bothered about the lack of attention to their exploits, considering that Anderson had sent Kaidan out to investigate.
Shepard sat on the dockside, outside the Normandy's airlock, and watched people go by over in the public area at the end of their berth. She was there saying her farewells. Kasumi's had been brief and upbeat. The thief had pulled her into a hug and told her that she hoped they saw each other again, before bouncing away. She was going to ground, Shepard knew, planning to keep her head down to avoid those who might want the knowledge she had inherited from her lover. Only time would tell if she succeeded.
Thane was also leaving, and his departure was harder to take. Shepard hadn't realised that she had counted the softly spoken drell as a friend until she was faced with the possibility that she might not see him again.
"A year can be nothing but the blink of an eye," Thane told her. He held her hands loosely. "Or it can be an eternity. I hope for the latter, and that I will see you again before the end."
"If you ever need anything," she told him, urgently, "Please don't hesitate to contact me."
"I hope to be staying out of trouble. My son and I need to get to know one another again, and that will be much harder if we are getting up to, as you might say, mischief." He offered her a smile, and his fingers tightened over hers for a moment. "No matter what happens, I am here for you, siha, as long as I am alive. Do not forget that."
Shepard was usually reticent about hugging people, but she felt it was justified in this case.
Tali, of course, was staying aboard. The vas Normandy suffix said all it needed to about what she thought of her ship. Garrus and Grunt too. Jacob and Miranda might have had options, but both had chosen to stay with her, and in a moment that Shepard would deny to her final days as having made her well up, not a single one of the Cerberus-former Cerberus-crew had decided to leave, throwing their lot in with her as well. Even Hadley, who told her that the Normandy was the only family he had left, and he wasn't going to leave them now.
Jack had surprised her. When Shepard had asked her if she was planning to leave, she'd just snorted, and kicked back on her bunk. "What?" she'd said, "Just after I got this place setup the way I like it?"
Shepard hadn't argued, but she did wonder if maybe she hadn't gone crazy as well.
There had never been the possibility of Kaidan staying, though Shepard would have been lying if she'd claimed the thought had never crossed her mind.
"Come back to the Alliance," he said to her, as he stood on the docks, clad in the armour they'd picked him up in.
Shepard shook her head, leaning back slightly on the shipping crate she was sitting on. "That was never a tenable offer and you know it. They wouldn't take me now I've been associating with terrorists. Very bad PR."
"Amongst other things." He didn't look distressed by her refusal. He knew as well as she that he had to ask, and that she had to refuse. The two of them having sex solved nothing, but it did mean they could at least look each other in the eye again. He held out a small slip of flimsy between two fingers, and when she unfolded it, she read an address on Presidium Junction.
"Just in case," he told her, and cupped her face in his hands and kissed her thoroughly.
"You should go," she said, when they finally broke apart. "Before I knock you out and tie you to my bed."
He smiled, and kissed her once more, briefly. "Don't be a stranger, Shepard," he told her.
Kaidan left her sitting alone on the dockside to watch workers and civilians moving back and forth, unknowing and uncaring of the sorts of things that lurked further out in the galaxy. She was watching the meandering patterns of foot traffic, thinking of nothing in particular, when Miranda appeared at her shoulder. She'd changed out of her Cerberus outfit. Her new garb was no less figure-hugging than her previous, but it was a dark royal blue that looked less harsh than her usual affair. Mostly notably, it lacked insignia.
"Tali'Zorah's ripped out most of the lower decks," she said, when Shepard didn't immediately acknowledge her. "She sounded positively orgasmic at the prospect of rebuilding damaged systems from the ground up."
Shepard nodded slowly, then turned to look up at her 2iC. "Did I mention that you're an idiot for not having taken the Normandy to FTL to avoid a firefight?"
Miranda wrinkled her nose slightly. "Fine. Next time I'll leave you to get shot to death by crazy asari conspirators. I've always wanted my own ship, and your cabin's bigger than mine."
Shepard slid off the edge of the cargo box, landing heavily on her feet. She could feel the extra mass she carried with all her enhancements. She would never be called a featherweight, but somehow that thought didn't seem as dreadful as it had a few days ago. The headache that had been nagging her had receded, and while there was the shadow of the Reapers still looming over them, she almost felt like she could deal with it.
Strange how a good night's sleep could help one's resolve.
"Do you want to get coffee?" she asked, stretching, ignoring the way her spine popped.
Miranda looked at her in open surprise. After a moment, she visibly shook herself. "I... that is... sure. Of course."
"Great," Shepard said. "Bring your credit chip. You're paying, since you nearly broken my ship."
Miranda made a squawk of minor indignation, and Shepard, for the first time in a while, laughed in genuine humour. The Reapers would wait until tomorrow.
~*~
Epilogue
Author: Jewels (bjewelled)
Fandom: Mass Effect
Disclaimer: Mass Effect is Bioware's. And don't they do well with it?
Summary: Rumours abound: the Omega 4 relay has been used, and signs lead to Shepard being involved somehow. Someone has to investigate, and who better than one of Shepard's former crew? On top of all that, ship crews are disappearing, and it can't be the Collectors. So who's responsible, and why?
From The Beginning
~*~
Fourteen: Live With It
~*~
Miranda wasn't sure what she was expecting to happen, but she wasn't expecting the cruiser that had been hovering off their bow to abruptly move to a different orbit, putting them neatly out of weapons range, at the same time as she received a hail from Shepard saying that the shuttle was returning. She was intensely curious. She knew something must have happened down on the planet, something important, but when she stepped off the shuttle, onto the deck, Shepard barely glanced at Miranda as she unlatched her weapons, handing them off to a crewman waiting to take them back to the armoury.
"Tell Joker to take us to the Citadel," Shepard said, tightly. She'd removed her helmet, her hair clinging damply to her forehead, and her jaw was tight enough that Miranda was surprised she couldn't hear her molars cracking under the pressure.
"What happened down there?" Miranda asked.
Shepard closed her eyes briefly, and tilted her head, and Miranda regretted asking. "Carry out my orders," she said. Her voice was soft, but firm. Miranda knew she wouldn't ask a third time.
"Yes, Commander," she said.
Shepard nodded slowly and walked past her, ignoring the other crew members who were approaching to stow the shuttle. After Shepard had left the deck, Miranda turned to Garrus and Commander Alenko, who were still there, handing over weapons and unlatching armour plates.
"Well?" she prompted, backing up her query with a raised eyebrow.
"Vast conspiracies," Garrus said, and grunted. "There are a lot of those around these days."
Miranda scowled at the non-answer, and looked at Alenko. He didn't seem particularly inclined to help her. She briefly wished that the Normandy were a military ship, and she could just order Garrus to tell her what had happened. If she tried, he'd probably laugh at her.
"I assume you'll be leaving us at the Citadel," she said to Alenko, and folded her arms. "And that you'll report back to the Council about everything that you've seen so far." She shook her head. "If Shepard were smart she'd kill you or keep you locked up."
Alenko looked at her for a long, searching moment, then smirked slightly and shook his head. "I have no interest in what your crew is up to, Ms. Lawson, now that you're not affiliated with Cerberus. Trust me on that one."
"I don't trust you at all," she said, "But apparently Shepard does. I suppose that'll have to be good enough."
Alenko looked past her, to the elevator doors through which Shepard had left the deck. "Sure," he said, somewhat distantly. "If you say so."
~*~
The AI didn't try to deny him access to Shepard's quarters, so presumably she either had expected company, or she hadn't thought to specify his exclusion. Inside, she was lying on her bed, still in her hardsuit, staring up at the ceiling with a dull, vacant expression. He recognised the look of one so far past the point of endurance that they honestly no longer had the energy to get emotional.
Kaidan had spent more than a few hours in that state after she'd died.
"Come to tell me that I made the right decision?" she asked, without looking at him. "Or maybe the wrong one?"
"Which would you like to hear?" He leaned against the wall next to her fishtank, looking down at her.
"The one where everything from about two years ago to today is all a dream, there are no such things as Reapers, Cerberus, or Spectres and I'm just another Alliance grunt counting the days til her next shore leave." She rubbed her hands across her face, leaving faint pink blotches on her skin where she pressed too hard.
He stepped forward, crossing to the side of her bed and sitting on the edge. He'd already changed out of his armour into the plain black clothes that he'd been wearing before, and he didn't make the mattress dip nearly as much as the fully-armoured Shepard did.
"When did you last sleep?" he said, and reached out to prod her shoulder. "Roll over."
Shepard pulled her face into a brief grimace, but did as she was told. "I don't need as much sleep as I used to. The tech does a pretty good job of filtering out the fatigue poisons."
"So does a dose of noxedrin. People still go crazy with no sleep." On her side now, she'd exposed the power plant. While the armour wasn't exactly standard issue, apparently based on experimental tech that Kaidan was certain wasn't on general sale, it was similar enough to standard issue gear that he had no trouble finding and depressing the manual override, sending the power plant into shutdown. It slowly stopped giving out the low frequency hum that you never really noticed until it was gone. He ran his hands over the joints of the hardsuit until he felt his fingertips brush the releases. He started with her gloves, pulling them and the gauntlets off her arms. Her skin was pale, clammy and cool to the touch. "So when did you last sleep?"
"When did we come back through the relay?" Shepard didn't sound like she was giving him the smart alec response; she seemed genuinely curious.
Her torso armour unlatched at the front, splitting open like a clamshell, and it took a little shuffling around to pull over her arms. Kaidan had no idea where she stored it, and just set it aside on the deck for the moment. Her boots came off easily enough, still covered in the dust and dirt of the Sanctuary, and she lifted her hips obligingly when he prompted, wriggling out of the last few pieces of armour. Underneath, she'd been wearing the standard abbreviated tank top and shorts that easily fitted underneath a hardsuit without interfering with its medical and tactile packs.
Someone had remade the room since they'd left it last, perhaps through the efforts of Shepard's yeoman. The bedsheets were tucked in tightly, and it took Kaidan a moment to pull them loose enough that he could pull it over Shepard. He slipped in next to her, still fully dressed.
"You made the right decision," he told her, as he dimmed the lights.
"Yeah," she said, the words carrying on a sigh. She'd already closed her eyes, lulled by the low lights. "Now I'm no better than a bunch of kidnappers." She shifted closer, and he wrapped an arm around her waist. "You're going to be reporting back to the Council, I take it?"
"Yes. Care to join me?"
Shepard harrumphed softly. Clearly not.
He kissed her neck. "Promise me you'll call me if you need me. Do you still like Massenet?"
Shepard made a noise that could be construed as agreement. It was the work of a few words to the AI to make the sound of a violin come floating through the air. Kaidan had no idea if she fell asleep after that, but if she didn't she gave a remarkably good impression of it, and she didn't stir when he whispered in her ear, so he allowed himself to fall into slumber not long after.
~*~
The Citadel hadn't changed since Shepard had last been there. For some reason, part of her thought that everyone should have been aware of their great victory over the Collectors. Instead, their arrival brought the same bored-sounding docking clearance. She supposed she shouldn't have been too bothered about the lack of attention to their exploits, considering that Anderson had sent Kaidan out to investigate.
Shepard sat on the dockside, outside the Normandy's airlock, and watched people go by over in the public area at the end of their berth. She was there saying her farewells. Kasumi's had been brief and upbeat. The thief had pulled her into a hug and told her that she hoped they saw each other again, before bouncing away. She was going to ground, Shepard knew, planning to keep her head down to avoid those who might want the knowledge she had inherited from her lover. Only time would tell if she succeeded.
Thane was also leaving, and his departure was harder to take. Shepard hadn't realised that she had counted the softly spoken drell as a friend until she was faced with the possibility that she might not see him again.
"A year can be nothing but the blink of an eye," Thane told her. He held her hands loosely. "Or it can be an eternity. I hope for the latter, and that I will see you again before the end."
"If you ever need anything," she told him, urgently, "Please don't hesitate to contact me."
"I hope to be staying out of trouble. My son and I need to get to know one another again, and that will be much harder if we are getting up to, as you might say, mischief." He offered her a smile, and his fingers tightened over hers for a moment. "No matter what happens, I am here for you, siha, as long as I am alive. Do not forget that."
Shepard was usually reticent about hugging people, but she felt it was justified in this case.
Tali, of course, was staying aboard. The vas Normandy suffix said all it needed to about what she thought of her ship. Garrus and Grunt too. Jacob and Miranda might have had options, but both had chosen to stay with her, and in a moment that Shepard would deny to her final days as having made her well up, not a single one of the Cerberus-former Cerberus-crew had decided to leave, throwing their lot in with her as well. Even Hadley, who told her that the Normandy was the only family he had left, and he wasn't going to leave them now.
Jack had surprised her. When Shepard had asked her if she was planning to leave, she'd just snorted, and kicked back on her bunk. "What?" she'd said, "Just after I got this place setup the way I like it?"
Shepard hadn't argued, but she did wonder if maybe she hadn't gone crazy as well.
There had never been the possibility of Kaidan staying, though Shepard would have been lying if she'd claimed the thought had never crossed her mind.
"Come back to the Alliance," he said to her, as he stood on the docks, clad in the armour they'd picked him up in.
Shepard shook her head, leaning back slightly on the shipping crate she was sitting on. "That was never a tenable offer and you know it. They wouldn't take me now I've been associating with terrorists. Very bad PR."
"Amongst other things." He didn't look distressed by her refusal. He knew as well as she that he had to ask, and that she had to refuse. The two of them having sex solved nothing, but it did mean they could at least look each other in the eye again. He held out a small slip of flimsy between two fingers, and when she unfolded it, she read an address on Presidium Junction.
"Just in case," he told her, and cupped her face in his hands and kissed her thoroughly.
"You should go," she said, when they finally broke apart. "Before I knock you out and tie you to my bed."
He smiled, and kissed her once more, briefly. "Don't be a stranger, Shepard," he told her.
Kaidan left her sitting alone on the dockside to watch workers and civilians moving back and forth, unknowing and uncaring of the sorts of things that lurked further out in the galaxy. She was watching the meandering patterns of foot traffic, thinking of nothing in particular, when Miranda appeared at her shoulder. She'd changed out of her Cerberus outfit. Her new garb was no less figure-hugging than her previous, but it was a dark royal blue that looked less harsh than her usual affair. Mostly notably, it lacked insignia.
"Tali'Zorah's ripped out most of the lower decks," she said, when Shepard didn't immediately acknowledge her. "She sounded positively orgasmic at the prospect of rebuilding damaged systems from the ground up."
Shepard nodded slowly, then turned to look up at her 2iC. "Did I mention that you're an idiot for not having taken the Normandy to FTL to avoid a firefight?"
Miranda wrinkled her nose slightly. "Fine. Next time I'll leave you to get shot to death by crazy asari conspirators. I've always wanted my own ship, and your cabin's bigger than mine."
Shepard slid off the edge of the cargo box, landing heavily on her feet. She could feel the extra mass she carried with all her enhancements. She would never be called a featherweight, but somehow that thought didn't seem as dreadful as it had a few days ago. The headache that had been nagging her had receded, and while there was the shadow of the Reapers still looming over them, she almost felt like she could deal with it.
Strange how a good night's sleep could help one's resolve.
"Do you want to get coffee?" she asked, stretching, ignoring the way her spine popped.
Miranda looked at her in open surprise. After a moment, she visibly shook herself. "I... that is... sure. Of course."
"Great," Shepard said. "Bring your credit chip. You're paying, since you nearly broken my ship."
Miranda made a squawk of minor indignation, and Shepard, for the first time in a while, laughed in genuine humour. The Reapers would wait until tomorrow.
~*~
Epilogue