#izfic

It starts as quiet tears, but when Kaidan gently brushes her cheek with his thumb and asks if she’s okay, her tears turn to sobs. He slides out of her and sits up, pulls her up and into his lap. She clutches at his shoulders, scrambling to hold him even closer.

He wraps his arms around her and splays his hands out across her back. He’s never seen her cry before. Upset, yes. But never cry. 

The closest he’s ever seen her to tears was just before he turned away on Horizon. Her eyes had shimmered, and she bit her lip hard enough to draw blood. She hadn’t let tears fall then, at least not where he had seen. But now she’s crying into the crook of his neck, stubby nails digging into his shoulders like he’s the only thing keeping her alive, like he’s the only thing keeping her human in all this.

She lifts her head and rests her forehead against his. “You’re all I have,” she chokes out, trying to explain the tears. “And I had a gun pointed at you and I don’t know what I would’ve done if you hadn’t…you’re everything, Kaidan.”

He brushes tears away with his thumb. “I did,” he whispers and cups her cheek. “I trusted you, and I will always trust you.”

She exhales shakily and squeezes her eyes shut, as if she can keep the tears at bay simply by closing her eyes tight enough. But too much presses on her eyelids - too much gone wrong, too many dead - and her plan fails. Her breath catches in her throat, half a sob.

“Not for lack of trying, though,” the voice says.

She waits for the accusations to come, the judgmental tones, the irritation at how inconvenient this particular exercise has become, the empty threats about being turned out. But there are none.

“Your tox screen shows red sand, ecstasy, cocaine, Minagen X3, seems almost pointless to mention the alcohol,” the shuffling of papers, “I haven’t even heard of half of what they found in your pockets.” He sounds vaguely impressed.

She flexes her fingers, forms a fist, but the familiar buzz doesn’t come. She tries again. Nothing. She opens her eyes and stares at her open hand in confusion. She’s strapped to the bed and her palm’s just as dull as ever, no blue.

“You’ve been given a biotic suppressant. Apparently you have a reputation.”

At that, she laughs, though it turns into a burning cough until a cup of ice chips makes its way into her right hand, rough straps only removed for a few seconds. Last time she was in a hospital, they hadn’t bothered to restrain her or give her pockets much more than a cursory glance. She’d biotically pulled the chair over and then dug out the emergency packet of sand from her bag, done a line off her chart and blasted her way out, stealing new clothes from an open locker in the nurse’s lounge. Nice boots. Still has them, somewhere.

She finally blinks enough that the room comes into focus, now just bright, no longer unbearable. There’s a man sitting in the chair beside her bed, slouching despite the Alliance jacket tossed over the back. He seems intent on studying her chart.

“The hell are you?” She wills clarity and energy into herself. Pay attention, push through the suppressants. You’ve done it before. A good flare and the restraints are gone; throw, and he’s out of your way. You can run. Her port stings with the reminder that she burned out her amp with the drugs. Again. No matter, she can pull enough together to get out of here without one. Probably. If there aren’t armed guards at her door this time. She crunches on the ice.

“Major David Anderson, Alliance Navy.”

“Fancy title for someone stuck in a room with a sandblaster no one gives a fuck about.” She’d kill for a drink. Everything’s too shiny.

He stands up and walks to the window. Her eyes track his every movement. She manages a tiny flare and the restraints break. She rolls her wrists and ankles, working out the stiffness. If she’s right, there’s a baggie of red sand underneath the sole of her left boot. That’ll be enough to make up for the burned amp. She slides to the edge of the bed and starts getting dressed.

“If you’re looking for the sand, it’s gone.”

She drops the boot. “The fuck do you want, mate?”

He turns. “I have a proposal for you.”

“I’m not a whore.” Her hands start to tremble when she tugs at the IV line, withdrawal beginning to set in. Hospital’ll clean you out well enough, but turn you back on the street with your pockets empty more often than not, just before your body’s expecting a hit. Wouldn’t be the first time she’s done it, but at least she knew those guys. She takes a deep steadying breath and gets the IV out and rubs her fingers underneath her eyes, smudging her eyeliner beyond saving, before she reaches around to turn off the monitoring machines. She knows what happens if she unplugs herself while they’re still on, and wants a good shot at running.

“Didn’t say you were, and this offer isn’t about that. Have a seat.” He gestures to the chair opposite the one he takes, and if he’s at all surprised that she’s broken her restraints, he doesn’t show it.

It’s only then she realizes what’s different. She’s in a private room, not one of the hellish curtained bunks in A&E where she usually lands, full of gunshots and other addicts and wailing parents whose snotty kid can’t find their inhaler. She takes her time getting dressed, checks the boot for drugs just in case (empty), and finally saunters over and flops into the chair, kicking her legs up over the side. She pushes her hair out of her eyes. Maybe she can fake her way through the withdrawal, if this guy takes too long. She reaches into her jacket pocket and digs out her sunglasses, slips them onto her face against the sun.

“Do you like your life, Miss Shepard?”

“Look man, I’ve seen this film. Just tell me what you’re offering so I can say no and get the hell out of here.”

Anderson pulls out an amp from his jacket. Serrice, by the looks of it. Fancy. She stole one of those once, burned it out in a two-day bender she doesn’t remember. Came out of it cuffed to a chair with a DI in her face going on about a city block that might not recover. Nick had paid off the DI while she lifted the wallets of half the division on the way out. Lived like kings for a week on that one.

He reaches into his other pocket and removes the small packet of red sand meant to be hidden in her boot. He sets it next to the amp. Her eyes widen and her palms begin to sweat. She can taste it, sweet and vaguely metallic, like sucking too hard on an ice cream spoon. Then the energy crackles down your spine and out through your arms to your fingers, speeding unbearably bright through your blood and bones on a collision course for everything in your way. She blinks and sits back, tries to look less eager, plays with the owl charm on her necklace to distract her fingers from reaching for the table.

“You’re a strong biotic,” Anderson starts, and she snorts. Obviously. “And if this,” he holds up the omnitool she thought she’d lost, “is any indication, a tech whiz as well. We could use someone like you.”

“An untrained biotic gang member with a drug problem and a habit of theft and property destruction?” He had to have seen the tattoo on her forearm. Fucking obvious, is what that is. Nick always was a moron, even if he had the funding to bail her out all the time. “Hell of a desirable, I am.” Coffee. Coffee would be phenomenal.

“Believe it or not, yes. And I can make all of that go away. Get you out of that orphanage and off the streets, cleaned up, with a proper amp and training. Give you a future that isn’t going to end two weeks from now when your friends leave you alone to die again.”

Her blood runs cold. She’d wondered where Naveen and Fiona and Ben had got off to, why Lily wasn’t sitting in the chair instead of a stranger. The holes still hang emptily in her memory, but she’s beginning to patch things together now. There’s a routine to this, to her hospital trips, and it’s been broken since the last thing she remembers.

Line of coke off Fiona’s compact, popped a pill from Naveen’s pocket (no idea what’s in that, don’t care), swallowed it with gin. Laughed and spun in the street, bottle in hand, flipping off the rich in their coats and cars bustling about in the rain to their dinners and homes and parties. The Minagen starts to drop and the sand hits and her lips curl into a grin, floating, elated. Energy sparks from her fingertips, pops down every vertebrae, feels it throb in her cunt (who’s it gonna be tonight; Nick, maybe, or Juna; both, if they’re up for it), she laughs. Lets her fingers glow blue as she wanders down the alley, blows up a garbage can as she passes.

Dizzy, then, off-kilter, balance gone more than what the half-bottle of gin and empty packets should take. Vision blurring and fading, she trips in time with the laughter, catches herself on the rough brick. Scrapes her palms, sharp and bloody.

And then, nothing. Until she woke up here, fifteen minutes ago. Alone.

She clenches her jaw. Bastards. “What’s the catch?”

“Rehab,” he says. “And you stay clean. The Alliance has a no-tolerance policy toward substance abuse.”

“Deal,” she says without further hesitation. Time she started looking after herself, anyway. Fucking Reds, she should’ve seen this coming. She may be a worthless street rat, but Isabella Shepard is her own worthless street rat.

Anderson pushes the amp toward her and pockets the drugs again.

She jacks in the amp and dark energy sparks around her fingertips. She rolls her neck, checking the amp’s security, and holds out her hand for her omnitool. She wants to, but doubts she could lift the drugs from his pocket. Anyway, she keeps her ends of bargains.

“No. You’ll get a new one after rehab. We’ll transfer all your programs and files, but rumor has it the Reds don’t let their members leave that easily. We’re not letting you be tracked.”

She swipes a cheap Bluewire from the gift shop after signing herself out. It won’t hack more than a car door, but it’ll at least support basic games and a clock. She’s good, but Anderson’s a trained soldier. He doesn’t comment and holds the waiting skycar’s door for her.

The Red stationed outside the hospital entrance doesn’t give her much more than a cursory glance, but she knows she’s been spotted. He tugs his hat down over his eyes and pretends to be engrossed in his magazine. She looks at Anderson and nods in the direction of the kid.

“We’ll take care of it,” he promises.

There are thousands of refugees sleeping on chairs and in corners in the docking bays because they have nowhere else to go, and yet here people are debating about what kind of leather seats are the best for convertible skycars. She walked past twelve starving children to get to the rapid transit station by the docks, gave them each a credit chit that would last them a week, and the sushi place has a line out the door and the bakery has a dumpster full of yesterday’s perfectly good rolls.

The orphanage she grew up in was smaller than this apartment.

And it turns out that Anderson wants to give it to her.

“It’s too much,” she says, and she means it quite literally. Her belongings have always fit into a footlocker with room to spare, her address hasn’t been a stationary location since basic. She wouldn’t know what to do with this much space. She wouldn’t know what to do with any place she could permanently call hers.

“Don’t make me beg, Shepard.”

She wants to, but she can’t argue with his logic: the longer I’m on Earth, the less I want to leave. It’s killing her to be out here on the Citadel, or the Normandy, or even in the middle of a pile of brutes and banshees, while her home becomes less and less recognizable. She’s pointedly not looking at the rubble behind Anderson. She grew up in London, too.

She bites her lip and looks out the window at the flashing lights of the noodle place. “David,” she uses his first name, like he told her all those years ago in the hospital, and tries to swallow the waver in her voice. “You’re coming back.”

“Bella.”

He’s the only one allowed to call her Bella, and he rarely does. She bites the inside of her cheek and looks back at the screen. Fifteen years he’s been the sole constant in her life, the longest anyone’s bothered to stick around, and now he’s trying to offload his possessions like someone who knows they won’t need them anymore.

“Okay,” she finally says, with more conviction than she feels, and forces a smile. There’s no version of this conversation that doesn’t end with her owning an atrociously large apartment, but she doesn’t want to fight with him. Not when she doesn’t know when she’ll be able to talk to him again. Or if. “But the minute you and Kahlee want it back…”

He laughs. “We’ll let you know.”

“Please stay safe,” she asks him for a promise he can’t possibly make.

“You too, Shepard.”

She waits until Kaidan’s sound asleep next to her, and then carefully slides out of bed. She grabs a blanket from the back of the armchair and wraps it around her shoulders as she walks downstairs. Even with blackout curtains on the upstairs windows, the Strip filters in; she doesn’t need lights to make sure she doesn’t fall.

The kettle turns off without a sound, water heated to the proper temperature for chamomile, and she carefully carries her mug over to the couch and curls up in the corner. The Strip’s quieter at three in the morning, but still alive with the low murmur of a neighborhood too bright to ever really sleep. She looks upward and squints in the dark at the ceilings, reminded of the cathedrals and churches she found shelter in as a kid when she got caught in the rain and cold. The pews were a lot less comfortable than the couch, but no less welcome.

Few people know what Shepard’s been through. I like to think I come pretty close.

She rests her cheek on her knees and closes her eyes, hoping Anderson has a roof over his head tonight, a real one.

“Hey,” Kaidan’s voice is husky with sleep as he pads barefoot down the stairs.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you.” She blows softly across her tea before taking a sip.

He shakes his head. “You didn’t. Want some company?”

She nods, and leans into him when he slides his arm around her. Kaidan’s warm and solid and familiar, but she still feels out of place here. The paperwork’s gone through and the apartment’s officially hers, but she’s waiting for the police to come and kick her out for squatting. Or for the owners to come home and find her stealing jewelry, or rifling through medicine cabinets, because her lookout spooked and ran.

“You okay?” He kisses her temple.

“Thinking about Earth,” she doesn’t answer the question. “Anderson,” she offers, because he’ll pry it out of her sooner or later.

Kaidan sighs. “He’s a tough one.”

She knows that tone, knows the unspoken I want to tell you he’ll be fine but you’ll yell at me for making promises I have no business making, but accepts it. “Saw him throw his pistol at a guy once. He’d run out of ammo in the firefight. Hit the guy right on his head, knocked him out cold.”

“I wondered where you learned that trick.”

She smiles, remembering how she knocked out a stray husk last week after emptying her entire stockpile of clips into a banshee. James and Kaidan had both looked at her like she’d gone completely mad, but the husk had given one last attempt at a groan and then collapsed.

They fall into silence as she finishes her tea, and she feels Kaidan drift off to sleep again with his chin resting on her head.

And I worry sometimes, she forgets: there’s a whole bunch of people who lose sleep over her getting back home.