#lae writes

(Spoilers for Campaign 4, Episode 29 below)

Ao3 link

“Papa, look! I’m a wolf!”

Kattigan looks up from the thread he’s carefully winding around the bolt he’s fletching to see Esmé lumbering around on the ground on all fours, her short dark hair in a riotous halo around her freckly, dirt-streaked face. He can’t help but grin at the sight, even though there’ll be hell to pay later from her mother when it’s time to clean their wild child up.

“Oh yeah? And what sound’s a wolf make, my little wolf cub?” He asks, which prompts Esmé to thrust her shoulders forward and raise her head up to the sky.

“Ummm, arf?” She barks out uncertainly, but with a gap-toothed, mischievous smile that he knows all too well by now.

“Silly pixie,” he laughs, setting the bolt aside to get down on all fours, he crawls toward her until they’re almost nose-to-nose. “A real wolf howls,” he growls in a low voice, “and eats up silly little pups who think they’re tough enough to be a wolf.”

With that, he throws back his head and howls. Esmé shrieks with laughter and does likewise, both of them howling up at the sky and into the echoing forest around them.

Mass Effect In which Anderson meets Shepard for the first time. Follow-up to this story, and tangential to this one.

Only an N7 could make a formal recommendation to induct trainees to the Interplantary Combatives Training program. 

That rule was established early on to keep the prestigious but difficult program lean. And, as one of the more prominent of the ICT’s alumni, Anderson was used to having favors called in to evaluate promising candidates.

Most potential candidates were more than happy to talk to him, eager to impress for that letter of recommendation that could earn them the respect of their peers. Most left disappointed, though. It took more than bravado in a scrap or two to make it into ICT, let alone all the way to N7, as he damn well knew. It took something else, something more, and most of the candidates he interviewed just didn’t have it.

Few, though, were as hard to read as the stone wall that was Lieutenant Shepard. 

She stood across from him on the other side of his borrowed desk, tall and stiff with her shoulders locked up tight. Rough looking, as could be expected for someone who’d survived a meat grinder like Akuze. White bandages peeked out from under her uniform up the side of her neck, hiding the acid-ravaged skin beneath. Her left leg was locked in by a sturdy brace that seemed to be all that kept it attached to her body for all the attention she paid to it. The medical report he’d skimmed had been pretty clear on how close she’d come to losing it. But beneath the bandages, beneath the uniform was something that had caught General Ivanova’s notice. Something worth the time to come out to Arcturus to talk to her. 

Fifty-one marines had landed on Akuze. Only one made it out. That alone was probably enough for Ivanova. Hell, it might even have been enough for him. But there was something more to it that he hadn't quite put his finger on.

“Your leg. I understand it was a result of friendly fire?” He asked, taking a shot at another target to see what he could hit, to see what was beneath the stone wall. None of his attempts so far had been successful. Neither the small talk nor the rundown of the incident on Akuze had gotten much out of her.

“Yes, sir,” she replied rotely. God, but she was young. Twenty-three years old, according to her file, but the eyes that looked past him, off to the side, anywhere but right at him looked so much older.

“Tell me how that happened.” He pressed his fingers together and sat back in his chair, listening to her give the same explanation he’d read in the formal report, the same story he’d heard in the inquiry board’s recordings with the exact same clinical tone of voice. Corporal Fern Kinley had panicked and fired her weapon wildly, hitting just about everything except the thresher maw and including three of her fellow marines. He held up his hand to stop her halfway through the recitation.

“Corporal Kinley was not field certified with assault rifles. How did she get her hands on one?” Again, knowing the answer but wanting to gauge her reaction. And again, met with the same detached indifference.

“Captain Nakamura was already dead. I made the call to open the weapon locker. I didn’t know Kinley wasn’t certified, sir. I take responsibility for what happened.” 

Anderson held up his hand again. “I’m not here to assign blame, Lieutenant. The inquiry board already closed the matter, in any case, and concluded that Kinley shouldn’t have taken a weapon she wasn’t qualified for.” 

“Then why am I here, sir?” She asked. Again, she kept looking past him and avoiding his eye. Like she expected some sort of punishment. Instinct whispered to him that it had little to do with Corporal Kinley, either. Not when the board had already ruled on the subject.

“Tell me about Sergeant Luo,” he said, changing the subject and keeping his tone casual but a sharp eye on her face. There might have been a small hesitation, maybe a little wince, but it was too subtle to really tease out.

“Luo and I were the only ones to make it out of the camp, but she was too injured to make it to the landing zone,” she said in that same flat affect. 

“I’m sorry. I understand the two of you were close.” When her eyes flicked up in surprise, the first real reaction he'd gotten out of her, he added, “You were listed as her next of kin in her file.”

“She…we met at basic. I thought she was joking when she said…when she put me as her next of kin. She didn’t really have a family, though, so I guess….” Shepard trailed off, and there was just the slightest quaver in her voice, the smallest crack. So he pressed.

“The official report on Akuze states she was found halfway to the LZ. Looked like she’d been dragged most of the way there. God knows with her injuries she couldn’t have walked that far on her own,” he said.

"No, sir."

“The thresher maw might’ve killed her, but that wasn’t how she died.” It wasn't a question, but neither was it anything he’d read in any of the reports on Akuze.

“Sir,” was all Shepard said. And those eyes that had seemed so cold, so lifeless before now shone with all the truths she’d held back from the board. Her shoulders fell and for the first time she looked him in the eye.

A quiet understanding passed between them.

And there it was. The missing piece he’d been looking for.

“That was a hard choice you made, child,” he said softly. “I won’t tell you it was the wrong one. I wasn’t there." He pulled a datapad from the desk and slid it across to her. "But there’s a place in the Alliance for people who can make those kinds of hard choices.”

Shepard’s eyes now followed the datapad and narrowed at the red-and-black emblem displayed on it.

“What are you saying, sir?” She asked, her voice barely a whisper. The understanding they'd shared had drained the stiffness from her, and now it seemed like the leg brace was the only thing keeping her upright.

“Times like these make or break an officer, Shepard. What I’m offering you isn’t easy, but it might well make you. If, that is, you’re up to the challenge,” he said, getting up from his chair and straightening his uniform. “I understand you’re still on medical leave, Lieutenant. Rest up while you can, get that leg better. And when you’re fit for active duty again…come see me.”

He left her there, staring down at the datapad in silence, and wondered if he’d hear from her again.

That much is obvious to Shepard from the beginning. For all Lawson and Taylor talk up saving human colonies, it’s a hostage situation that she has little choice but to play her part in. The ship, the crew–Joker and Chakwas and Garrus and Tali–they’re the obvious carrot to keep her cooperative like the good warhorse she is. An organization capable of feeding fifty-one unsuspecting marines to a Thresher Maw doesn’t simply do nice things out of the goodness of its heart, after all.

The stick is far more subtle.

The picture on the desk is the first one. It’s meant to be seen, with the way it lights up whenever she draws near. The message behind it is equally easy to read. That there’s a picture of Kaidan on her desk, a picture that clearly hadn’t come from his service record or a public source, speaks volumes about Cerberus’ capacity for kompromat. 

It takes her longer to notice the medals in the display case just next to the picture. Each one awarded after a particularly heroic moment in her career that was one more reason to lie awake at night and recount the names of those who only got those shiny pieces of ribbon and metal in a shadow box delivered to their next of kin. Her eyes are so used to skipping over them that she doesn’t notice the extra medal at first.

All the medals in the case are new, just printed copies of the ones that had long since burned up over Alchera. Except the one that isn’t. It’s old, the stained blue ribbon beginning to fade and fray while the silver veneer flakes off of the cheaper dull gray metal underneath. But the name stamped across the bottom under the embossed cross-hair shape is still perfectly legible.

M. Shepard.

She knows that medal like the back of her own hand, the places where the finish is worn off from her rubbing her thumb over it and the feel of those embossed letters under her finger. Knows the way it felt every time she’d tucked it into her armor for over a decade. Knows it like the memory of her own mother’s face on the day she’d given it to her on her sixteenth birthday.

It was Nana Peggy’s good luck charm. She won it in a longshot competition back in ‘35.  She gave it to me, and now it’s your turn to have it.

Good luck charm, her ass.

It would be nice to think they’d tucked this memento into her cabin as a personal touch. It could even be Lawson’s official story, if she bothered to ask her.

But only an idiot believes the official story.

Slowly her eyes adjust to the dark, allowing her to take in the details around her.

There’s no alarm klaxon. No acrid smells of electrical fires or explosions heaving her to and fro. No red warnings blink threateningly on her HUD. Air flows freely in and out of her lungs and Kaidan’s arms are loosely draped over her waist as he shifts sleepily beside her. The fish tank glimmers with a muted blue light, casting a soft glow across the cabin. And it is completely, utterly silent except for the subtle, dull thrum of the Normandy SR-2’s engines that permeate through the bulkheads.

She inhales deeply through her nose then slowly, deliberately expels the breath through her mouth. 

So. That nightmare again. 

"There is coffee, ma'am," Kaz often pointed out to her, perplexed, when she complained out the lack, holding up the packets of dehydrated brown crystals that their group frequently found in the Alliance supply drops behind Reaper lines.

"For a boy who made coffee for a living before this damn war, you sure don't know the first thing about it," she would just as often say in reply.

She'd never been much of a coffee snob, but John had. Maybe when she'd been Kaz's age, she'd have choked down those cheap crystals doused in some lukewarm water to get through her day. But like so many other things in her life, John had spoiled her for anything else.

Because it wasn't the coffee. It was the ritual of putting the old purple enameled kettle on the stove, waiting for it to heat until it worked up a whistle, and slowly, patiently pouring the hot water into the paper filter over the aromatic grounds with just a pinch of salt perched precariously over a mug. Then sipping it slowly and savoring the rich, complex taste while sitting on the front porch to greet the day.

Every morning, for more years than she dared to count, John had started their day like that, moving in time with the steps of the dance that they'd made in their life together. With him gone, she'd been dancing those steps alone, comforted by their familiar rhythm that kept parts of him with her, always. Sometimes sharing them with Jo or with Beth in their infrequent visits home.

But now even that was gone. And all she had were tasteless coffee packets that could never hold a candle to the real thing.

(Silly little story about my trash panda monk from a D&D game, whose recent brush with death inspired her to pursue a different path in her training.)

Rae is no stranger to the door to the Halls of the Ancestors. Too many times she's been here, stepping up to the door between the planes when the storm of the battle overwhelms her. Too many times she’s stood here feeling all too small before the dark, heavy door.

It's almost routine, by now, to feel the cool winds that beckon her from the other side and to hear the whispered voices carried on it. Sometimes it’s the deep, craggy voice of Master Tyrax, “Get back up and fight, hatchling. Those jackals aren’t going to punch themselves.”

Others whisper to her in a tongue she only remembers in dreams and lullabies, urging her to open the door to get to see her birth family once again.

Too many times she's reached out her hand to push the door open, the ancient wood of it oddly warm under her touch, only to turn away and rejoin the fight in the Living Lands, called back by the voices of her friends and the steady beat of her own heart.

This time when she finds herself at the door...this time is different. The voices call to her from the other side of the door, appealing to her to join them on the other side. There is peace, they say, a reprieve from the pain that wracks her unconscious body. A chance to rest and put her fists down for once.

“Leave the storm behind," whispers the sonorous voice of the one she'd called Grandfather Tairneanach, long since gone from this plane. He speaks to her in Giant, a thunderous tongue even in whispers that speaks closest to her heart. “Open the door and be at peace.”

The beat of her heart grows louder in her ears as everything else fades away. Louder...and slower.

A beat, and she's at the threshold of the door again.

Another beat, and she presses her hand against the door as she slumps to the ground.

A third beat, and the last breath is pushed from her lungs with a small, pained sigh.

Then nothing. Not even silence.

The door opens.

Light floods her vision. Lacking the strength to shield her eyes, she squeezes them shut against the sudden onslaught of radiance, but not before she catches a fleeting glance of bronze scales.

“The battle is still on, and you’re just lying here?” a deep voice growls.

"Master…Tyrax?" The sound pushes out of her in sheet astonishment. She forces one eye open to see the craggy face of a bronze Dragonborn in simple brown robes looming over her, a twinkle in his ancient eyes despite the stern tone.

“Get up, Rae. You’re not out of the fight yet.” He crouches down, holding out a clawed, scaly hand to her.

“I’m not strong enough,” she says in a voice as small as she feels, not feeling up to taking his hand.

“Strength has nothing to do with it, child.”

“Then why do I keep on ending up here?” The question bursts out of her before she can stop it. And suddenly she’s just so, so tired. Tired of fighting. Tired of losing. Tired of being small in a world of problems that are all so much bigger than her. It would be so, so easy to pass right through the door and leave it all behind…wouldn’t it?

“You think strength resides here?” A single clawed finger reaches out and pushes against her arm. “You lived too long among the giants, hatchling. Big brutes throwing their weight around. Impressive, I’ll grant you, but not strength.”

“My family is strong! So much stronger than me!” She bursts out, pushing herself up to her feet out of sheer indignation. Before she can even think, her fists are raised.

“It’s not a slight against those that raised you. But they aren’t strong like you could be, if only you knew it.”

“You’re not making sense, Master.” She lowers her fists. Not even death can stop him from talking in riddles, it seems. 

“No? Think of it this way. You can be big and stomp all over those smaller than you. But that’s not being strong. Strength comes from within. It’s learning how to be yourself and to use the gifts you already have, not trying to be something you’re not. You are nimble. You are swift. You’ve something of the storm about you from your family, but you haven’t yet learned to bring it within yourself and truly use it.”

Rae frowns. The storm comes as naturally to her as breathing, and she’s used it plenty of times. But Master Tyrax wouldn’t be telling her this without reason. “I think….” She starts, then trails off and looks down at her hands. Small sparks of electricity gather in her palms, almost without her thinking about it. She presses her fingers down into her palm and the sparks travel up her arm toward her core where they mix and dance with the ki that resides there.

When she looks back up at Master Tyrax, he’s looking at her expectantly, just like he always used to.

“I can get stronger if I take what I have from my family and what I learned from you and put them together?” As she says it, it clicks into place, the piece she’s been missing. A sudden wave of energy flows restlessly within her, dragging her out of her stupor.

“You’re on your way to understanding, little one.” He beams at her proudly. “Never forget that you have a bit of the dragon in you, too. It’s why I agreed to train you in the first place.”

“I still haven’t beaten a dragon, though,” Rae says, unable to help the wistful sigh that escapes her. “I got really close once, but then a robot got it instead.”

Master Tyrax chuckles, a low and rough rumble from somewhere deep in his chest. “You’ll get your dragon one day, hatchling. But before then, I have one last thing for you.” He reaches out and gently presses a scaled palm against her forehead. A sudden pulse of energy flows through her, adding to the restless flow dancing through her before settling uneasily into her lungs. “I gift you the Breath of the Dragon.” He pauses, then adds, “Try not to set too many things on fire with it. Your guildmates won’t appreciate you bringing the place down around their heads.”

She grins up at him. “I’ll do my best. Thank you, Master.” On impulse, she throws her arms around him. She barely comes up to his waist, but he stoops down to return the hug.

“Be well, Rae. We’ll see each other again some day, but not for a long, long time.”

The second reason is, I had to get a job to pay the bills and I've had to get used to said job and trying to find a proper... work/work/life balance that let's me also work on art and my comic at a decent pace, while not leaving me completely dead. Still working on that one x'D

Third one is, a market I was on recently got hit by a pretty bad storm (as in "evacuate the pubblic" and "several of the tents, along with their stocks, ended up in the trees" level of bad) and although I wasn't hit as hard as other sellers, I did lose a significant amount of stock on top of having to replace some of my market gear. I'm glad it happened after I had just acquired the security of a paying job, but it still sucks a lot. (and insurances being what they are, I only got a laughable amount paid back... tho it's still better than nothing at all)

(cw: heavy themes including slavery, implied torture, and trauma)

Someone should check on the commander, Ashley had said to him after something had happened on the docks. Someone, meaning Kaidan, he’d understood. As for the something….

No one could tell him exactly what had happened, just that Shepard had told the crew to take the rest of the day as shore leave before disappearing into the bowels of the Citadel.

And somehow, he knew just where she’d be. 

Chora’s Den was, as always, a headache waiting to happen. The too-loud music, the dull red lights, and the crush of people filtering around the dingy club had already settled in behind his eyes, causing a dull throb to form in his head by the time he found Shepard.

She was sitting at a corner table, staring straight past the asari dancer writhing on the platform in front of her. Two drinks, a pint glass and a shot glass, sat on her table, both completely full. Condensation gathered and dripped down the side of the pint glass, puddling on the table, suggesting it had been sitting there untouched for some time. 

He approached cautiously, not sure how to even greet her like this, but she saved him the trouble.

“Williams sent you to check up on me?” She asked, before he even realized she’d seen him. She just continued staring straight ahead. He settled in next to an empty chair at her table.

“You had her pretty rattled. Figured I should just check to see you’re alright.” And he could see exactly what had Ashley so concerned. For all that Shepard was in the midst of a lively sea of people, she might as well have been alone on a frozen lake in the middle of nowhere. And Kaidan couldn’t shake the sense that something dark stirred restlessly just beneath that thin ice.

“You mean you drew the short straw.” She didn’t even look at him, just mechanically picked up the pint glass, brought it up to her lips, and set it back down without actually taking a sip. 

“Something like that.” Kaidan hovered near the empty chair. Sitting felt too comfortable, too informal for whatever Shepard was wrestling with. The asari dancer looked over her shoulder at him, expectantly, and cleared her throat pointedly, prompting him to take the chair anyway. Shepard’s eyes flicked over to him, dull and uninterested in either the dancer or him. She brought up her omni-tool and sent a tip to the dancer, who nodded and continued her rhythmic undulations in an entirely business-like manner.

Shepard was silent for a long time. Kaidan simply waited. Waited for her to say something. To tell him to fuck off. To something.

Then, finally, she spoke.

“There was a girl on the docks. Talitha. Talitha Abbott.” 

“Who was she?” Kaidan asked, quietly, gently. Her eyes flicked over to him again, this time seeming to actually notice him.

“What do you know about Mindoir?” She asked after another uncomfortably long silence.

“Mindoir? It’s one of the frontier colonies, out near the Terminus systems.” He racked his brain, trying to remember what he knew of it. “It got hit by a batarian raid pretty hard a while back, I think. Early 70’s?” There was something else, something that stood just outside his recollection. The dull ache in his head was making it hard to think.

“April 17, 2170,” she said, her voice completely devoid of inflection. “She was a survivor of the raid, if you can call it survival. Watched her parents die right in front of her eyes, along with everyone she ever knew or loved. They took her and kept her as a slave for thirteen years.”

Shepard remained entirely expressionless, but Kaidan couldn’t help wincing. Protecting frontier colonies from dangers like batarian slave raids was one of the core duties of the Alliance. He’d seen the aftermath of such raids before. It was never pretty.

And after thirteen years….

“How’d she get here on the Citadel?”

“Rescued. Then she escaped from her rescuers. She…dissociated. Couldn’t deal with what happened to her.” There was a catch in Shepard’s voice. A slight stumble, the tiniest hint of vulnerability. Kaidan started to reach for her, unthinkingly, but forced his hand back down to his side once he realized what he was doing.

“Shepard, what happened on the docks?” He asked quietly. The throbbing in the back of his head was growing. The longer he stayed in Chora’s Den the worse the ensuing migraine would be, he knew, but he had to stay. Had to know what had sent a hardened soldier like Shepard fleeing like this.

“She’s…sedated. Safe. But….” Shepard reached for the shot glass in front of her, her hand shaking ever so slightly, and quickly downed the amber liquid in it in one gulp. “Mindoir was my home, too.”