#leahfic

42 - You are cordially invited to go fuck yourself (Leah Shepard)

Shepard’s been done since the moment Aria met her. Maybe four days awake after being not-dead-but-dead-enough-to-count for two years, armor still unscratched and gun not oiled quite right, pissed as hell. Her ship’s got a Cerberus logo on it, but there’s a reason she brought the merc and the thief - cloaked, sitting in the corner, but Aria hasn’t made it to her matriarch years without a sense for these things - with her instead of whatever bright shiny Cerberus operatives came standard with the ship.

She’s always liked that about Shepard; honesty’s hard to come by in Aria’s line of work, and Shepard’s brand of honesty - born of fury with the life the galaxy handed her and a deep desire to fuck over twice as hard anyone who tried to fuck with her - fits well with Aria’s sleep-with-two-guns-under-the-pillow lifestyle. Aria’d like her better without the Cerberus ship, but it brought Shepard to her kingdom once a month for a year, so she tolerated it.

They’re pretty screwed, her and Shepard and Nyreen, and she’s cursing under her breath that she didn’t see this coming. She’s run this same play herself more than once: force your target into the one place they have to go, make it a kill zone, and though Petrovsky hasn’t hit the third part of the plan yet, the endless waves of expendable soldiers are coming. She checks her heat sinks and cracks her neck, ready.

But a little ball shoves its way through the orange force fields and floats over to them. It shimmers and blinks, and Petrovsky’s hologram folds out of it.

“No,” Shepard says, sounding almost bored. She aims her Harrier at it - a little bit of irony that Aria’s beginning to love - and fires six rounds into the holoprojector.

Petrovsky flickers with static, his words distorted but tone clearly irritated with this turn of events, and then disappears in a small explosion of smoke and cybernetics.

Shepard pops out of cover and unloads a clip into the mech. The stupid thing doesn’t even notice that it’s on fire until it collapses to its knees and pitches forward, face-first into the floor. The sound it makes is almost sad.

Aria calls out her flare and Shepard ducks. The entire room explodes blue and orange and she grins. There’s a reason the two of them work well together. She shoots things and sets them on fire, and Aria makes everything blow up.

Shepard picks up scattered clips - her Harrier chews through ammo like a starving duct rat, but the mechs move in close too damn fast for her Widow - and checks the Cerberus bodies, some of them still in the process of dying very loudly, for credits. A quick scan highlights the nearby medical stations; she cleans them out, and heads back to Aria.

Aria’s slumped against a crate, eyes closed.

Shepard sits down next to her and digs an energy bar out of her side armor compartment. “Here.”

Aria opens one eye. “I’m fine.”

"Didn’t say you weren’t. Eat."

Aria’s eyes narrow. Half bored contempt, half apathetic irritation, with just enough actual anger to bite, most people would back down under her glare; Shepard’s never been most people, but Aria tries anyway.

Shepard huffs and cracks her neck. “I’m not getting my ass killed on this rock by some fucking mech just because you forgot to bring a snack.”

After a moment, Aria leans back on the crate and rips open the wrapping; continuing the argument isn’t worth her time. She gestures to Shepard’s forehead. “You’re bleeding.” She takes a bite of the energy bar. “This tastes like dust,” she says around a mouthful of something that’s supposed to taste like chocolate.

Shepard’s had thirteen years to learn to ignore people staring at her eyes, so it takes her a bit to realize that Aria’s actually staring, not simply figuring out how best to get her naked again. 

"What?" She looks in the mirror at Aria lying behind her in the bed, zippers up her boot over her jeans and starts on the other. She’d quite like to have Aria figure out how best to get her naked again, but Shepard does have a galaxy to save. 

"Guess eyes don’t survive the trip through space too well." Aria sits up, and the way the sheet slides off her chest down to her waist has to be intentional. Shepard’s learned that a lot of things about Aria are intentional.

"Nope." She’s wondered if Cerberus could give her real eyes again and just chose not to, rebuilt super soldier and all that, best of the best. Real eyes would be a downgrade, even from the buggy Alliance implants she got after OCS.

She stands and tugs her shirt over her head and pulls it down. She flips her hair out and tugs it up into a ponytail, bright neon pink. How Miranda managed that, Shepard’s not going to question. She finally turns to face Aria. “Thought we didn’t do personal.”

"It’s not personal. It’s an observation." Aria slides out of the bed, leaving the sheet behind. "Personal would be asking why you tensed up the minute you realized I was looking."

Shepard takes a breath and relaxes her shoulders. It’s hard not to touch Aria when she’s here, standing in front of her, her only clothing a sheet puddled on the floor. She doesn’t even try. Drags her fingers across Aria’s wrist, up her arm to her shoulder, dusting along the curve of her skin to curl around her neck and pull her in for a kiss.

Everything with Aria is just So Much and Shepard has to ground herself by breaking away lest she let Aria finish unbuttoning her jeans and is actually late for departure. 

"Lucky for us I’m not one to pour out my life story just because some pretty asari had an observation."

Aria smiles. “Lucky for us indeed.” She lightly smacks Shepard’s ass. “Go on, or that Cerberus bitch will come to collect you, and I don’t think she likes me much.” 

Shepard laughs. The day Aria cares who likes her will be one with many flying pigs and many cold hells. “We’ll be back in a week or two. Maybe by then you’ll decide if you want to ask, or stick to observing.”

small musings on all my Shepards

Two soldiers, one infiltrator, one adept, a vanguard, and a sentinel. Three born on Earth, two from a colony, and one raised in space. Two survived alone, two held off the Blitz, and two earned the nickname Butcher.

Six of them, at the end of all things. Six individuals, six lives, six histories.

Six last stands.

Leah stands alone, staring at the beam in the distance, her spine ramrod straight and steel. This is just another mission, no point convincing herself it’s more important than any other. People fuck up more if they know that they have to be perfect. Piece of cake, is what this is.

Isabella stands with Kaidan on her left, Anderson on her right. They know this is the end, and if there is a tomorrow - they don’t know what it looks like. Kaidan squeezes her hand and Anderson gives her a look, like he knew she’d grow into this. She nods. Time to go.

Yael and Shoshana stand side by side. They clasp their hands together and bow their heads, and the wind carries away their prayers. They entered this world as a team, and they’ll leave this world as a team.

Susan stands beside Liara, with Ashley and Garrus a step behind. They can do this. She can do this. She taps her fist against Ashley’s, and awkwardly does the same for Garrus, and they all laugh. Liara she simply smiles at, knowing she’ll break if they hug or speak. Liara nods, confident. You can do this.

Olivia stands with Garrus, with her mother in her comms. She can’t promise anymore that she always comes back, but she can promise she isn’t planning on dying again. Her mother tells her she loves her, and to please duck, and disconnects. She looks up at Garrus and smiles, ready. He bumps his forehead against hers, right behind her.

Four destroy, one controls, and one refuses.

small musings on all of my Shepards

Mindoir left her smoldering, but Alchera set her on fire. Better, faster, stronger.

A gold blaze through the battlefield, she aims and shoots and barely a nanosecond passes before the brute’s head explodes and its body lumbers over itself, falling to a thudding stop. She’s so far ahead of Vakarian she’d have to turn her implants off until the end of the war to give him a fighting chance.

A cannibal howls in her face and she roars back before punching its eye and smashing her Black Widow into its skull with a satisfyingly sickening crunch. Vega lays down cover fire and Vakarian has her in his scope and she rushes forward to catch the last marauder off guard. This is her signature on the bloody and charred field in front of them, artwork of her own design.

She grabs its fringe, tightens her fingers and snarls at its struggle – she has cybernetics in her veins, too. But she’s angrier. She wins. As the banshee’s shriek scratches down her spine, she yanks, rips the marauder’s fringe completely off. It drops and collapses pathetically at her feet, dead. Reaper blood drips from her fingers.

The banshee’s nearly on top of her, but she rolls out of the way into cover and aims. She grins. Laughs.