#luca asks

Luca eyes the shifty looking turian with the shifty looking space cow and decides then and there the rumors couldn’t possibly be true.

Maybe just seventy six percent true.

“I dunno,” he says to Eva, scratching his neck and trying to ignore the itch of his nose. The piles of spice in the marketplace remind him of Asteria, only he hopes there’s no murderous merc bands ready to abscond with him this time around. “Are you sure he’s not legit?”

“Luca,” she hisses his name out of the corner of her mouth all while smiling blandly at the turian. “This is definitely not the place. Come on, let’s keep looking.”

“No, wait, I want to see what else he’s got.”

“Luca…”

The turian leans forward, mandibles twitching. “Do you want a free cupcake for only a small cost?”

“Yes!” Luca says brightly then frowns. “Wait. What?”

“Luca,” Eva is tugging on his arm now. “Come on, let’s go.”

“No, wait. Evie, he said cupcakes! Commander Miller loves cupcakes-“

“He also said small cost, and since you just spent all your credits on that ridiculous miner’s hard hat for Ben, you’re officially broke.”

Luca looks at the hard hat in his hands. It's bright pink with green lights and a bulb. Come to think of it, maybe it's not actually a miner's hard hat. “Come on, Ben is gonna love this. You’re just mad because I nabbed the last one. Cap could totally use one of these on the farm, right?”

“I… Luca, no.”

“I still want cupcakes though.”

Eva sighs and grabs his shoulders. “Luca,” she says, staring deeply into his eyes. He’s mesmerized by the blue that has nothing to do with biotics and everything to do with the colour of the sky. “If I promise to buy you a cupcake, can we please go?”

He chews his lip. “Two cupcakes. No, wait! Three.”

“Three?”

“One for me, one for Commander Miller and one for Ben. Do you think he likes cupcakes? Everyone likes cupcakes, right?”

“How about I just buy one for everyone on the ship,” she mutters.

“Okay!”

Here, have both! 😊

23. How do they deal with their anger?

Young Luca would throw a tantrum until he got distracted by something else. When he matures and becomes the Protector of the Pack, he’s better at knowing which battles are worth his anger, but he will definitely snap before thinking so it gets him in a lot of trouble

Orion channels his anger into productivity, so you’ll usually catch him furiously scratching things off his to do list when he’s mad

28. Is there a place that reminds them of their childhood? Is that good or bad or bittersweet?

· for a hug in response to one muse learning that the other’s still alive.

--

Something squelches under his boots. It might be mud, it might be reaper guts, it might just be the blood of any other number of unfortunate souls who didn’t make it through the final battle in London.

Luca trudges through the smoky air, unsure if the eerie silence is just the aftermath of the battle or if it’s just his hearing aids finally given up the ghost. He doesn’t want to ever hear another banshee shriek or the scream of a soldier as their chest is cleaved out ever again.

He drags his kit behind him, stumbling once over the uneven and rocky ground. It doesn’t make sense to drag it. The fighting was over, his rounds were depleted, every one of his drones were gone – even Neeboo, sacrificed on the altar in a last ditch attempt to save a pinned down turian and his team three rows rover.

It didn’t work. They didn’t survive.

Luca doesn’t know why he did, and others, better fighters, smarter, stronger warriors than him… didn’t.

He tries very hard not to think of his friends. Of the phoenix, the furies, the paladins… he had been separated from his squad early on in the fight, comms jammed and eventually severed. The battle had been chaos and a small part of Luca is terrified he might have been the only one who lived through it.

He doesn’t think it would be a blessing.

Fires still burn, the fallen on both sides seem to get thicker the further he walks. Where is he even walking to? He doesn’t know it but he’s searching, searching for a splash of glossy red, or blue, a red stripe, a shield or the shape of a dark hood.

In the end, they find him.

“Luca? Oh my god… that… it is. It’s Luca!”

At first he thinks he’s dreaming, hallucinating with the shock of the battle but then he’s pulled in hard against someone’s broad chest. Someone else pries his kit out of his hand, he almost doesn’t let it go, something about it’s familiar weight a misguided source of safety. He can hear his name from a distance, teeth flash white in the dark as familiar faces streaked with soot and gore crowd close.

He blinks up at them, still wondering if he might be dreaming. “Braun? Thurman?”

“Holy shit, Luc. We thought you were dead. We lost you over the ridge and we though-“

Thurman doesn’t finish, crushing Luca to his chest once again. Luca’s face is wet, but with the blood staining Thurman’s armor of from his gross, sobbing tears, he’s not sure.

“Is… did they…”

“We don’t know, we’re trying to find everyone. Shit, someone tell the captain! Someone find Cap! He’s gonna want to see this. Hold on, Luc.”

Time gets hazy for a moment. Luca is drawn down to rest against a piece of overturned rubble. Water gets pressed to his lips, and he blinks blearily at Harris as she forces his head back so that he drinks.

“We thought you were dead, Luc,” she tells him through damp eyes. “God, I thought I wasn’t going to see you again.”

“I thought I was too,” he says weakly. “I almost was.” 

Someone is yelling his name and he forces himself to look up, trying to focus his eyes on the figure pushing their way through the small crowd gathered around them.

“Let me through. Let me through! That’s my kid, okay? That’s my kid!“

“Cap.. Captain?”

The flash of Isaac’s red N7 stripe is the first thing Luca notices, right before he notes the grimy streaked skin and shining eyes. There’s a cut on Isaac’s forehead that still bleeds, running down the side of his face in a thick line.  

“Luca, oh my god. I can’t believe it. I thought-“

Luca can’t hear the rest, suddenly folded into a hug that finally tells him he’s safe. He’s home.

His fingers curl over the edges of Isaac’s armor in a desperate grip as he starts to sob, terrified that if he lets go, he’ll wake up and this would be all a dream.

(sorry this is silly but he needed it)

--

“You have to be ready to commit to this, Luca. No half measures,” Isaac told the engineer firmly. Luca squirmed uncomfortably beside him but Isaac wasn’t about to let him escape without trying to help.

“A whole sixty seconds,” Luca said dubiously. “What’s that going to achieve?”

“You’ll see once we try. Are you ready?”

Luca’s lip trembled ever so slightly, the only indication of just how much he was hurting inside. “Um. Oh.. Okay?”

Isaac opened his arms and folded Luca into a tight hug. Luca was stiff at first but then he melted against him. Isaac watched the clock tick over, each second, each heartbeat, ticking in time.

Five seconds, then ten… at twenty seconds, Luca tried to wriggle away but Isaac squeezed him tighter. “Stop moving.”

Luca made a small noise of protest but stayed still. At forty eight seconds, he released a deep sigh.

“Almost there, Luc. Do you feel it?”

Luca’s blunt nails dug in hard to Isaac’s shoulders. “Your… Your heart is talking to mine,” he said.

“Yes,” Isaac chuckled gently. The clock kept ticking and Isaac kept watching.

"It's... nice," Luca mumbled.

At ninety seconds, Isaac heard the softest of snores.

An hour later, a concerned Eva appeared in the doorway. “Isaac? I’ve been waiting for you to… oh.“

Isaac looked up at her over the top of Luca’s curls and shrugged helplessly.

“Stupid,” Ben told him, wiping the sticky dark blood and rotting brain matter away from Luca’s face.

Luca scowled, squinting through the wetness threatening to drip into his eye. It felt disgusting but it smelt even worse.

“I was just trying to help,” he mumbled, deflating under Ben’s gentle touch. He got a shake of Ben’s head and a set of pursed lips in response.

“Phoenix, remember,” Ben tapped the centre of his chest, right were the Cerberus logo used to be. “Vanguard.”

“Yeah, okay. I got it.” Luca held himself still as wide hands scooped more of the muck out of his hair. So gross. But he would still do it again if he had to.

Luca knew Ben saw his thoughts in the stubborn clench of his jaw when he sighed. He caught Luca’s chin between his thumb and forefinger and Luca couldn’t look away from those compelling green eyes even if he wanted to.

“Does your brain ever just crap out on you?”

Luca collapses dramatically onto Eva’s mat, right in front of her as she’s trying to meditate in the training hall.

She cracks one eye open. “What did you do now?”

Luca drags one hand down his face. “Ben. Fail. Again.”

Eva laughs. “You have to give me more than that, Lulu.”

“I… ran into him in the mess hall and he was wearing that black... you know… with no sleeves.. and his tattoos and his arms… just… so beautiful…” Luca sighs dreamily then continues with a mumble, his face pressed into the mat. “I went to say ‘good morning’ but I just blurted BICEPS instead. Eva, I can never show my face again. Why am I like this?”