Amihan (ə-'mi-hən) (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
camalyng) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
greenstickered2015-06-10 11:46 am
camalyng) wrote in greenstickered2015-06-10 11:46 am
Mass Effect (Relay Monument Incident): Perfidy
Title: Perfidy
Rating: PG-13 (F-bombs)
Words: ~1330
Summary: Ashley's first solo mission brings not one, but two familiar faces.
When her first solo mission is to calibrate Horizon's GARDIAN turrets, Ashley doesn't know whether to laugh or cry or blurt out, 'But the Reapers might learn how to love!'
She doesn't do any of those things. No one believes in Reapers, and she's not going to get grounded like Joker for stomping on the party line. She just says yes and waits for any other objectives.
Her second objective suddenly makes why her make sense: She has to investigate whether Cerberus is behind these attacks. Of course they'd want to send someone who's seen their work already, rather than try to write in someone new, and she's the only Alliance soldier alive who was part of the Cerberus investigations two years ago.
(She's seen the reports saying that Shepard might be back but working for Cerberus. She doesn't want to believe it.)
She asks for training for the GARDIAN turrets. They get an engineer to teach her the quick and dirty way to fix one; she makes her promise to teach her properly when she gets back.
"Yeah, sure," says Engineer Tan. "I hear you've been working on tech certifications."
"Working on it," Ashley agrees. It's not going well. She has her certification in Disruptor Ammo, yes, but with a year of reading and rereading about coding and experimenting on her omni-tool, she's not even halfway to requalifying as an Infiltrator. "But the most complicated tech work I've done in my life was arm a makeshift nuke."
Tan looks up at her and squints like she's trying to remember where she's seen her before. Ashley shifts, aiming for a more relaxed posture than the portraits from the medal ceremony.
She can see the exact moment when the credit chit drops.
"That's surprisingly easy, isn't it," Tan says instead, awkwardly, and she nods. "Good on you for trying to learn more. You don't get many soldiers wanting to learn things from other fields."
"I just want to be more useful to the Alliance," she says, which is what she said to the officers when she asked for tech training, and isn't a lie. It's not the whole truth, either, but I need to be worth Kaidan's life would probably get her sent back to the psychologist, and the geth thing would probably get her written up if not grounded.
(I need something to work on in all that time I used to spend writing to the guy I couldn't date would just be pathetic and embarrassing.)
It's hard to feel useful when half the colony won't give her the time of day.
Ashley's a military brat, but on every colony she grew up on, the worst treatment Alliance families got was grudging tolerance. Open disdain for being Alliance is new, and insulting considering how hard she's worked to stop getting open disdain within the Alliance for being her.
Cerberus be damned, they should have picked someone else for this assignment. Someone better at holding their tongue, someone better at tech. Someone like Kaidan, if he'd lived.
Someone who wouldn't be so desperate to appear useful to the colonists that they'd react to an unscheduled, unmarked ship by trying to shoot it from the ground with an assault rifle (she feels stupid as she does it).
Someone who wouldn't get themselves bitten by one of those bug things.
Someone who wouldn't be in stasis while half the colony gets abducted.
She's completely alone when the stasis field wears off. For a moment she panics, thinking she's back on Eden Prime, but then she realizes how quiet it is, not at all like she's being attacked by geth or anything else. There isn't even the buzzing of those insects in the air.
Ashley rushes through the colony, almost relieved that she's not seeing any civilian bodies, but the bodies of some new creature and something almost like a husk worry her instead, and it's still too, too quiet. Spent thermal clips are everywhere, indicating someone fought through, and the closer she gets to the GARDIAN towers, the more she can hear the hum that says they're active. Someone did her job for her.
She walks in on fucking Delan insulting Shepard, and without thinking she steps in like she would have for any bar fight in the old days. In the old days, of course, she wouldn't have told Delan he was in the presence of a god. She's just... a little overwhelmed, to be honest, by the sight of Shepard alive after going to her damn memorial and grieving her for two years. When she sticks out her hand for a friendly handshake, it's because if she hugs her, she might never let go.
Over Shepard's shoulder, she catches sight of Garrus, half his face scarred and holes in his armor, and she wants to headbutt him for both affection and pain. Instead she chooses not to react, chooses not to drag another personal relationship into what's really just an Alliance and Cerberus conflict. But almost every word she fires at Shepard applies equally to him: I thought you were dead. You show up after two years and act like nothing's happened? I thought you were gone. How could you put me through that? Why didn't you contact me? Cerberus, are you fucking kidding me?
(She doesn't say that last one, at least in so many words, but she's thinking it. Garrus being a turian while she's the granddaughter of General Williams is bad enough, but those are things they were born into and can't change. Garrus working for Cerberus is a choice, a hypocritical one given his species and the Cerberus mission, a choice that flies in the face of her most defining choice, a choice that seems tailor-made to hurt her.)
Out of the corner of her eye she can see Garrus holding himself rigid as Shepard tries to defend herself, only interjecting when she mentions the reports, and while that surprises her, she's oddly grateful for his stupid turian professionalism. Shepard being back is enough to deal with without acting like they had a bad breakup in front of her when she'd only really caught the start of their relationship, and in front of a complete stranger who probably has no idea they had one.
She was never the optimist on the Normandy. Neither was Garrus. So she's a little insulted when the only other thing that makes him break his silence is some pretty reasonable Cerberus what ifs.
"Damnit, Williams," he says. Two years ago he'd been saying, damnit, Ash in very different tones of voice; the step back to using her surname instead of her nickname feels like a slap in the face, especially after she used his first name. "You're so focused on Cerberus that you're ignoring the real threat."
She wants to kiss that defense of Cerberus from his mouth until he forgets about them entirely, wants to throw him to the ground and show him that the real threat to him is her. If she doesn't focus on Cerberus, she'll probably break down and say it. So she deliberately ignores that comment, focusing entirely on Shepard. It's easy with Shepard just as defensive.
"I'm an Alliance soldier," she says, as much an attack on Shepard as it is a reminder of why they never made it official. "It's in my blood."
Shepard invites her back. She turns her down, and looks right at Garrus as she says she's "no fan of aliens" even though these days she only really minds this particular alien. He gives her the most hurt look he's ever seen on his face, and she's seen him grieving. It's nowhere near as satisfying as she'd thought it would be.
She doesn't say goodbye to him, just Shepard. The last time she said goodbye to Garrus in person, it had been with a kiss, clinging to each other in that Presidium hotel room. This time, she has to end it.
Rating: PG-13 (F-bombs)
Words: ~1330
Summary: Ashley's first solo mission brings not one, but two familiar faces.
When her first solo mission is to calibrate Horizon's GARDIAN turrets, Ashley doesn't know whether to laugh or cry or blurt out, 'But the Reapers might learn how to love!'
She doesn't do any of those things. No one believes in Reapers, and she's not going to get grounded like Joker for stomping on the party line. She just says yes and waits for any other objectives.
Her second objective suddenly makes why her make sense: She has to investigate whether Cerberus is behind these attacks. Of course they'd want to send someone who's seen their work already, rather than try to write in someone new, and she's the only Alliance soldier alive who was part of the Cerberus investigations two years ago.
(She's seen the reports saying that Shepard might be back but working for Cerberus. She doesn't want to believe it.)
She asks for training for the GARDIAN turrets. They get an engineer to teach her the quick and dirty way to fix one; she makes her promise to teach her properly when she gets back.
"Yeah, sure," says Engineer Tan. "I hear you've been working on tech certifications."
"Working on it," Ashley agrees. It's not going well. She has her certification in Disruptor Ammo, yes, but with a year of reading and rereading about coding and experimenting on her omni-tool, she's not even halfway to requalifying as an Infiltrator. "But the most complicated tech work I've done in my life was arm a makeshift nuke."
Tan looks up at her and squints like she's trying to remember where she's seen her before. Ashley shifts, aiming for a more relaxed posture than the portraits from the medal ceremony.
She can see the exact moment when the credit chit drops.
"That's surprisingly easy, isn't it," Tan says instead, awkwardly, and she nods. "Good on you for trying to learn more. You don't get many soldiers wanting to learn things from other fields."
"I just want to be more useful to the Alliance," she says, which is what she said to the officers when she asked for tech training, and isn't a lie. It's not the whole truth, either, but I need to be worth Kaidan's life would probably get her sent back to the psychologist, and the geth thing would probably get her written up if not grounded.
(I need something to work on in all that time I used to spend writing to the guy I couldn't date would just be pathetic and embarrassing.)
It's hard to feel useful when half the colony won't give her the time of day.
Ashley's a military brat, but on every colony she grew up on, the worst treatment Alliance families got was grudging tolerance. Open disdain for being Alliance is new, and insulting considering how hard she's worked to stop getting open disdain within the Alliance for being her.
Cerberus be damned, they should have picked someone else for this assignment. Someone better at holding their tongue, someone better at tech. Someone like Kaidan, if he'd lived.
Someone who wouldn't be so desperate to appear useful to the colonists that they'd react to an unscheduled, unmarked ship by trying to shoot it from the ground with an assault rifle (she feels stupid as she does it).
Someone who wouldn't get themselves bitten by one of those bug things.
Someone who wouldn't be in stasis while half the colony gets abducted.
She's completely alone when the stasis field wears off. For a moment she panics, thinking she's back on Eden Prime, but then she realizes how quiet it is, not at all like she's being attacked by geth or anything else. There isn't even the buzzing of those insects in the air.
Ashley rushes through the colony, almost relieved that she's not seeing any civilian bodies, but the bodies of some new creature and something almost like a husk worry her instead, and it's still too, too quiet. Spent thermal clips are everywhere, indicating someone fought through, and the closer she gets to the GARDIAN towers, the more she can hear the hum that says they're active. Someone did her job for her.
She walks in on fucking Delan insulting Shepard, and without thinking she steps in like she would have for any bar fight in the old days. In the old days, of course, she wouldn't have told Delan he was in the presence of a god. She's just... a little overwhelmed, to be honest, by the sight of Shepard alive after going to her damn memorial and grieving her for two years. When she sticks out her hand for a friendly handshake, it's because if she hugs her, she might never let go.
Over Shepard's shoulder, she catches sight of Garrus, half his face scarred and holes in his armor, and she wants to headbutt him for both affection and pain. Instead she chooses not to react, chooses not to drag another personal relationship into what's really just an Alliance and Cerberus conflict. But almost every word she fires at Shepard applies equally to him: I thought you were dead. You show up after two years and act like nothing's happened? I thought you were gone. How could you put me through that? Why didn't you contact me? Cerberus, are you fucking kidding me?
(She doesn't say that last one, at least in so many words, but she's thinking it. Garrus being a turian while she's the granddaughter of General Williams is bad enough, but those are things they were born into and can't change. Garrus working for Cerberus is a choice, a hypocritical one given his species and the Cerberus mission, a choice that flies in the face of her most defining choice, a choice that seems tailor-made to hurt her.)
Out of the corner of her eye she can see Garrus holding himself rigid as Shepard tries to defend herself, only interjecting when she mentions the reports, and while that surprises her, she's oddly grateful for his stupid turian professionalism. Shepard being back is enough to deal with without acting like they had a bad breakup in front of her when she'd only really caught the start of their relationship, and in front of a complete stranger who probably has no idea they had one.
She was never the optimist on the Normandy. Neither was Garrus. So she's a little insulted when the only other thing that makes him break his silence is some pretty reasonable Cerberus what ifs.
"Damnit, Williams," he says. Two years ago he'd been saying, damnit, Ash in very different tones of voice; the step back to using her surname instead of her nickname feels like a slap in the face, especially after she used his first name. "You're so focused on Cerberus that you're ignoring the real threat."
She wants to kiss that defense of Cerberus from his mouth until he forgets about them entirely, wants to throw him to the ground and show him that the real threat to him is her. If she doesn't focus on Cerberus, she'll probably break down and say it. So she deliberately ignores that comment, focusing entirely on Shepard. It's easy with Shepard just as defensive.
"I'm an Alliance soldier," she says, as much an attack on Shepard as it is a reminder of why they never made it official. "It's in my blood."
Shepard invites her back. She turns her down, and looks right at Garrus as she says she's "no fan of aliens" even though these days she only really minds this particular alien. He gives her the most hurt look he's ever seen on his face, and she's seen him grieving. It's nowhere near as satisfying as she'd thought it would be.
She doesn't say goodbye to him, just Shepard. The last time she said goodbye to Garrus in person, it had been with a kiss, clinging to each other in that Presidium hotel room. This time, she has to end it.