Archive of Our Own

1.

Liam's idea of diplomacy was...entertaining, and even slightly enlightening.  But this current exercise is more familiar to Jaal, and less awkward for the human standing next to him.  He watches Pathfinder Ryder's hands as she carefully disassembles her own sniper rifle, comparing every movement to the blueprint displayed above the tech lab's workbench.  The rifle design is simple in principle--longer barrel, more acceleration, more force.  Yet Jaal can't help but wonder how such a small alien lifts such a large gun.

When he asks, Ryder chuckles.  "SAM," she says.  "He uses my armor's power cells to generate extra strength.  Otherwise, I'd never be able to lift this thing.  The original design was an anti-vehicle rifle."  She still looks ridiculous shooting the weapon--the barrel alone is longer than her spindly forearms--but Jaal can't deny its effectiveness.  Not after seeing it punch through a wall--and the kett standing behind it--with one shot.

"Your turn," she reminds him.

This is normally something he does alone, to clear his mind and focus his thoughts.  Yet, to his surprise, her presence isn't intrusive.  If anything, she inspires him to show off a little.  He lays his weapons out on the workbench, starting with the simplest.

"This is a firaan."  The blade crackles as his fingers close around the handle, infused with his own bioelectricity.  "Small, easily concealed, and very lethal."  He spins the blade once for effect, then carefully sets it back down.  One of his uncles nearly lost a finger, showing a woman that trick.

"And this," he says, pointing to his pride and joy, "is a modified version of a kett sniper rifle.  You can see all the changes I've made under the casing here..."  Each modification has a story, each a little stamp of his personality, turning the enemy's weapon into his own.

"Wow.  That's incredible.  Do you mind if I take some scans?  SAM and I are trying to reverse engineer kett weapons for human use."

Her request shouldn't feel personal, and yet it does.  It is the best rifle in the Resistance, and it's his.  But when he sees the curiosity in her eyes, the pure excitement of learning something new, how can he possibly deny her?

2.

"Suvi--"  Fiona knows it's not the most sympathetic thing to do, but she's almost crying with laughter.  The rueful expression on Suvi's face is just too priceless.

"I know, I know," Suvi mutters.  Her cheeks are already brilliant red, and the flush is spreading along her neck and ears at an incredible rate.  "Are you going to rat me out to Lexi?"

The nigh-fluorescent color--and subsequent walk of shame--are probably punishment enough.  "No.  I've got some auto-injectors in my quarters.  Go help yourself."  Fiona's still snickering when Suvi rushes out of the kitchen and Jaal walks in.

"Is she...?  I don't think humans are supposed to be that color," Jaal says, staring after the science officer in obvious alarm.

Fiona shakes her head.  "She's allergic to something in your nutrient paste."  She herself has a carefully measured scoop of the stuff in a weigh boat--minus the spoonful that Suvi tried.

Jaal sits down next to her with a heavy sigh.  "I knew this was a mistake, letting you try our food."

"Hey, I had SAM scan this weigh boat and its contents to hell and back," said Fiona.  "And cross-reference it with my medical records.  I should be fine.  Wish me luck!"

Some expressions translate loud and clear across two galaxies, and Jaal's deep skepticism is one of them.  "Luck," he replies, completely nonplussed.

The first bite of nutrient paste tastes like hoppy beer made solid.  Floral, bitter, and a little bit grainy.  The texture's all right at first, similar to polenta, but it soon starts to stick to the roof of her mouth.  She hates that.  She's hated it ever since peanut butter as a kid.  So she lunges for a glass of water, trying not to gag as she takes one enormous gulp after another to wash the stuff down.

Jaal's mouth quirks.  Then he smiles, then bursts into peals of ringing laughter.

3.

Before the kett base, it seemed like Ryder stopped by the tech lab almost every day.  Sometimes to inundate him with questions, sometimes to sit and work together in companionable silence.  But now, in the wake the horrible truth they uncovered, he hears her footsteps pause by the door.  Like she wants to knock but thinks better of it, and disappears.

She is...giving him space after their conversation, to use a human phrase.  Allowing him time to overcome his shock and grief.  But time isn't what he needs after the kett base.  He needs contact.  He needs a reminder that life is more than horror and survival.

So he seeks her out.  She's in her quarters with the door wide open, reading in bed.  Jaal clears his throat to get her attention, but the spectacular view behind her stops him in his tracks.  Her room overlooks Voeld orbit.  Beneath them, the planet glitters cold and bright, the aurora dancing along its outline.  From up here, there is no desperate ground war, no kett, no exaltation.  The view from space is a vision of what Voeld might have been.

"Stars and skies," he breathes, and Ryder's laugh jolts him out of his daydream.

She sets her datapad aside and waves him into the room.  "Come on in.  The view's better from here."

Jaal hesitates, suddenly shy.  He knows how he would ask another angara for comfort, but not her.  Yet her smile is encouraging and warm, enough for him to take a few steps into her quarters.

"I want to ask you for something," he says after a deep breath.

Ryder is better at figuring out his emotions than the other way around.  She stands up, locking the door behind him to give them some privacy.  "Sure," she says, unusually serious.  "Whatever you need."

Jaal takes a step toward her.  Then another, and another, until they are as close as they were that first day on Aya, when he demanded to know why this stranger had fallen out of the sky.  This is going to be a long explanation; he's never seen any of the aliens touch each other, except brief greetings, or in case of medical emergency.  It seems like a lonely way to go through life.  

"You've noticed that my people like to touch," he begins.  "I know humans are different, and I hope I'm not overstepping--"

He isn't even halfway through his planned speech when Ryder steps into his arms and pulls him close.  She's short, small, and her arms don't even extend all the way around his back.  But her heartbeat is strong and steady against his, her skin warm through their clothing.  He breathes a sigh of relief and returns her embrace, letting her anchor him to reality, soothe the fraying edges of his nerves.

"You know," she whispers, "you could've just asked for a hug."

Jaal simply holds her tighter, wanting to linger for as long as he can.

4.

Fiona volunteers to be the guinea pig for the angaran vid interface--at night, in the armory, where Lexi has the lowest chance of crashing their party.  The homemade setup looks like a decontamination field device to Fiona...but with many more beams pointed at whomever stands in front of it.  Little blinking lights surround her in a 270 degree arc, and she can definitely see some parts held together with duct tape.

"Ryder, if anything starts to feel strange--" Jaal begins.

"I'll blame Gil," says Fiona.

Gil snorts over the comm.  "I'll remember that the next time your room needs maintenance.  Have fun, kids."

Jaal punches something into his omnitool, and the screen in front of her flickers to life, showing a scene from Aya.  Sunshine pours from the sky, and the machine around her begins to hum.  The warmth that spreads across her skin feels less like sun and more like the rush of air after opening an oven.  But she smiles nonetheless, basking in the sensation.  She catches Jaal's eye, and the smile that he returns is better than any simulated sunshine.

"Good.  I'd like to try something else."  Instead of going for the omnitool, Jaal fiddles with a few knobs on the device.  The image vanishes just as a light tingle races up Fiona's right arm toward her neck, then down along her spine.

"Whoa!"

"Relax," says Jaal.  "I was saying 'hello.'"

Fiona's jaw drops.  "You mean...that's what bioelectric communication feels like to angara?"

"Yes.  I realized I could simulate the sensation for you."

She could dance on the spot if it weren't for all the jury-rigged hardware.  "Jaal...do you know what this means?"  Fewer misunderstandings, lower chance of war or violence...she's practically dizzy with the potential applications.   "We can use this interface to understand your people better.  We can add a whole category of nonverbal communication to our translator lexicon.  This'll be great for relations between our species!"

Jaal's eyes soften as he turns another dial.  This time, the sensation is very different.  Like someone brushing a thousand tiny feathers along her skin, all of them coalescing over her heart.  Fiona's breath catches.  She looks up at Jaal, and realizes she could lose herself for hours in the blue of his eyes.

"I didn't do this for diplomacy," he murmurs.  "I did it for you, my friend."

5.

"That's Mount Everest," says Liam.  "Tallest mountain on Earth.  Humans used to have to bring these big oxygen tanks to reach the summit.  Now they rent out custom environment suits at base camp, slap you on the arse, and say go."

Jaal points to a tiny blue speck, stark against the white snow.  "Is that you climbing?"

Liam laughs.  "I wish.  A buddy of mine sent me this.  I think that's his sister."

Details like this make Jaal ache inside--not just from missing his own family, but also for the colonists who left home behind.  He thought he was taking a risk coming aboard the Tempest.  He can't imagine what it would feel like, abandoning everything familiar to venture into the great dark beyond.

"Your turn, Ryder," says Liam.

Fiona brings up an image of sunset on an archeological dig.  She's standing on the edge of an excavated site, with seven asari in lab uniforms.  They're all laughing, and the asari holding a bottle of alcohol has her arm around Fiona.  "My last day on Cyone.  After that, I was off to Initiative training."

Liam gives Fiona a playful nudge.  "You had someone back at home?  You never mentioned that."

"Had," she says, but there's no bitterness in her voice.  If anything, she sounds fond.  "Neriya.  As soon as Dad told us about the Initiative, we both knew I was leaving.  So she threw me a surprise party, and told me to science the shit out of Andromeda."

Liam and Fiona laugh.  Jaal doesn't.  "You and your lover parted ways so easily," he says, stunned.  Perhaps the cultural center's portrayal of human customs is incomplete, or maybe he's misinterpreting something.  

Liam hastily excuses himself to get more beer.  Fiona frowns, drumming her fingers on the worn old couch cushions.  Jaal is just about to apologize for whatever custom he violated when she flips to the next picture.  It's her and her brother in their Andromeda Initiative uniforms--with a caption addressed to Neriya Dalinari.

Enjoy the next 600 years while we're napping.  I'll name a planet after you :)
-Fiona

"It's never easy saying goodbye to someone you care about, or letting them go," she says quietly.  "But we can't cling to things we can't change.  It just distracts us from what we do have, you know?"

She has no way of knowing how closely her words cut.  He's never mentioned Alleia to her.  But she senses that something is wrong, and tentatively rests her hand on his shoulder.  They're still sitting like that when Liam comes back with another round of beer for everyone.

"Everything ok?" he says, looking between Fiona and Jaal.

It is.  That, by itself, is the strangest thing.  Sitting with his two human friends, learning about their lives a galaxy away, the old wounds on his heart no longer bother him.

6.

Dearest.

Fiona's brain keeps getting stuck on that word.  It rattles around her head, demanding her attention as she tries to answer her other email.  Like a toddler.  Or a particularly persistent cat.  She gets about halfway through the queue before collapsing back in her chair with a groan.  Wrangling her brain back into focus is about as likely as Tann declaring his undying love for her.

She closes her eyes, conjuring up Jaal in her imagination.  His whole-hearted laughter.  His grace and speed in combat.  Those eyes that arrest her attention every goddamn time.  She imagines his eyes closer than they've every been, close enough for him to be the only person in the whole galaxy, and that alone is enough to make her heart race.

God, she's a mess.  How is she supposed to write a coherent reply now?

"I recommend an honest and simple response, with as little room for misinterpretation as possible," says SAM, bringing her back to reality.