Work Text:
Awkward Moments
A Mass Effect Ficmas 2019 Request by briannetoma
Basic Request:
I adore Jack x Jane romance. Anything romantic or funny or fun between those two is a hit. Christmas or New Years themed are fun. :)
Initial Commentary:
This one took almost a month to figure out.
The biggest problem is that canonically, Shepard and TIM don’t actually MEET until ME3’s penultimate finale. Before that, they’re just trading barbs via long distance QEC comms and through subordinates like Kai Leng.
Ultimately, I managed to click on a plot. Here goes nothing…
The Citadel, December 2183
Despite the death of the Council and hundreds of thousands of sentients when the Geth attacked the Citadel, life went on, particularly in the areas not too badly affected by the short-lived Geth War, as the tridee talking heads were referring to it as.
Unfortunately, even being a Council SPECTRE meant that one couldn’t easily get themselves out of the requisite social events, particularly as the new Council established itself and began to gather favors that could be traded later on for even more favors.
So it was that Daisy Shepard found herself standing in a all too tight dress, in front of hundreds of scanbeams for the Milky Way’s various news networks; trying to put on a happy face.
“Commander Shepard,” shouted one of the news reporterettes, an Asari from Nebula News. “How do you answer the accusations that you deliberately let the Council die to secure Human dominance?”
Daisy glared back at the Asari, who looked to be in the stages of early matronhood. Calming herself, she remembered something that Liara had mentioned, or maybe something she’d looked up one night on the extranet after the shy Asari scientist had joined the Normandy’s crew and Asari history had suddenly looked a lot more appealing.
“Queen Madara once faced a choice like I did long ago,” she said. “Let a hundred die on a ship, or let the Ardat-Yakishi Metzli escape and kill hundreds more. She sank the ship and saved hundreds more. Lives that would have been lost if Metzli had escaped.”
Before another reporter could interrupt with questions of their own, Daisy skittered across the open ground as fast as her high-heels could carry her. Damned Asari, she thought. Of all the human fashions you have to pick up on, you pick high heels? Before first contact, flat heels had been the ‘in’ thing amongst general human culture.
Now, everyone wanted to be a matron gliding across the floor in heels; and that meant that Shepard too, had to wear heels, given that her wardrobe for tonight had been donated by Udina’s office ‘so you don’t look like a hobo and embarass humanity,’ as the unofficial explanation went.
Once past the pair of well-dressed Elcor that acted as ushers, keeping the general public and reporters without sufficient social status outside of the hall, Daisy relaxed. Spotting Garrus, she walked over, catching him in the act of trying to impress a Turian woman with his martial prowess over the (naturally) open bar.
Grabbing one of the free drinks laid out on the bar countertop, she noticed that the bartender was an Asari. That wasn’t unusual. What was unusual was that she was a matriarch. Or at least Daisy thought she was. There was a lot of ageist back and forth amongst the Asari themselves, with maidens having breast implants to look older, while matriarchs saw nothing of spending tens of thousands of credits a week on skin peels and injections to restore the bright and supple skin of maidenhood.
While she took a sip from her drink, she overheard exactly what Garrus was trying to impress the woman with and chuckled, which caught the Turian’s attention. Ignoring Garrus’ subtle twitching mandibules, she spoke up, perhaps fortified by liquid courage.
“So, Garrus; you still telling the story about how you took out that Lightbulb from five klicks away?”
Taking both Turians’ silence as a nod of assent, she continued. “What Garrus here didn’t tell you is that he used the automatic cannon on a tank to do it. That’s kind of...cheating.”
As the Turian female walked away in disgust; Garrus sighed. “Shepard.”
Daisy shrugged. “She wouldn’t have been a good choice for you, anyway. She was Directorate of Intelligence through and through.”
“Really?”
“If you weren’t paying so much attention to her spikes, you’d have noticed the Armax Falcon holdout pistol strapped under her dress. Popular with the Directorate.”
“I’d have liked to get my hands on her though.”
“The gun or woman?”
“Shepard.”
Smirking, she walked away, scanning the room for other members of the Normandy crew. They’d all been given explicit instructions by their respective councilors that they had to attend; something about “restoring the trust so badly shaken by recent events”.
Spotting Tali’s distinctive Quarian patterns in the crowd, Daisy began to walk over; drink in hand. As she got closer, she saw that Tali was animatedly talking with an older human man dressed in an expensive suit of what looked to be Singaporean thread in the latest Giuli Vorn pattern.
His voice was the first thing Shepard noticed, a rich baritone that carried over the distance. As she closed, she got bits and pieces of their conversation, something about how hard it was to keep the Normandy’s Mass Effect core balanced just right, but when it was balanced just so, the ship (and core) could sing.
Tali spotted her first and waved. “Shepard!” she squealed. “You’ll never guess who I found!”
The man smiled, his blue eyes gazing it seemed, right through Shepard. “My apologies, Commander Shepard.” He nodded towards Tali. “I wasn’t expecting to find someone in the same field as me at an event like this.”
A pause. “Oh,” he said, rubbing his nose. “My apologies. Jack Harper, Chief Executive of Cord-Hislop Aerospace.”
It was then that Shepard got it. Cord-Hislop, one of the top aerospace companies in the Systems Alliance, right behind Chengdu-Boeing Aerospace Corporation. Thinking back, she remembered a few Cord-Hislop employees who’d been on the Normandy all the way back; making sure the new frigate worked properly. They’d left at around the time she’d been given command of the Normandy.
“So,” she said. “I finally find the person responsible for the slowest elevator in the fleet.”
At that, Harper sighed. “Developing the Mark Nine Core and the attendant heat sinks cost more than we thought. We had to cut costs elsewhere to stay within Parliament’s budget.”
“Oh!” exclaimed Tali. “That’s why even Wrex was complaining about the food.” A moment’s pause. “Oh. I never noticed it,” she said in an embarrassed tone. “The Dextro food was special order, wasn’t it?”
Daisy smiled. “Yeah, we ran that through the SPECTRE budget, along with fifty dozen heat sink connectors. Navy Budgeting didn’t like it, but what’s the point of a near unlimited black budget funded by the Council if you never use it?”
“So how’d my ship hold up, Commander?”
“Your ship?”
He smiled. “When you spend two years of your life running herd on a dozen cats, you tend to get a bit…possessive of the outcome. There was this psychologist who kept on insisting on amenities needed for the crew. We had to discard most of her ideas, unfortunately.”
Daisy took a sip of her drink. “Ideas, like what?”
“Well, she wanted a small pool for crew exercise. Claimed it wouldn’t cost that much, since we could double-count the mass as an emergency heat sink.”
“A pool?” Tali exclaimed; trying to get her head around the concept. “In the Migrant Fleet, only the Liveships have sterile pools for recreation. The waiting list for a session is years.”
“Yes. She was quite persistent, quoting the latest research by Asari psychologists into ‘the calming effect of water’ on sentient lifeforms. Her last proposal was for a small aquarium in the recreation spaces. We considered it seriously, but we were under tremendous pressure from our Turian liaison to not include frivolous necessities in the design as the Hierarchy was fronting almost half the funds.”
Shepard chuckled at that. “I’m never going to let Garrus live that down.”
“Live down what, Commander?” Harper asked. “Or should I call you Shepard?”
“Daisy. Daisy’s fine,” she said, feeling the alcohol getting to her, making her slightly light-headed. “Live down the fact that he could’ve seen a crew swimming competition.”
Harper’s expression went to slightly confused, along with Tali’s. “I don’t get why a swimming competition is relevant…” he began, before catching himself. “Ah, I see. Well played, Daisy.”
As the two of them shared a knowing smile, Tali looked between them, slightly confused.
Taking pity on her, Harper continued. “Traditionally, the Asari swim naked in competitions; something to do about being equals before Tevura, their Goddess of Travels.”
“Speaking from experience, Jack?”
“I have had some experience, if that’s what you’re implying.”
“Was it good?”
“It was…interesting to say the least. Almost as interesting as Miss Karrigar.”
“Wait.” Shepard interrupted, lowering her drink. “Brooke Karrigar, right wing for the Armali Assaulters?”
“None other.”
“Do you always come onto biotics, Jack?”
“Only if they’re good.”
After that, it was relatively easy to slip away from the party, claiming that she’d left something on the Normandy that needed her attention. The others would cover for her, like they’d always done before on the battlefield.
TWO YEARS LATER
December 2185
“Give me one reason why I shouldn’t kill you both,” Daisy said, fighting the urge to scratch her face off as she aimed the strange new pistol at Lawson and Taylor (if that was their real names). Beneath their feet, the deck rumbled with low explosions intermittently as the station’s damaged reactor continued its inevitable cascade towards resonance failure.
“It’s nice to know that the famous Shepard charm’s still intact,” replied Lawson. “If you kill us now, the Reapers win.”
“Bullshit.”
“They covered it up,” Taylor said, with disgust on his face. Lawson continued for him. “The Council’s dismissed the Reapers as a fantasy of a conveniently dead SPECTRE. This leaves them free to consolidate their own power. Irissa’s the worst. She’s trying to do in years what an Asari typically does in decades.”
“Motherfuckers.”
Breathing heavily, Daisy lowered the pistol. She was taking a chance by not killing the two of them right then and there, but what she’d just been told fit in with what little she knew of Irissa. She’d been a small-time politician from Sanves who’d rose in a few centuries from being mayor of a small city to deputy councilor; no mean feat, particularly since she wasn’t from a well-established House.
The others, well. Udina was Udina, while the Salarians and Turians saw a chance to expand their influence in the fragile political situation. Most people took one look at the Salarians and dismissed them, usually because of their short lifespans. But that was what made them so dangerous. They always put the greater above the whole, to a point beyond that of even the service-minded Turians.
“Let’s get the fuck out of here. Before I change my mind.”
A few hours later, they were on another Cerberus station, one much larger and more populous than the former Lazarus Station. How did a bunch of egomaniacs like Cerberus get this kind of equipment?
“Boss wants to see you,” stated Taylor. “Down the hall, there’s a Quick room,” he said, using the slang term for Quantum Entanglement Communications. If Daisy still had any eyebrows, she would’ve raised them at that; for QEC systems cost as much as a frigate and were found only in Fleet Headquarters and higher.; “It’ll put you in touch with him.”
“He’s not here?”
“Security,” replied Lawson. “We operate under extremely cellular formats. If one cell’s compromised, the others continue onwards.”
“Fine.”
Stepping into the room, she barely noticed the security door closing behind her while the QEC cabinet booted up, handshaking with its counterpart across the galaxy.
Moments later, a sigh escaped Daisy’s lips.
“I don’t know what’s more fucked up, dying, or finding out the last guy you boned is really the leader of the human supremacist movement.”