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The Firing Line
- Chip
Reyes has been called a lot of things. A bastard, a player, a manipulator. Some, a select few, might even call him a charlatan. But never in his thirty-something years has he been called a fool.
The lights flash, tracing messy hair and wild limbs. It’s enough to make Reyes press against the balcony railing, to let the word roll off his tongue. He watches as she loses herself in the music. A drink waits for her on the table, red lipstick dotting the rim. The asari dancing next to her laughs, placing a hand on the small of her back as they press their foreheads together and grin.
Fool.
He tastes the word, lets it saturate his tongue, burning more than whiskey, making him wonder how the file sitting on his omni-tool, the lengthy one detailing the life of Papa Ryder, could ever do justice to the warrior dancing before him.
The music changes. Something slow—sensual. He watches her smile, her eyes falling shut as she sways her hips to melancholy. The asari sighs as if this version of the warrior is a regular occurrence and heads to the bar. Not caring that she’s alone, the warrior continues to sway. And then, she looks up. A second, maybe two passes, but it’s enough. He winks. She smiles.
Fool.
Much, much later. After official meetings and offhanded compliments, they find themselves alone. Her companions wander Kadara as she sits armour and all on the leather of his couch. He thinks of what it’d be like to peel it off her. Strap by strap. It’s a sordid thought. Made more sordid by the metaphor. He doesn’t just want to see her naked; he wants to bare her soul. He wants to see if he is right.
Turns out he is.
Ryder is just a bloody good actress.
He thinks this as she slips off her shirt, trailing kisses down his stomach as if it were an order from the Initiative itself. She smiles at him, and it hurts. It hurts because he loves to be right. But not like this. A month of endless files points to good deeds and amazing feats, but all he can see is a scared little girl pretending to be her father.
He tastes it in her sweat. In the way she moans a little too loudly, touches him a little too proudly. She fucks like she has a chip on her shoulder. Like she’s spent her whole life being told what to do, who to see, and how to feel. When he’s there, pressing her against the wall or sidling up to her at the bar, he feels her tension.
They’d never approve, her eyes say.
That’s why you like it, he smiles back.
Ryder doesn’t call. She flits around the galaxy like a good hero does. She answers summons. She connects clues. She scans and collects, making almost as many friends as she does enemies. It’s a front. He knows it’s a front because he does the same. Smirking instead of smiling. Charm in place of sincerity. He’s never offended that she doesn’t call. That when her ship touches down, he won’t hear it from her lips but from an informant. He’s good at waiting. He’s almost perfected it. One leg rested upon the other, arms spread across the couch, mind flicking through the files he’d read, the ones which outline all the heroically dashing deeds she’d accomplished lately. He knows he’ll never hear about the months she’s been away. She doesn’t like to talk about what’s important. Not with him, at least. So, he reads. Knowing that the next time she enters the room, he’ll be able to see it. The size of her chip. How deep the fissure runs as she sits herself down and sends him a weak smile.
Charm me, it says.
Like you need the excuse, he laughs.
There are days they simply wander the port. Heroes don’t have the luxury of free time, so they dress it up as missions. Fighting outlaws, freeing prisoners, doesn’t matter what they call it. The truth is always simple but never easy.
He likes to watch her as she fights. The way adrenaline makes her eyes gleam, how practice weaves its way into her taut muscles as she charges at whatever sorry sucker thinks they stand a chance. And when it’s over. When her breathing calms and her fists unclench, he watches the change. The slow, sad realization that what she’d been feeling was merely temporary and the real feelings, the ones she masks with quippy jokes and toothy grins, are here to stay.
It's then that he takes her. That he steps into her, amongst the blood and wet pavement, pushing her against the wall. It can be seen as dominance, or arrogance, or even just as need. But it’s more than that. It’s support. It’s giving her something to hold her, to distract her. And maybe, most importantly, giving her something to forgive.
“Dad would’ve never used his hands.” She says, eyes trained on her own hands, bruised at the knuckles, tender and raw despite the calluses.
“You’re not your dad.” He says simply.
“No,” she nods, hands falling to her side. “I’m not.”
Carefully, he takes a fallen hand, kissing the dried blood with the gentlest of lips. “It’s a good thing,” he whispers.
“Is it?” She laughs.
When she walks away, a part of himself, the dark, festering part, can’t help but think that daddy issues never looked so good. Another part, the one that is good at self-reflection, smiles. And what does that say about you?
She never speaks about her dad. Not all the way, at least. It’s always in parts. Dad used to bring me presents. Dad never spoke about his feelings. He learns to read in between the lines. Not that it’s hard. A textbook military father, an ambitious narcissist, an absentee and an idol. He knows the type. Never had much of a father himself, but at least his father had known how to stay gone. Hers was cruel in his patterns, in the way he’d dip in and out of her life. A present was how he’d ask for forgiveness. Artefacts he’d pick up on missions, tokens of the death he was so good at spreading. It was enough for a little girl who was told that her father was someone to admire. Enough attention that over the next few months, the ones where her father would disappear into that hole “strong” men seemed to go, she’d wait, craving his return.
In a way, he’s grateful to her father because he knows. He knows that she would've never come to him if it weren’t for the chip. Never would’ve fallen for his false smile or felt her heart twist at his lies. She would’ve been wise to his tricks if Daddy had been around. She would’ve been smart enough to know not to stay.
- Whiskey
Ryder loves the way sunrise touches the docks. The way the deep red yolk burns across the sulfur pink clouds teasing the day into submission. When the hum of her ship’s engine starts, ready to whisk her away to her next mission, she feels its echo in her heart. The sad lurch that another day has started and she’s not that much wiser, not that much further along in all the plans she’s made and has yet to accomplish.
If she spends her days searching for a better future, she spends her nights abandoning hope. Nights with her legs wrapped around trouble. Basked in the heady cologne of reckless abandon. Wrapped in all the mistakes she knows are mistakes but is still willing to make. Because her mistakes hurt, and if she’s honest with herself, she fucking loves to hurt.
It helps that her hurt is so goddamn pretty. Those eyes—the colour of sand—those lips—dressed up in a smirk. The way she never sees him coming, never tires of the words that speak of nothing, that send her heart into a flutter every time he speaks her name.
“You look like you’re waiting for someone.” He says, leaning close enough that she feels him but far enough that she has to want it.
“And is that someone you?” She counters, loving their silly games. Loving that he needs them just as badly as she does.
“Depends.”
“On?”
“What you need.”
She bites back a smile resisting the urge to reply with a corny—you. Instead, she accepts the whiskey he hands her. Knocking it back the way she was taught. Not by her father or brother but by the desire to be tough, tougher than all the bastards who never stop wanting something from her. The liquid burns its way down, and she allows herself a wince. Just a ghost of one, enough to watch the quirk of his lips as he gestures to the bartender for another round.
The night swells around them as they talk. The coming and going of mercenaries drinking their day’s pay, of deadbeats forgetting their pain, of criminals and drifters and all the people he surrounds himself with because it makes him feel at home. She feels the eyes of the other patrons as she laughs, swigging her whiskey to belong even though they all know she doesn’t.
She doesn’t care.
Maybe once, when she was still in military training, or later, when she accompanied archaeologists on digs. Maybe she cared about belonging, about bending into the shapes society asked of her because when society asks, you obey. But now. Now that they’ve given her power (or more like she was given power and kept it). Now she doesn’t give a fuck. And it suits her. Suits her till morning kisses the night away, and she’s reminded that she should give a fuck because people rely on her, and they shouldn’t have to rely on someone who yearns for hurt.
“Do you like that?” He whispers, a hand on her throat. A hand to keep her grounded while the other roams somewhere they will both dream about later.
“Yes,” she says, snapping back a moan.
“And they call you hero.” He says with teeth, with lips that make their way down skin that comes alive in the wake of his fire. “If only they knew.”
- Tartarus
Operating out of Tartarus was never a mistake. It was a choice. One made because he believes in the power of names. You don’t go to Tartarus looking for hope. You go because you know there’s none to be found. He thinks it’s obvious. Thinks that he doesn’t need to tell her the truth because he was never hiding it.
A good man doesn’t sit on a throne.
A good man doesn’t even want a throne.
He will never forget the day she walked into the room. A body lean from fighting, hidden by a faded leather jacket that’s a little too big, a little too tough. Dark hair held in a high ponytail, high enough, tight enough, that it begged to be torn down. It wasn’t their first meeting. It wasn’t even their second. But it might as well have been their first because it was his first time seeing her. Really seeing her. Not just as a pretty mark. As an inexperienced girl who did a good job at pretending. But as something kindred. A person who the world so desperately wants to tear down but will never have the pleasure of doing so.
“You need a friend,” he says, hating how the words feel in his mouth. Slippery and loaded.
“And is that friend you?” She asks with a smile, a joke waiting for permission to land.
No. He wants to say. It shouldn’t be me.
In place of futile truth, he smiles, fighting the honesty away. Dipping his voice to an octave akin to honey. “I can be a good friend.”
“So can I,” she says, halfway to the door. “But” a pause, a smile, “that’s only because I can see the strings.”
And yet, he strings her along. He feeds her the kind of information that a good pathfinder needs. He lets himself fantasize as he watches the ruthlessness of her morality. The trail of bodies that don’t listen to the brand she’s selling. He wants to be cynical, but it’s hard when he watches her make real change.
In a way, her change makes him feel at peace. Because if she believes that violence can be an answer, then maybe she can believe in him.
- Port
She knows what kind of day he’s been having by the way he kisses her. A good day means light and flirty, playful because he knows he can win. The bad days are when he’ll use his hands instead of his mouth as if within her body, he will find something—a clue, a secret—anything to tell him why things refuse to go his way. And then there are those days. The days she has no name for. The ones where he’s rough and greedy and demanding to the edge of violence, and she doesn’t know what sparks those days, but she both hates and loves that it excites her, that she looks forward to those days because it’s probably the reason she keeps finding herself on this godforsaken port.
Her friends don’t like him. Her brother doesn’t know him. And her father would’ve hated him. The thought makes her laugh. As if she needed more reasons to want him, to need him, to feel every thought purposefully slip into some mundane excuse to talk to him. It doesn’t mean that she is weak. In fact, she is so strong in everything else that it’s almost a pleasure to feel weak. To let herself fall into something so beyond rational thought that she can just float, free-falling into whatever disaster she surely could’ve protected herself from.
That’s why when it comes. When the truth of his deception comes knocking into her life. She’s not all that surprised. She’s glad. Thankful that he’s exactly what everyone said he would be, so she doesn’t have to spend more brain power defending him.
“You have bad taste in men,” he whispers, teeth on her throat, leg pressed between her thighs. He’s used her in a way that should make her feel angry. He’s made her compromise on morals she so helplessly clings to. He doesn’t have the decency to look ashamed. He’s so busy riding off the high of winning that he’s ignored the fact that it’s come from her losing.
A charlatan. A hero. Which one is the liar?
“The worst,” she moans, needing the grip of his fingers, the punishment that comes with his touch. Because no matter what people say, she’s not a good person. She’s not a good person, and still, they saddled her with all this power because, at the end of the day, they don’t live in a good world.
A good world wouldn’t allow pain to feel like pleasure. It wouldn’t allow a good man to die so a spoiled daughter could take his position. It wouldn’t exile people because they were brave enough to be scared and broken.
But when he slips her underwear to the side with the crook of a finger. When he fucks her furiously against the wall, she knows. She doesn’t want to live in a good world.
- Truth
“If people were honest, we’d be out of a job.” He says it like a joke, but the real joke is that it’s the truth.
Now that the secret is out, they spend more time talking. He’s not sure if he likes it. Talking usually means growing, and growing only ends in death.
“If people were honest, then we’d be the liars.” She pulls her knees to her chest. He hates it when she does that because it makes him think of a child. A child masquerading as a warrior. A man masquerading as a promise.
“We aren’t liars?” He asks, hand tugging at her hair, pulling her head so it falls onto his shoulder.
“Not when it counts.”
He wants to remind her that he’s betrayed her. That he spent all that time feeding her lies so that he could feel better about himself. The fact that she took it in stride makes him feel much worse than if she were angry. Anger would’ve meant that she believed his lies. That for the briefest of times, he was a good man.
“Fuck me,” she says in place of the silence, tilting her head back so that his eyes can roam down her neck and into her shirt.
“What happened this time?” He asks even though he knows. He knows because he’s the leader of a colony, and colonies are filled with ants. Ants are good at finding cracks, at latching on to prey who think they are in charge just because they can’t see them.
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“I know,” he replies, wishing that she did. Wishing that he didn’t.
“Reyes,” she says, quiet but angry. “Fuck me.”
She gets on her knees, twisting around so she’s kneeling above him. When he looks into her eyes, it almost feels like breaking. Eyes so bright—brimming with pain and fear—a rawness so honest that he almost softens to the sweet kisses and tenderness she hates. But he doesn’t soften because he knows the truth. She doesn’t come to him for love.
She comes to him for hate.
- Rooftops
“What are we doing?”
She’d been toying with the words. Sampling them in her head with a million responses that would never come.
“You mean, what are you doing?”
She hates that he knows her. That despite her best efforts, she’s not some illusive goddess built from fire and will, but a scared girl that will always feel small.
“Yes,” she sighs, “but also no.”
“So, maybe?”
They are seated on a rooftop. Not just any rooftop but the rooftop. The one where she first learned of his taste—whiskey and mint—where she allowed herself to be the self that was just her. The one absent from the word hero.
“Stop it,” she says. Tired of their games. Of herself. “I’m being serious. Where are we going?”
“After this, we are going to Tartarus.” Then, before she can be indignant. “Then the morning after, who knows? Isn’t that what you want? The chaos of the unknown? The impossibility of after?”
“I just want to be happy.” She lets the words fall as she stares out at the city. Watches as it stretches out before them, endless and unknown. His silence makes her want to look into his eyes, to take the fingers that are rested so close to her thigh into her own.
“Happiness is a lie.”
“Oh?” She laughs. “And what’s the truth?”
“Contentment.”
“What’s the difference?” She baulks, feeling herself begin to close, emotions pushed under the surface, hidden behind words like duty, justice, and pain.
“Happiness is like enlightenment, out of reach, illusive, something they ask us to work towards. Contentment is something that just happens. The in-between, the moments we don’t remember till it’s too late.”
“Fine. Then I want to be content.”
He takes her jaw with his fingers, turning her face so their eyes can meet. “This doesn’t make you content?”
“It does.”
“But?”
“It’s not enough.”
He sighs, letting his fingers slip. The gesture makes her feel empty. Like she’d finally found who she was and then just as suddenly forgot.
“Nothing ever is.”
- Charlatan
She fades away just as easily as she came. It’s so subtle at first he doesn’t even notice. But then a shipment comes in, then another and another, and he suddenly realizes just how long it’s been since he’s seen her, felt her, heard her.
He tries his best to make it seem business as usual. Like he’s asking where the little hero has gone out of curiosity. A notch in a smuggler’s bedpost. A passing fancy until something expensive and new comes his way. There’s a reason he calls himself the Charlatan, and it’s not for the lies he tells others.
She’s changed him. Before her, he’d drifted by on ambition alone. On the sweet thrill of victory. The knowledge that people can be smart and cold, but he is always a little smarter, a little colder. He’d like to blame it on his upbringing, but he knows it’s just how he is. He could’ve been raised in the plushest of homes, and he’d still be like this. A predator. A liar. Hungry and waiting.
He's still hungry, still waiting, but it’s for all the wrong reasons. The bruises that dot her knuckles after a barfight, the way she bites her nails when she’s nervous, the twitch in her left leg when she’s told to listen. All the things he thought he’d never notice, things buried under the force of their sex, the violence of their need. But now that she’s gone, it’s all he’s left with. The everything in the face of the nothing.
- Hero
Death came for her father in a blaze of glory. In the precipice of victory. The seductive turn from unknown to known. There was honor in his choice. In the way he sacrificed all his definite for her trembling maybe. Since her father’s death, she’s spent much time contemplating her own. It’s why she loves the feel of the Charlatan’s fingers on her throat. His kind of death would be a mercy. A kindness on a woman whose half-assed decisions have shaken the galaxy in more ways than she deserves. A merciful death would be too much to ask for. So, when death comes, it comes to her like she always knew it would. Like a trap.
As her brain starts to shut down, as the fight begins to leave her fingers, she doesn’t panic. In the end, there’s a strange sort of peace, like she can finally stop searching. For a reason, a purpose, anything to keep her believing that when they no longer need a hero, they will still need her.
Death is kind in its apathy. It doesn’t care how many good deeds she’s done or how much violence she’s spread. It comes to her as it comes to all its children. Unwitting and sure. Her last thought as she slips towards oblivion, towards eternity, isn’t of the loyalty of her friends, nor is it of the sweet almost she had with a man that would never completely be hers. No, her last thought is much, much simpler.
Fuck you, she thinks, vision fading to black.
And then, just as suddenly as she’s welcomed the end, she’s back, eyes shooting open to greet the dim yellow light of her prison in a burst of horrified surprise.
Fuck you, is the first thought of her new life.
- Firing Line
She’d died, his hero. His pathfinder. She’d died, and there hadn’t been a damn thing he could do about it. He tries to imagine the moment, the emptiness claiming her as her light finally learned to give in. He’s a glutton for punishment, so he doesn’t call her, doesn’t ask how she is. He just sits, lost in Tartarus, imagining what it was like when she died. It’s then, weeks after he’s learnt why the Pathfinder hasn’t been slinking into his port looking for death, that he decides.
He will be enough.
Ryder doesn’t doubt the good in people. She doubts herself, her decisions, her courage, her love. Which is why when she sends the call and the galaxy responds, she’s surprised. Come with me, she beckons, fall into the firing line. And they come. By foot, by flight, the people she’s made connections with, the ones she’s merely gazed upon, they come, rallying to her call. She’s racing, Nomad, surging through the wilderness when she hears his voice. It's smug and satisfied even though it should be terrified. But he's Reyes, and he’s jumping into danger for a cause that would never be his own because it's hers. And maybe, just maybe, it's because he's hers. Her voice shakes in response, pitching an octave higher when his words settle upon her heart, joking and dishonest, but there.
Don’t you get it, her lieutenant smiles.
You are enough.
Reyes watches her rush into the heat of battle like he knows she does. But knowing and experiencing are entirely different beasts. He’d always been in the background, in the shadow of after, waiting for stories she never managed to tell, letting her bury panic under the ease of sex, dressing death in denial. Now, as he watches her greet the possibility of the end, he wonders how he ever thought of her as anything other than a warrior.
Fool. He smiles.
She is enough.
When Ryder exits the vault, she finally feels like the word they have always called her. She knows the feeling will fade the way that everything fades, but the pride is enough to last a lifetime. Or so she thinks—drunk on adrenaline—high on victory. But after the hugs and cheering comes exhaustion, and suddenly, she isn’t so sure. How long before they turn against her? Before the world changes, forgetting that once upon a time, she was a hero. Then she sees his face. Watches as he watches her. He doesn’t intrude, doesn’t claim her, or besmirch her. He just lets her have her moment because it’s hers, and he’s hers.
Happiness. She thinks.
He is enough.
They meet in secret. Hidden in a storage room. Pressed up against a wall because it’s what they know and what they like. They meet in the face of their misconceptions. They meet in the lines of their truth. He brings a hand to the back of her head, and it doesn’t mean violence. She gives in to him, and it doesn’t mean broken. They are still liars. Dressed in jokes and false smiles and the toil of their jobs. But they’re trying. And it might not be a promise. It might not even be the end, but it’s a start.
And sometimes, that’s enough.