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The fact stands that Lace isn’t a very sentimental woman.
It’s just how she was raised. In a household of a single mother who was constantly hellbent on proving to the galaxy that she was worthy of power, it was only natural that her carbon copy daughter would end up becoming somewhat similar. After a series of private schools, endless tutoring, and military training in her adult years, any semblance of emotional control was given up in favour of maintaining a distant demeanour with anyone who crossed her path.
Not unlike a certain Admiral Silk, who Lace has the displeasure of calling mother.
This was never an issue in her life. Not as a child, and not during Basic— and especially not during her later years as a young woman in the Alliance Navy. In fact, it served her quite well that the only major emotion she was willing to display was anger; people steered clear, put off by her flares of rage that would give way to cool disinterest not long after. It allowed her to maintain her fellow officers at arms’ length that kept away any pesky, distracting relationships that would force her feelings to get tangled with others. Of course, that worked for all but one person.
Lace had been okay with the odd hookup here and there. As a lieutenant, it was the only real way to have a relationship outside of work— and that was all good with her. She didn’t need emotion. Feelings. Touchy-feely stuff. But then the whole thing with Hornet happened, and everyone knew it was always a bad idea to shack up with your CO— but could you blame Lace? Hornet was, and still is, one of her only friends in this stupid military, and in this stupid galaxy. When they fell in bed with one another, it just felt natural. Like it was the next step in their friendship, now grown into something more.
All good things come to an end, though.
The Alamo creaks underfoot as Lace slips her way back onto the ship. It’s late into the night cycle on Thessia, the asari homeworld, where the SSV Alamo has been stationed for the past few days. Hornet had needed to deal with some political things with the human delegates on the planet, and so here they’ve been. Lace hadn’t been invited to the meetings. This, she was fine with.
What she wasn’t fine with was the fact that Hornet has been treating her like nothing ever happened between them. She goes about her workday as if they hadn’t spent the last year in one another’s arms, doing all the shit that couples usually do— though just under the cover of being “best friends.” Sure, it wasn’t like they were ever actually dating, but…
The kissing. The compliments. The warm ache in Lace’s chest that lit each time Hornet fell asleep on her shoulder, tired from the monotonous work she’d been stuck doing all day in her cabin. And yet still, they weren’t anything. Nothing real.
Technically, Lace had been the one to end it. Hornet offered her the choice, and she made it. It was for the good of the crew. Humanity. Whatever. Her mouth formed the words and then it was all over, just like that.
That didn’t mean the feelings fade immediately, though. No, they linger; and in spite of Lace’s coldness, her chilly shoulders and narrowed looks, she feels every emotion very keenly. Sometimes, she thinks she’s never outgrown her teenage years, still weeping and sobbing and stomping over the smallest of things. Although now, she secrets it all inside.
But if there’s one emotion she’s always willing to show, it’s pettiness.
It’s why Lace is sneaking onto the Alamo— not alone. In her hand, she holds the blue palm of an asari, who snickers each time Lace pushes her against the steel wall and nuzzles her face into the crook of the alien’s smooth neck. Lace doesn’t even know the asari’s name, let alone who she is besides the fact that she’s beautiful. It doesn’t need to be anything more than that.
Lace makes sure that her keens and croons are quiet, though not quiet enough. Most of the crew is off carousing around Thessia, probably getting into their own brand of trouble. Lace should be keeping an eye on them, but she doesn’t care. Being a lieutenant means nothing to her if her commander is pretending like their relationship is strictly professional. Which it never has been.
There is one person on the ship that Lace knows without a shadow of a doubt is aboard tonight. As she dips a hand into the low-cut dress of the asari, the lights flash on in the CIC. Momentarily blinding, the lieutenant blinks away the dazzling spots behind her eyes as they focus on the other wakeful soul at the end of the bridge.
“Lace, what the hell are you doing?”
Hornet is in her pajamas, an N7 hoodie and a pair of shorts. The hoodie is two sizes too big, and the shorts are too small. It makes it look like she’s not wearing any pants, swallowed by the dark, cottony fabric. Lace’s mouth goes dry and she suddenly wants to take her hands off the asari and go die in a hole.
Still, a plan is a plan, even if it’s made haphazardly after a few late-night drinks and bedroom eyes blinked across a club dance floor.
Lace says, “You’ve got eyes, Commander. I’m sure you can use them.”
For once, the grand commander is stunned silent. Her mouth gapes ajar and she flails for a moment before collecting herself. Such flagrant displays of disrespect aren’t new from Lace, but she knows that this is a low for her. Bringing strangers onto an Alliance ship is, for a lack of a better term, a big no-no.
Hornet grits her teeth. “The asari leaves. Me, you— my cabin. Now.”
“You just hate it when your crew has fun, don’t you, Hornet?”
“That’s an order, Lieutenant.”
Lace rolls her eyes, though she preens when she spots Hornet’s gaze lock on the way her lieutenant’s hand stays on the asari’s hip. Lace digs her fingers into the soft flesh before patting it once, whispering into the asari’s ear that she’ll be here all week. The asari giggles with a polite hand over her dark blue lips as she saunters out of the airlock and back to the docks.
“You know where to find me, Lieutenant Lace,” she ambles, her slim figure disappearing into the dark night.
“What were you thinking? Bringing a civilian on board— I should have you written up. Or even demoted. Fired. God, Lace, what the hell was that?”
Lace is laid up on Hornet’s bed, her dirty boots staining the commander’s white sheets below. Hornet is pacing around her cabin as she rants and raves about how badly her lieutenant has fucked up tonight. There’s sensitive data aboard, Lace. There’s need-to-know information on the Alamo, Lace. The asari could have been a spy, Lace.
Blah, blah, blah.
The lieutenant leans up on her elbows and looks over at Hornet. Her words are all a fuzzy, blurred sound in the background of Lace’s howling blood, rushing harshly in her ears. It’s hard to focus on anything else when her commander’s face is flushed pink— she’s never prettier than when she’s spitting mad, just like the focused anger she hones on the battlefield while in the middle of a hundred men who are out for her. She handles them all without issue, no sweat broken.
Although she’s tuned out most of what Hornet is saying, Lace knows that Hornet is more infuriated over the fact that someone non-Alliance related was on a Navy ship, rather than that Lace brought them aboard. Because that’s what this always comes down to— Hornet caring far more about her precious Alliance Navy than anything else in this damned galaxy. It’s always Navy this, Navy that. Fucking military brat.
It makes Lace wonder if Hornet has ever loved anything more than the machine she’s a cog within. If she even comprehends that she’s nothing but another moving piece to keep the guns shooting, the blood flowing.
“You’re not listening.”
“You’re right. I’m not.”
Hornet sighs and runs a hand through her choppily-cut hair. It’s something she snips herself in the mirror every month. At some point, the commander had let her lieutenant cut it during those brief, halcyon days when they’d snuggle in the early morning and pretend that they were just normal civilians who didn’t regularly work in a battlefield as their day job. At least, Lace pretended. She wasn’t so sure about Hornet.
“Just— why? You know the regulations,” Hornet says.
Of course. Everyone knows the regulations. You don’t this far into the Navy without being completely and totally aware that what you’re doing— dragging a civilian alien onto a warship for some under-the-covers fun— is against the rules. No one is going to be mad if you get a hotel room and arrive to the docks the next day doing the walk of shame.
But that’s not what Lace wanted. She crossed the boundaries for a reason, and now Hornet won’t even give Lace the reaction she wanted. Maybe in the back of her head, she expected the commander to be blushing with jealousy, a heated gaze in her dark eyes as she promised her lieutenant a final night of closure. She’d toss the asari out, sweep Lace into her cabin, and they’d spend the late eve with only one another in their thoughts and touches.
In the end, Lace is laying on Hornet’s bed alone.
“Why not?”
“Is this about—”
“No,” Lace quick to answer. “No.”
It’s the quiet walk to her bunk that Lace realizes that this plan was doomed from the start. Trying to get stoic Commander Hornet to bend, to break, underneath the overwhelming weight of jealousy that she hardly ever feels— yeah, no. That was never going to happen. Just like their thing was never going to be rekindled, no matter how much Lace dreamed of it doing so.
She settles into her bed, staring up at the blank ceiling. Her mind plays back the last thing Hornet said before Lace left the commander’s cabin, repeating on a torturously never-ending loop.
“I said this wouldn’t change things between us, and it doesn’t. Don’t let it change anything for you, too.”
Lace closes her eyes. On the back of her lids, she sees a vision of two young girls in Basic training as they watch the sunset on the faraway horizon. One dreams of a life well-lived in the comforting ranks of Navy officers, and the other is just happy to be with someone who sees her as something more than fodder— not a soldier, not a cog. Just a friend.
And yet Lace still wants more.
Too bad that ship has sailed.