Quietly Shepard slipped out of bed, careful not to disturb the outflung tattooed limbs of his lover. He crossed the room to his desk and turned on his terminal, clicking onto his email as he sank naked into the chair.
He reread the email from Admiral Hackett with annoyance that didn't quite overcome the heaviness of his heart; then he read the email from Anderson with less annoyance and more of a sense of a duty he had not carried out.
Undecided, he read them again. And again. Until a voice came from the bed, and he looked past the glare of the monitor to glimpse her sitting up amidst the tangle of the sheets. "At it again? I told you to delete those things."
"I can't just delete an email from the commander of the Fifth Fleet. Or from Anderson. I owe him."
"You don't owe any of them shit. What did they do for you? Left you for dead, that's what."
"I don't owe Cerberus anything anymore, either. I did what the Illusive Man wanted—I took out the Collectors."
"Yeah, but you destroyed their base, too, and pissed him off." Jack got up and crossed the room, the light from the fish tank playing across her tattoos. "In my book, that makes you free, not some Alliance stooge."
"I'm not a stooge."
"You are if you let them bully you into running back to Earth so they can play patty-cake with the batarians."
"I destroyed a planet, Jack! A whole batarian colony!"
"To keep the Reapers from coming through. In the end, it's a win."
"The batarians don't feel that way." He leaned back in the chair and looked up at her. "If it keeps the batarians from going to war with the Alliance, what's a couple months sitting in a tribunal on Earth? I like Earth. I grew up there."
"Earth smirth," Jack said, her face twisting. She had never been there, he knew—at least, if she had, she didn't remember it—and liked to make a big show of not feeling any kind of connection to anything or anyone. "Who cares?"
Shepard thought of Doug and Rachel, still living in Oklahoma. "I do. I still have ... friends there." He had never told Jack much about his past. Enough to let her know that he was like her, an orphan, with nowhere to go back to, but not about what Rachel had done for him, or Doug. He heard from them only sporadically, anyway. They were busy—Doug was remarried and had a small cattle ranch, and Rachel taught school. Shepard wondered if she was married, or thinking about it.
"Yeah? So go see them."
"Why don't you come with me?" They had talked about this before, briefly, but it had been forgotten since the Collector base. At least, it hadn't come up again.
Jack glanced at him, startled. "You're serious? You want to take me to Earth? To meet your ... friends?"
"Yeah." He reached for her hand, tugging her down into his lap.
Never liking to feel captured, Jack squirmed away from him, back toward the fish tank, watching the schools of fish flowing through the water. "You don't mean that."
"Of course I do."
She glanced at him over her shoulder. "Just to visit your friends? Then we leave?"
"Well ..." He looked over at his terminal, Anderson's email still up on the screen. "I'd probably be noticed in transit, and I'd likely have to go to Vancouver and—"
"I fucking knew it." Jack whirled around, crossing her arms over her chest and glaring at him. "Damn it, Shepard, why do you have to be such a goody-goody all the time? You really are the king of the fucking Boy Scouts, aren't you?"
He restrained a smile, thinking that Jack was one of the few who could legitimately think of him that way. Most of the galaxy thought of him as ruthless, hard, someone who got things done without considering the consequences. "It's my duty, Jack. I'm still an Alliance soldier."
"No, you're not! You didn't go back to them after Cerberus rebuilt you."
"Doesn't matter. It's not that simple."
"Yes, it is. The Alliance abandoned you, the Illusive Man fired you—that means you're free. You don't owe any of them anything. You don't owe the fucking galaxy anything." She growled with the intensity of her anger. "I told you not to go off after that stupid woman in the first place."
"You mean Dr. Kenson? Jack, if I hadn't gone, she would have let the Reapers through the relay." He got to his feet, facing her down, unable to believe that she truly felt that way. "We'd have been at war with the fucking Reapers!"
"And why was that your problem? Why is it always you?"
"I don't know, but it is."
"Then stop! Make someone else go save the goddamned day for a change!"
"No one else was responsible for blowing up a batarian colony," he pointed out.
"So you're going, then. Tail between your legs, like a well-trained little Alliance pooch? They whistle and you jump for it?"
The decision had been made, or as good as, but he was damned if he was going to admit it to her with that attitude. "If I go, it'll be because I thought it was the right thing to do."
"You know they'll make you their whipping boy, lock you up and throw away the key, make you an example. Then where will you be when the Reapers really do attack?" Her face lit up at that, knowing she had found an argument that would speak to him.
But he was ahead of her, and had already thought about it. "If I go, and I make them see what a danger we truly face, then maybe when the Reapers come the Alliance will be ready."
"They haven't listened to you about the Reapers yet. What makes you think they're ever going to?"
"I can be pretty persuasive, or so I'm told." He grinned at her.
"You didn't persaude the Council."
"No." The grin slipped away as if it had never been. "I didn't. Maybe I won't have any better luck with whatever tribunal the Alliance sets me in front of. But Jack, I have to try! I know what's coming—I know it better than anyone. And maybe they won't listen, but if there's a chance, one single damned chance, that I can help prepare, that I can get someone to listen to me who will know how to stop it before it starts ... I have to take it."
"So you're going?" she asked, the anger and the bluster gone from her voice, replaced by disappointment and defeat.
He hesitated only a moment. "Yeah. I think I am."
"You expect me to go with you?"
"I wish you would." Not that he could see Jack in an Alliance facility, but—there was something here between them, a connection, an understanding, that he had never felt before. He didn't want to give it, or her, up if he didn't have to.
"I thought we were going to be pirates."
They had talked that way, after the Illusive Man's anger when Shepard destroyed the Collector base. Shepard had been angry enough himself to chuck it all and find his own path, and the rest of the team seemed to feel similarly, so that had been the tentative plan—until he'd been asked to go save this missing doctor, finding her indoctrinated and ready to open the door to the Reapers, and had blown up a batarian colony in the process of preventing that catastrophe.
"We were," he said to Jack. "But ... I have to do this."
"I'm not coming with you, Aaron."
"No." He tried not to show how hurt he was. He hadn't expected her to, although he had hoped she might.
"Or sticking around to wait for the Alliance's lapdog."
That struck deep. But he was damned if he was going to let her see it. "Fine. You want me to have Joker drop you off somewhere?"
There was a very brief silence. She seemed to have expected him to argue—and Shepard was a little surprised at himself that he hadn't. Then she turned, picking up her discarded pants from where they had been flung earlier in the night. "Yeah. Tell him to set a course for Omega."
"Omega? Why there?"
"Know anywhere better for a girl to get in trouble?"
He didn't. "I wish you luck."
"Yeah. You, too." She picked up the rest of her clothes and moved toward the door. "Been nice knowing you, Shepard."
"Real nice," he agreed.
Jack hesitated before tapping the button that would open the door for her, and Shepard watched her, his heart in his throat. Was she really going to do this? Could she? Then, when the button didn't respond, she slapped her hand on it more firmly, the door opened, and she was gone.
Shepard looked back at Anderson's email and sighed. He couldn't have done anything else. The Reapers were coming, and he was the only person who had any hope of getting the Alliance to listen and prepare. And he did feel bad about the batarians. If he had it to do over again, he would do exactly the same, but that didn't mean he didn't care that people had died in the process. If that cost him Jack—well, had he really expected she would stay forever? He supposed it was a loss he could live with. Or so he told himself, but his room, and his heart, felt surprisingly empty without her.