Work Text:
[Alchera, Amada System]
“Are you sure you don’t want to bring anyone, Commander?” Kelly meant well, but Shepard wasn’t the type to trust her. She always had just the right question to make him question his motives. It was not a coincidence. She was a targeted assault on the consciousness with every waking hour. It was as if someone had gone through every dive bar date and girl of Shepard’s youth and found someone to tempt him. But she was one of those hyper intelligent types. Every part of her appearance ticked off his boxes. But her eyes bothered him. They judged, hunting for any signs of weakness. So Kelly Chambers was on the ‘never even if blackout drunk’ list.
“Do I really need more than one person?” He shrugged. “It’s a statue with a mass transfer platform.”
“But if anything goes wrong down there, you might die before any of us could come down and save you!” Kelly impressed. But her eyes were searching for weakness.
“Fine.” She had a point. Shepard turned to the front of the ship. “Joker!” He bellowed.
“Fuck you, Commander!” Came the immediate response. Though after Shepard didn’t say anything for a few seconds he responded again. “What?!”
“Suit up! Get to the hangar! Someone made the point that I shouldn’t drive our only shuttle.”
The resident pilot stumbled out of his chair. “Yeah, that weather pattern is something beyond what a VI should handle. I’ll be down in ten.”
The shuttle ride through the cold weather was turbulent. He really did appreciate having Joker at the wheel, the shuttle coughing violently as it set down in a snow drift. “Thanks for the assist, Commander. I was getting some cold sweats waiting for that eyeball to take a break.”
“It’s not the old bird, that’s for sure.” Shepard admitted, sealing his helmet tight. “You coming out with me?”
“Ice, snow, and high probability of freezing winds? I’ll be fine right here, in this insulated leather seat.” Joker said, smiling.
“EDI has a terminal in the shuttle.” He wasn’t sure if he was right or not, but Joker looked like he wanted to wash his hands.
“On second thought, let me activate my cleats.” Joker joined him, and a minute later they were walking the crash site. The back of the SR-1 had struck first, shattering into so many pieces they couldn’t find evidence of the deck. “Oh my god. How the hell did that survive?”
Peaking out of a snow drift was the unmistakable head of the MAKO. Shepard grinned. There were a lot of good memories in that thing. “I bet my keychain is still in there!”
It was! His ugly keychain was still hanging from the manual ignition ring, and the tank had been bent so hard that it would never run again. With his loot restored, and some omni-gel taken from the storage tank he felt a bit more like himself. “I can’t believe that survived when we got holed right through the deck.”
“Come on, we don’t have much time. The core looks like someone picked it up or the eezo burnt up in atmosphere.” Strangely his Omni-tool wasn’t screaming about radiation warnings.
“Good thing there aren’t any colonies here. That would be some awkward questions.” Joker pointed out. “Looks like the nose is intact. CIC table is still there.”
“I always hated that thing. Never made sense to me.” Shepard shrugged, leading the way across the tundra. “I despise having to take extra steps.”
“You and me both, Commander.” Joker chuckled. “Oh my god, my chair survived.”
“It’s all bent, though. Look, the top has been shredded.”
“My headrest is fine. Something’s in the chair, Commander. metal shards, probably to be sticking out that far.” Two prongs of some kind of metal stuck over the seat, but looked nothing like the stuff that would have torn itself free of the haptic terminals of the bridge. Both men trudged forwards, patches of ice making the going that much harder.
“Uh, Joker? That’s a body.”
Sitting in the chair was a short little redhead. She was iced over, her corpse frozen in this tundra. “Commander, we didn’t have anyone this young onboard. It must have been a stowaway.” The metal prongs they saw were sticking out of the side of her head, attached to the ice.
His stomach churned, thinking about that. “So when we abandoned ship, she must have tried to survive.”
“Oh my god.” Joker almost threw up. “We left her behind?”
“How could we have known! Look at how small she is. There is no way she was on the roster of the crew. She looks almost like a pre-teen.”
“Commander. I think she tried to fly the Normandy.” Joker was tracing the corpse’s small hands. “It looks like she was holding onto the manual control sticks.” The specific system had been ripped from the console, but it looked like she had been trying to save herself. “But I locked out the system so that the VI would continue evasive maneuvers. She would have been spaced or worse.” He really did throw up, the inside of his helmet flushing to prevent his death. “Oh god, there were two of you!” he choked out.
“Let’s get you back to the shuttle, Joker. We couldn’t have known. There was no way. You’re going to go sit down, and I’ll recover the corpse. We will find her family when we go to the Citadel next. Alright?”
“Okay.” The pilot said quietly. “Oh my god, Commander.” He whispered. “I’ll do anything to make it up to her family. God.” He made a noise that Shepard couldn’t identify. “I’m sorry.”
Shepard strapped Joker back into his seat, and then slid the empty platitude of a statue out onto the ice. His Omni-tool was still not showing any radiation warnings, but the suit heater was running low on battery. It was working overtime. The woman couldn’t have been taller than five foot, and looked like a young teenager. But as he picked her up, she seemed to come with a lot of extra metallic pieces. Well, someone was going to be on morgue duty. They could identify why someone had wing shaped metal coming off of their hips.
She was small enough that Shepard could buckle her in over the metal pieces, and just kept her frozen body there. “Sorry.” He whispered. “I try not to leave anyone behind. But sometimes things go wrong. You died out there under my command. So I bear responsibility for you.” He felt a bit awkward, talking to a corpse. But Joker could hear him, and that mattered more. “It was my fault, not yours. We both died alone out here.” Shepard took a longer moment to think as he thumbed the door button, sealing the compartment. “You deserve to go home. So we are going to bring you home.”
“Let’s fly, Commander. I’m detecting ice buildup on the wings.” Joker warned. So he buckled in, and the compartment rose in temperature enough that they could pop their helmets. Though the smell of Joker’s was pungent. Shepard didn’t say a word, and controlled his facial features. He had smelled worse. Hell, he had puked in a helmet before. It was bad, but there was no way he was going to mock Joker for that. Not when he was so fragile. It was minutes to get up through the atmosphere, but as they flew the compartment finally got above freezing. Perhaps even tepid.
They could hear dripping from the rear compartment. “Commander, we might want to keep that corpse on ice.”
“I’ll get a blood sample first. Then we can store her.” Shepard waited for the shuttle to stop before they unbuckled their seats, and stepped back into the rear compartment. The ice had been starting to thaw, and a few patches of skin were revealed. “There’s enough here. We can get a sample before the rest freezes.” He held up his Omni-tool to some of the exposed skin, ready to take the sample.
“Commander.” Joker whispered. “Her eyes just moved.”
Under the ice, a pair of hazel eyes were focused on him. “Oh my god, she’s alive!” He shuddered. This should not have been possible. And yet, he had come back. “Joker, go up to my quarters and borrow my duffel bag. We need to get her up to Mordin. He disabled most of the surveillance in his lab.”
“What about the lightbulb?”
“We will come to an understanding.” EDI was a computer. He didn’t understand everything that went into an AI, but somewhere in there she should have a way to be manipulated. Either that or he could find a way to move her to the lab.
“Coming right up, Commander. Though for the record we are trying to save her. Not get in trouble for carrying a girl in a duffel bag.”
The ice around the girls body started breaking, as if from great force. How could she have survived this? Was she some kind of Reaper object? “I’m Commander Shepard.” Oh yes real original. This wasn’t a flirt and get drunk mission! “Are you alright?” There! Brain finally kicked in.
The girl coughed, her breath fogging. “You came back for me! I knew you would!”
“Who are you?” Shepard demanded, now more suspicious than concerned.
“Oh, I’m sorry!” The girl, for that is the only thing she could be. “I’m SSV Normandy!”
What followed was a glance between Joker and Shepard. “What.”
[The Citadel, Widow System]
“So she is a frigate in a human body.” Anderson wasn’t amused. “Can you prove this?”
“She can use the Tantalus drive, Anderson. It’s like she is an artificial biotic. But she caught a charge from Grunt and didn’t even budge. Slapped him hard enough that she knocked him out. For a few seconds anyways.”
“I’ve seen you take a charge from a Krogan.” Anderson gave a meaningful glance.
“Sir, in full kit I am hitting around one twenty kilos. She’s barely forty kilos. No matter what system of math you believe in, she should have been flattened like a pancake. She can change her mass with the drive, and it caused the SR-2 to flutter. Disrupted her drives for a moment when she slapped Grunt.”
“Now, that’s not possible.” Anderson concurred. “But I can’t prove anything to the rest of the council. Even with your history of finding ancient evils and metaphysical secrets I couldn’t present anything like this to the council.”
“Her DNA is a match for all of the dead crew. She was made from something, sir. I don’t want to send her off just to hear about her ending up in Cerberus’ hands or in a lab somewhere.”
“You’re not giving me much more to go on than that. And the news is going to get out that you’re running around with a child soldier. Which the Council frowns upon. Child grooming is outlawed for many reasons when it comes to Spectres. It was one of the crimes laid against Saren.”
“What children was he raising to fight?” He didn’t remember fighting any children.
“Those Krogan you fought on Virmire. Most were less than a year old. So, therefore children.” Anderson pointed out.
“Uh, can you do anything to help me, then? I don’t want her to go running off. She’s here on the Citadel with Joker right now. But she can do anything the Normandy could, just at an infantry level.”
“ Commander! Oh my god, Commander I lost her! ” Joker’s voice came across the Omni-tool. “ She was right there, and then she disappeared! ”
“Can she cloak?” Anderson asked pointedly.
“May I preface my statement by saying sorry?” Shepard said, feeling a bit sheepish. “I need help, Anderson.”
“You’re not a parent, are you Shepard.”
“Not at all.”
“Then perhaps you should at least take some of the free courses we have for adoptive parents.” Anderson tapped his Omni-tool a few times, as Shepard was forwarded thirty hours of free courses on childcare and how to not be a shite parent. “Might help you with handling this. And we can get an identity sorted for her, but if you want to keep her safe you might have to keep her a secret from the Alliance, and thereby the government.”
Anything more that he would have asked was interrupted by Admiral Steven Hackett himself coming through the door. He looked frazzled. Clinging to his torso like a limpet mine was Normandy, her shock of red hair peeking over his shoulder. “Shepard. By god I hope this is your daughter, or else I’m going to be assuming a whole lot worse.”
“Commander!” She chirped, happily. “I saw my Admiral!”
“I also don’t remember a child soldier initiative, Commander.” Hackett said, remarkably calm as he came inside the office and settled into a chair. “She also said something about hypothermia, being abandoned, and being left for dead.”
Shepard was sweating. Seriously sweating. If this was what parenting was like, he wanted no part of this being a constant dread. “Y’see Sir? That’s a long story. And Normandy here is a special little lady.”
“I’m going to need some proof of anything; otherwise you are being dragged before a tribunal for involving this little girl with the SSV Normandy!” Hackett sounded furious.
“Right. Uh, I can prove that. Joker?” He asked through his Omni-tool. “Bring Grunt to the Alliance Councillor’s chambers. And medi-gel. Lots of medi-gel.”
“The Krogan is going to bully me again?” Normandy asked, cheerfully. Hackett and Anderson gave Shepard a withering glare.
“Context, Normandy! Context!” He begged.
“I get to go on a renegade rampage again and ignore the Council?”
Shepard buried his head into his hands. “Fuck. Me.”