a thousand miles (left behind) & no one's wiser
rating: prooobably t for teenz throughout
pairing: sarah/devon
a/n: mass effect au because sooomeone is so incredibly pushy about it and i guess in some ways, it's a good idea. it also solves the whole devon isn't a competent spy thing because surely he can save the galaxy three times over, i mean. come on now. it's relatively similar, takes place from the beginning of me2 onwards. i'm not sure how closely it will follow but for now it's pretty close. also, sarah is still sarah but devon is shepard because commander woodcomb does not roll off your tongue very well. and pretty much everyone else is replaced by chuck characters. it should be pretty obvious who is whom.
summary: you can take the soldier out of the fight, but you can't take the fight out of the soldier.
As unfortunate as it is for the station to be under attack, it’s nearly poetic that the turmoil that follows him around continues the moment his vitals finally show that he’s breathing on his own.
If she wasn’t held down by mechs in the comm station right now, she’d probably be more concerned with him possibly falling on his face as soon as she lifts the stasis but they’ve targeted the med bay and it’ll be an even bigger shit show if he gets killed - again. Her HUD doesn’t need to be blinking warnings everywhere to know who they’re going after. She might as well give him a chance to save his own skin. The way things are going, by the time she clears them all out and gets to him, it’ll probably be too late, anyway.
So what the hell.
Another biotic blast buys her enough time to work on the terminal without bullets flying at her. It takes her longer than she likes to manually override all the firewalls that have popped up since the security breach is triggered. She barely gets the comm link up and to her omni tool before another mech sends another ill aimed blast that only serves to destroy her personal terminal.
“Wake up, commander,” she says as calmly as she can while slamming the mech in question with an unnecessary amount of force. There’s no answer but her HUD is showing good vitals coming out of sleep. “Commander Shepard, you have to get out of the med bay. The station is under attack and I can’t get to you.”
There’s still no answer, vitals still going strong. She’s wondering if they’ve shut down comms when another group of mechs come in and she hears some static on the other end, then his voice coming through the line, “what’s going on? Where am I?”
It’s unsurprising that his first priority is to find out unhelpful information instead of finding where the gun is kept in the med bay.
She’s never actually known the man before Lazarus, outside of news vids and the extranet. Although after engrossing herself with every bit of information there is about him for the past two years, it makes the man become quite predictable in some ways.
(she sincerely wishes she isn’t always right, if only just this once)
“There’s no time to explain, there’s mechs closing in on your location - you need to get a gun now.”
“I’m in a med bay, I don’t see any guns.”
Thank you, Captain Obvious.
Her frustration gives way to a calmer tone when she speaks, “there’s a locker at the far corner, there should be a pistol in it.” There’s no time for restating facts let alone arguing over it. Whoever planned this does a surprisingly good job of picking a time when everyone is isolated into convenient pockets for mechs to corner.
She finally makes her way towards the exit of the room after making sure the link is stable. She’s about to check in again when the feed buzzes in and out before what she assumes is lab equipment clattering on the floor. “Shepard,” she finally says when the noise dies down, “are you alright?”
“I’m fine, the pistol doesn’t have a thermal clip.” His voice is raw and scratchy from being unused. As far as she can tell, he still sounds like all the holograms she’s seen of him - a good sign. Another blast from a mech coming her way and a rather violent cough from him takes her out of her thoughts.
“Shepard, you’ll have to be careful.” One mech. “You’re not fully healed yet.” Two mech. “Get out of the med bay and keep moving.” Three mech. “We’ll find you a new clip along the way to the rendezvous.” Ten mech.
There’s no confirmation that he’s heard her but her HUD isn’t full of blinking red, so it counts for something. She doesn’t know how anyone would react to being woken up after two years of death and he seems to be taking it in stride. At the very least, he’s handling it as well as she could expect him to.
The firewalls prove to be effective when another wave of mechs flank her exit to the armory where she’s set the initial rendezvous point. The bastard behind all of this has to be someone on her team because she makes the announcement over the loudspeaker and not through the comms. There’s no way anyone outside the station would know to cut her off unless they’re physically in here still.
“Are you still there? I’m out of the med bay. No hostiles in this room.”
She’s busy trying to reroute Shepard when his voice comes in again, “repeat: out of med bay, no hostiles sighted.” She locks off as many doors as she can en route to the shuttle bay to filter out most of the mechs before answering.
“Find a thermal clip, there should be a at least one lying around,” she says, adding “you’re in a lab room they’ve tried to barricade to keep the mechs off,” before he has the chance to make a comment about it. Thankfully, he doesn’t say anything other than he found a few clips and - son of a bitch - mechs have already been redirected towards the new path.
She finally gets eyes on his location when she makes it to the server room. He looks as good up and about as he can be with someone hacking the station to try and kill him. When she tells him, he seems almost apathetic about the entire situation. He takes out the handful that make it to him with an ease that makes it hard to believe he was technically dead not even twenty minutes ago.
Unfortunately, despite his quite thorough takedown, he takes more time walking around than she would like with the mechs leaving her position to ambush him.
In a last ditch attempt to give him some more time, she tries to trigger the mechs’ basic threat programming to redirect them back to her. It works for the most part, it doesn’t take long before most of them have diverted themselves on his path to come back to her.
“Shepard, you’re doing great. Just keep going, I’ll meet up with you at the -“
A blast goes off to the right of her, back in the comm station. It’s all smoke and fire right now, the static that’s going off in her ear is indicative of another ill aimed blast that serves to do nothing to her while taking off her comm line in the process.
She tries to pull up the link again, hoping that something will get through to him but all she gets is static and fragments of his voice in return. It doesn’t worry her too much, he’s only a few rooms away from the shuttle bay. He’s handled himself well so far, and if she doesn’t find the root of this problem quick, they’ll all be dead anyways.
She’s had enough of running around in circles in her station and she’ll be damned if the place goes down without her finding him first.
A quick sit-rep scan shows that most everyone is dead - lab workers, technicians, engineers, guards, the whole lot is gone save a handful. Aside from them, there’s a reading on Casey that shows he’s more or less healthy. And…
Emmett.
He’s the only personnel left alive with actual vitals. The rest that manage to not get completely crushed by a mech are bleeding out or suffering from some form of mortal injury. Another pulse scan gives her a read on all the mech activity since the breach. As she suspects, where Emmett seems to be located is also where there’s no mech trace.
Conversely, where she is happens to be where there’s an abundance of them. With more coming. And another blast that’s aimed for her takes out the server room just as she advances out of it to go after the bastard doctor.
Motherfucking perfect.
/ part 2 (coming soon)
pairing: sarah/devon
a/n: mass effect au because sooomeone is so incredibly pushy about it and i guess in some ways, it's a good idea. it also solves the whole devon isn't a competent spy thing because surely he can save the galaxy three times over, i mean. come on now. it's relatively similar, takes place from the beginning of me2 onwards. i'm not sure how closely it will follow but for now it's pretty close. also, sarah is still sarah but devon is shepard because commander woodcomb does not roll off your tongue very well. and pretty much everyone else is replaced by chuck characters. it should be pretty obvious who is whom.
summary: you can take the soldier out of the fight, but you can't take the fight out of the soldier.
As unfortunate as it is for the station to be under attack, it’s nearly poetic that the turmoil that follows him around continues the moment his vitals finally show that he’s breathing on his own.
If she wasn’t held down by mechs in the comm station right now, she’d probably be more concerned with him possibly falling on his face as soon as she lifts the stasis but they’ve targeted the med bay and it’ll be an even bigger shit show if he gets killed - again. Her HUD doesn’t need to be blinking warnings everywhere to know who they’re going after. She might as well give him a chance to save his own skin. The way things are going, by the time she clears them all out and gets to him, it’ll probably be too late, anyway.
So what the hell.
Another biotic blast buys her enough time to work on the terminal without bullets flying at her. It takes her longer than she likes to manually override all the firewalls that have popped up since the security breach is triggered. She barely gets the comm link up and to her omni tool before another mech sends another ill aimed blast that only serves to destroy her personal terminal.
“Wake up, commander,” she says as calmly as she can while slamming the mech in question with an unnecessary amount of force. There’s no answer but her HUD is showing good vitals coming out of sleep. “Commander Shepard, you have to get out of the med bay. The station is under attack and I can’t get to you.”
There’s still no answer, vitals still going strong. She’s wondering if they’ve shut down comms when another group of mechs come in and she hears some static on the other end, then his voice coming through the line, “what’s going on? Where am I?”
It’s unsurprising that his first priority is to find out unhelpful information instead of finding where the gun is kept in the med bay.
She’s never actually known the man before Lazarus, outside of news vids and the extranet. Although after engrossing herself with every bit of information there is about him for the past two years, it makes the man become quite predictable in some ways.
(she sincerely wishes she isn’t always right, if only just this once)
“There’s no time to explain, there’s mechs closing in on your location - you need to get a gun now.”
“I’m in a med bay, I don’t see any guns.”
Thank you, Captain Obvious.
Her frustration gives way to a calmer tone when she speaks, “there’s a locker at the far corner, there should be a pistol in it.” There’s no time for restating facts let alone arguing over it. Whoever planned this does a surprisingly good job of picking a time when everyone is isolated into convenient pockets for mechs to corner.
She finally makes her way towards the exit of the room after making sure the link is stable. She’s about to check in again when the feed buzzes in and out before what she assumes is lab equipment clattering on the floor. “Shepard,” she finally says when the noise dies down, “are you alright?”
“I’m fine, the pistol doesn’t have a thermal clip.” His voice is raw and scratchy from being unused. As far as she can tell, he still sounds like all the holograms she’s seen of him - a good sign. Another blast from a mech coming her way and a rather violent cough from him takes her out of her thoughts.
“Shepard, you’ll have to be careful.” One mech. “You’re not fully healed yet.” Two mech. “Get out of the med bay and keep moving.” Three mech. “We’ll find you a new clip along the way to the rendezvous.” Ten mech.
There’s no confirmation that he’s heard her but her HUD isn’t full of blinking red, so it counts for something. She doesn’t know how anyone would react to being woken up after two years of death and he seems to be taking it in stride. At the very least, he’s handling it as well as she could expect him to.
The firewalls prove to be effective when another wave of mechs flank her exit to the armory where she’s set the initial rendezvous point. The bastard behind all of this has to be someone on her team because she makes the announcement over the loudspeaker and not through the comms. There’s no way anyone outside the station would know to cut her off unless they’re physically in here still.
“Are you still there? I’m out of the med bay. No hostiles in this room.”
She’s busy trying to reroute Shepard when his voice comes in again, “repeat: out of med bay, no hostiles sighted.” She locks off as many doors as she can en route to the shuttle bay to filter out most of the mechs before answering.
“Find a thermal clip, there should be a at least one lying around,” she says, adding “you’re in a lab room they’ve tried to barricade to keep the mechs off,” before he has the chance to make a comment about it. Thankfully, he doesn’t say anything other than he found a few clips and - son of a bitch - mechs have already been redirected towards the new path.
She finally gets eyes on his location when she makes it to the server room. He looks as good up and about as he can be with someone hacking the station to try and kill him. When she tells him, he seems almost apathetic about the entire situation. He takes out the handful that make it to him with an ease that makes it hard to believe he was technically dead not even twenty minutes ago.
Unfortunately, despite his quite thorough takedown, he takes more time walking around than she would like with the mechs leaving her position to ambush him.
In a last ditch attempt to give him some more time, she tries to trigger the mechs’ basic threat programming to redirect them back to her. It works for the most part, it doesn’t take long before most of them have diverted themselves on his path to come back to her.
“Shepard, you’re doing great. Just keep going, I’ll meet up with you at the -“
A blast goes off to the right of her, back in the comm station. It’s all smoke and fire right now, the static that’s going off in her ear is indicative of another ill aimed blast that serves to do nothing to her while taking off her comm line in the process.
She tries to pull up the link again, hoping that something will get through to him but all she gets is static and fragments of his voice in return. It doesn’t worry her too much, he’s only a few rooms away from the shuttle bay. He’s handled himself well so far, and if she doesn’t find the root of this problem quick, they’ll all be dead anyways.
She’s had enough of running around in circles in her station and she’ll be damned if the place goes down without her finding him first.
A quick sit-rep scan shows that most everyone is dead - lab workers, technicians, engineers, guards, the whole lot is gone save a handful. Aside from them, there’s a reading on Casey that shows he’s more or less healthy. And…
Emmett.
He’s the only personnel left alive with actual vitals. The rest that manage to not get completely crushed by a mech are bleeding out or suffering from some form of mortal injury. Another pulse scan gives her a read on all the mech activity since the breach. As she suspects, where Emmett seems to be located is also where there’s no mech trace.
Conversely, where she is happens to be where there’s an abundance of them. With more coming. And another blast that’s aimed for her takes out the server room just as she advances out of it to go after the bastard doctor.
Motherfucking perfect.
/ part 2 (coming soon)