a thousand miles (left behind) & no one's wiser - part three
All headers are on part 1.
part 2 is here.
Getting the commander to join their initiative doesn’t take much convincing on their part. Rather he’s the one spending most of his time convincing them that he’s not actually on their side, that he’s not one of them.
It doesn’t matter much to her, regardless of his reasons the relevant point is that he’s agreed to go planet side with them - so long as he suits up and plays his part, she doesn’t really care much what he thinks.
“Where do you get all this gear?”
She’s preoccupied with checking her own gear, it’s top of the line and she keeps it in excellent condition but out on the field, a minor oversight could mean a major death and there isn’t exactly a line of people waiting to put up four billion credits to bring her back.
Absentmindedly, she hums back some acknowledgement of him talking though she’s not sure what he asked. When she looks up, he’s got his skin suit on, half ready holding up various pieces of armor for inspection. The image is enough to loose a short chuckle under her breath, seeing the great Commander Shepard baffled by something as simple as armor isn’t something she expects to see.
It’s understandable, though - a lot of tech has changed in the past two years, adding to that the amount that they’ve been able to acquire through less common channels; a normal chest plate could be completely daunting to someone who’s been dead for two years.
“This is all…different?”
He’s currently fixated on a particular piece that is complicated in its own right, considering its origin not many people would know what it is either. In this special case, she decides to forgo any comments about his habit for stating the obvious.
“That,” she says, taking the piece in question in her own hands, “is a very rare CIA Intersect tech piece.” It may very well be her favorite one that doesn’t inflict pain, the way she runs her hands over it is something akin to love.
It’s certainly worthy of it, the plate is a beautiful exemplar of craftsmanship. Where other armor is resistant and dense, it gives way with its fluid, mesh-like structure - bending to avoid breaking and woven to have twice the strength with integrated biotic reinforcements throughout. Despite being nearly two inches thick, it makes a t-shirt feel too heavy.
He raises an eyebrow at the way she holds it so tenderly, probably seeming out of place when taking into consideration her usual demeanor. “CIA?” he asks.
“Central Intelligence Armory, makes some of the best gear money can buy. Even better when you have assets that money can’t buy.”
She closes the space between them, invading his space necessarily in order to properly attach the front of the chest place on him securely. He’s bigger than her, so she has to lean in even closer than she already is to do so. When she’s got both pieces on him right, they’re nearly chest to back with her behind him.
She lingers for a second, just until the biotics start to hum - a soothing sound she lets envelope her for the brief moment it comes on.
“This…feels like…”
He could be at a lack of words, or simply enthralled with the armor. His fascination is nearly childlike, poking at it and getting as close to flailing around the room that a grown six-foot-three man possibly can.
The sight nearly sends her into a fit of laughter when she walks over to the gun locker, only just managing to school her face back into neutrality. She picks up a Fulcrum F-25 Perseus assault rifle, the weight feeling comfortable in her hands, metal solid and cool to the touch. It’s not something she would normally choose but she can appreciate a finely crafted weapon when she sees one.
“Nothing the Alliance has ever issued you, I’m sure,” she says, rounding back with gun in hand. She aims at an imaginary target down the room one last time, checking the settings before handing it off, “this should be to your liking, too.”
He only holds it for a less than a minute, yet he looks at the thing like it’s his most precious belonging. His fingers flit over every inch of the body, almost caressing in touch, giving attention that very nearly rivals Casey. When he reaches the clip, his face scrunches up to examine the gun better as he brings it closer to his face, “there’s no heat sink on this.”
“Heat sinks became inefficient, too much overheating. We spent more time waiting around for guns to cool down than actually shooting them. A disposable heat sink,” punctuating her sentence with a click as she snaps a thermal clip into his gun, “solves that problem.”
“So, now, we have to reload?
Once more with the obvious.
She clicks a thermal clip into her own gun, checking everything one last time before making her way to the airlock. It’s decidedly better for her if she doesn’t engage further - they’re on a schedule and it won’t be in their best interests to linger any further.
Still, she can’t find it in herself to resist one last quip. “Is that too much for you to handle, Commander?” she calls back, “I’m sure I could always ask Casey to find something laying around that you’re more accustomed to.”
She hears him fiddle with the gun for a second and fitting it in the holster before she hears him settles up behind her just outside the airlock. Her gaze is kept straight ahead, more aimlessly than actually staring at the metal doors in front of her but she’s waiting for him to take point. The Illusive Man says that he’s supposed to ring lead everything, so she might as well let him start from the very beginning.
He waits for her, too, assumingly for directions or an inkling of instruction that she’s not going to give him. It’s a moment of silence that isn’t heavy or awkward like it should be, in fact, it’s actually quite comfortable if they weren’t wasting time just standing around. So she says ‘commander,’ even toned - not a hint by any stretch of the imagination - and it seems to jumpstart him into action.
He ends up sidestepping her while not actually leaving her space to unlock the airlock, keys in the code and before he pulls back all the way, takes care to linger by her ear.
“Now, see - I think the real question is can you handle me?”
Keeping up with him proves to be something of a challenge, although certainly not one she can’t handle. Even the notion that she - the one in charge of bringing him back to life - couldn’t keep up with him is absurd in the first place.
Especially when he heads in almost gung ho about recon on Freedom’s Progress. It nearly gets them gunned down by a handful of mechs; luckily, Casey isn’t following as closely behind and he gives them enough cover fire to get to their own cover.
After that mishap, he takes it slower, seemingly content with waiting until a more controlled setting to test his new body. It goes smoothly enough, the entire colony seems to be completely abandoned with absolutely no signs of life leftover but the mechs constantly targeting them means someone has to be here overriding the security system. Once they can make their way to the central security hub on the other side of the colony, they’ll be able to actually do some work.
Currently, there’s a small squadron of flying security drones bogging them down, keeping them from crossing a bridge that serves as the connecting point from the main living areas to the control stations.
“Casey!”
There’s a blast that nearly takes his head off when he peaks out to answer her and she hears him go off about her nearly getting him killed for some bullshit no good reason. “Whatever you wanna tell me, it better be damn good, Walker.”
“How about you start being useful for a change by taking out that precious rifle of yours and actually take out some of these guys in my blind spot?”
She’s crouched down next to him, while Casey is farther back with a better vantage point than either of them. He’s suggested falling back to take care of the rest of the drones that have settled in a good spot up in a ridge after they finish with the other half.
Moving is an unnecessary risk when Casey is without a doubt the best sniper out of all of them - she’s sure she can take on him but neither are a match for Casey, though he generally enjoys bashing in heads more than shooting them off. It takes some goading to actually make him take out his “sweetheart.”
“Can he actually make those shots?” he asks, crouching in closer than necessary to avoid using comms presumably to avoid hurting Casey’s feelings. She scoffs, turning around to lean her back against the barrier they’re sitting behind and resting her gun in her lap because this is about to turn into a show she’s watched a thousand times.
“5000 credits says he shoots five for five - a thousand for each shot and every time he misses, I’ll give double that.”
“You’re on, XO.”
[later, when Casey hits them all without missing a beat, he’s baffled and out five grand -
“You played me.”
“Commander, I simply made you an offer. A very good offer with odds in my favor, but as my great great great great grandmother once said, you gotta risk it to get the biscuit.”]
Currently, she has a gun trained on her because the fool of a man is allowing it.
She has half the mind to not send a less than subtle shockwave to prove a point. It’s nearly insulting that this child would think aiming a gun between her eyes would be enough to subdue her. But then again, what else does she expect from an N7 operative still wet behind the ears.
The bar lowers even more when she realizes said operative is the same Alex McHugh that Shepard trains from her acceptance up until the day he dies.
While she hasn’t seen her in action, so far she can tell that the rookie’s picked up some of the commander’s less notable traits. For her sake, she hopes that just means she takes after him wholly. Considering Alex managed to graduate even after he died, she’s pretty sure that puts the vote in her favor.
Regardless, this whole situation with someone wanting to off her isn’t something she likes and if he’s not going to do anything about it, she will.
“Commander,” she manages through tightly pursed lips. At this point, she’s unconcerned about concealing the irritation in her voice. He’s gaped at the girl like she’s the one who’s been resurrected long enough.
“Al -”
“What are you doing with them? They’re the same people that have been trying to get rid of you.” Alex’s eyes are trained on her the entire time she speaks. Her tone is defiant, like she’s better than her because she’s on what she’s decided is the right side of things. It’s naïve the way she lets her own feelings get in the way of assessing how dangerous a perceived enemy can be.
A smirk graces her lips and she cants her hips - she can certainly partake in the obvious game, too. “This time, we tried our hand at bringing him back to life. So far, it seems like we have much better luck with that particular endeavor.”
There’s a distinct satisfaction she feels when the younger operative nearly pops a vein and it helps placate the desire to cause harm to her in the moment.
Of course, leave it to Shepard to finally intervene when she’s just begun to have fun with her current predicament. He places himself between the two of them, standing closer to Alex to push the gun away and whisper something that seems to calm her enough to holster her gun and ignore her altogether. While she is slightly bitter about having her fun interrupted, she can’t complain about being left alone.
Finally, they can get this over with.
So it happens, Commander Shepard seems to be a magnet for all things ridiculously horrible in life because pretty much everything that could go wrong has gone more wrong than she ever thought possible.
Starting with their makeshift truce with Alex’s quad going to complete shit as soon as they split up. She begins to put less and less faith in the top notch Alliance training program when they walk straight into a YMIR and get themselves mowed over.
It nearly takes them out too, if Casey didn’t have an affinity for carrying around a rocket launcher when it’s mostly unnecessary. Shepard manages to get ahold of one himself from a nearby compound to end what Casey starts.
Thankfully, it’s the last obstacle they have to face before reaching the control center - not that it makes any difference because that would be much too easy for all of them.
Once they’re inside they find themselves face to face with a highly unstable nut that somehow manages to lock himself inside when the Collectors hit. It protects him from being taken since the swarms unable to reach him. As a safety precaution, he rewires the entire defensive system to attack anything that so much as breathes near the colony.
The videos he has confirm what they already know so far and he seems far too unstable to be of any actual use to them. As much as she would like to take him back, it’s proving to be much more work than he’s worth to argue with Alex. As it stands, the commander is like a puppy who’s just found his way home.
All she wants right now is to be done with this place
Her personal fortress of solitude keeps her isolated to finish her reports in peace, without interruption and without any discussion about what happened to delay her. She puts off settling the grumbling in her stomach in favor of finishing up so she won’t have to come back and work on it more later. It’s just easier to finish in one go, it’s not like she’s starving or anything.
Gardner has whipped up something that looks like spaghetti for tonight. She’s in the middle of scooping some onto a plate when her luck runs out. It seems she’s too focused on praying to whatever deity that will take pity on her for it to actually taste like something from back home, that she forgets to direct some of her hopes in the direction of being left alone.
Shepard comes strolling over, having just left the medbay for whatever reason - she doesn’t remember him getting hurt but she hasn’t received any alerts, so if he was it isn’t anything serious. She shifts her attention to his presence, praying to the same deities to take pity on her again in the form of directing him away from her.
(she gets no such luck this time even though her spaghetti actually tastes like spaghetti despite the odd texture of the sauce - she figures one out of two is better than nothing)
“You disappeared pretty quick earlier,” he says. It’s a statement that’s phrased more like a question, subtly goading her for an explanation he doesn’t want to outright ask for and she doesn’t want to give.
She ignores the social cue and only answers with a curt, “I had work to do.” Again, she hopes he leaves and again, she is denied this grace. Apparently, that would be too easy.
“Look, if you ran off because of what Alex said -“
“Commander, thank you for your concern but I assure you, my big girl feelings are certainly not hurt over some child calling me names.”
“But I -“
She doesn’t mean to let this get to her because it shouldn’t be something that gets under her skin the way it is right now. All he’s doing is being polite, apologizing for his trainee’s rudeness and it’s something that any decent person would do - in fact, she expects this from him which is why she’s tried her best to avoid him since they get back.
And yet for all her efforts, the feeling that she’s been royally insulted beyond reason surfaces anyways and it’s more her frustration that she can’t keep this part of her in check that makes her snap at him than it is her annoyance at him.
“But nothing, Commander,” she cuts, turning around sharply on her heels. “I’ve been called much worse by much bigger people and I don’t intend on letting it get to me now.”
She hates this feeling. The one that makes her question whether or not she’s good enough.
The times she feels this way are few and far between but ever since she brings this man back to life, he manages to make her feel nearly worthless twice in as many days (she thinks that maybe, if she couldn’t see her worth in her accomplishments, she would actually believe this). It fuels this fire, blowing things out of proportion and instead of trying to keep it down, she lets it go as it pleases.
The glare she fixes on him is meant to deter him from continuing this exchange any further and send him back on his merry way, but for a moment he only stares back at you with something she thinks is understanding. It’s very possible that there’s a degree of hurt mixed in, although she ignores that feeling and the slight slouch in his posture that makes him seem less assured than his gaze would suggest.
Still, he looks like he’s about to say something.
She turns back again to go back to her room before he can get a chance to say anything. Out of the corner of her eye before she’s fully turned his back to him, she can see him start to reach out for her. She anticipates the touch, him grabbing any part of her to turn her around but his hand never makes it.
Before her doors close completely, she pretends she doesn’t hear him say he’s still sorry.
/ part 4 (coming soon)
part 2 is here.
Getting the commander to join their initiative doesn’t take much convincing on their part. Rather he’s the one spending most of his time convincing them that he’s not actually on their side, that he’s not one of them.
It doesn’t matter much to her, regardless of his reasons the relevant point is that he’s agreed to go planet side with them - so long as he suits up and plays his part, she doesn’t really care much what he thinks.
“Where do you get all this gear?”
She’s preoccupied with checking her own gear, it’s top of the line and she keeps it in excellent condition but out on the field, a minor oversight could mean a major death and there isn’t exactly a line of people waiting to put up four billion credits to bring her back.
Absentmindedly, she hums back some acknowledgement of him talking though she’s not sure what he asked. When she looks up, he’s got his skin suit on, half ready holding up various pieces of armor for inspection. The image is enough to loose a short chuckle under her breath, seeing the great Commander Shepard baffled by something as simple as armor isn’t something she expects to see.
It’s understandable, though - a lot of tech has changed in the past two years, adding to that the amount that they’ve been able to acquire through less common channels; a normal chest plate could be completely daunting to someone who’s been dead for two years.
“This is all…different?”
He’s currently fixated on a particular piece that is complicated in its own right, considering its origin not many people would know what it is either. In this special case, she decides to forgo any comments about his habit for stating the obvious.
“That,” she says, taking the piece in question in her own hands, “is a very rare CIA Intersect tech piece.” It may very well be her favorite one that doesn’t inflict pain, the way she runs her hands over it is something akin to love.
It’s certainly worthy of it, the plate is a beautiful exemplar of craftsmanship. Where other armor is resistant and dense, it gives way with its fluid, mesh-like structure - bending to avoid breaking and woven to have twice the strength with integrated biotic reinforcements throughout. Despite being nearly two inches thick, it makes a t-shirt feel too heavy.
He raises an eyebrow at the way she holds it so tenderly, probably seeming out of place when taking into consideration her usual demeanor. “CIA?” he asks.
“Central Intelligence Armory, makes some of the best gear money can buy. Even better when you have assets that money can’t buy.”
She closes the space between them, invading his space necessarily in order to properly attach the front of the chest place on him securely. He’s bigger than her, so she has to lean in even closer than she already is to do so. When she’s got both pieces on him right, they’re nearly chest to back with her behind him.
She lingers for a second, just until the biotics start to hum - a soothing sound she lets envelope her for the brief moment it comes on.
“This…feels like…”
He could be at a lack of words, or simply enthralled with the armor. His fascination is nearly childlike, poking at it and getting as close to flailing around the room that a grown six-foot-three man possibly can.
The sight nearly sends her into a fit of laughter when she walks over to the gun locker, only just managing to school her face back into neutrality. She picks up a Fulcrum F-25 Perseus assault rifle, the weight feeling comfortable in her hands, metal solid and cool to the touch. It’s not something she would normally choose but she can appreciate a finely crafted weapon when she sees one.
“Nothing the Alliance has ever issued you, I’m sure,” she says, rounding back with gun in hand. She aims at an imaginary target down the room one last time, checking the settings before handing it off, “this should be to your liking, too.”
He only holds it for a less than a minute, yet he looks at the thing like it’s his most precious belonging. His fingers flit over every inch of the body, almost caressing in touch, giving attention that very nearly rivals Casey. When he reaches the clip, his face scrunches up to examine the gun better as he brings it closer to his face, “there’s no heat sink on this.”
“Heat sinks became inefficient, too much overheating. We spent more time waiting around for guns to cool down than actually shooting them. A disposable heat sink,” punctuating her sentence with a click as she snaps a thermal clip into his gun, “solves that problem.”
“So, now, we have to reload?
Once more with the obvious.
She clicks a thermal clip into her own gun, checking everything one last time before making her way to the airlock. It’s decidedly better for her if she doesn’t engage further - they’re on a schedule and it won’t be in their best interests to linger any further.
Still, she can’t find it in herself to resist one last quip. “Is that too much for you to handle, Commander?” she calls back, “I’m sure I could always ask Casey to find something laying around that you’re more accustomed to.”
She hears him fiddle with the gun for a second and fitting it in the holster before she hears him settles up behind her just outside the airlock. Her gaze is kept straight ahead, more aimlessly than actually staring at the metal doors in front of her but she’s waiting for him to take point. The Illusive Man says that he’s supposed to ring lead everything, so she might as well let him start from the very beginning.
He waits for her, too, assumingly for directions or an inkling of instruction that she’s not going to give him. It’s a moment of silence that isn’t heavy or awkward like it should be, in fact, it’s actually quite comfortable if they weren’t wasting time just standing around. So she says ‘commander,’ even toned - not a hint by any stretch of the imagination - and it seems to jumpstart him into action.
He ends up sidestepping her while not actually leaving her space to unlock the airlock, keys in the code and before he pulls back all the way, takes care to linger by her ear.
“Now, see - I think the real question is can you handle me?”
Keeping up with him proves to be something of a challenge, although certainly not one she can’t handle. Even the notion that she - the one in charge of bringing him back to life - couldn’t keep up with him is absurd in the first place.
Especially when he heads in almost gung ho about recon on Freedom’s Progress. It nearly gets them gunned down by a handful of mechs; luckily, Casey isn’t following as closely behind and he gives them enough cover fire to get to their own cover.
After that mishap, he takes it slower, seemingly content with waiting until a more controlled setting to test his new body. It goes smoothly enough, the entire colony seems to be completely abandoned with absolutely no signs of life leftover but the mechs constantly targeting them means someone has to be here overriding the security system. Once they can make their way to the central security hub on the other side of the colony, they’ll be able to actually do some work.
Currently, there’s a small squadron of flying security drones bogging them down, keeping them from crossing a bridge that serves as the connecting point from the main living areas to the control stations.
“Casey!”
There’s a blast that nearly takes his head off when he peaks out to answer her and she hears him go off about her nearly getting him killed for some bullshit no good reason. “Whatever you wanna tell me, it better be damn good, Walker.”
“How about you start being useful for a change by taking out that precious rifle of yours and actually take out some of these guys in my blind spot?”
She’s crouched down next to him, while Casey is farther back with a better vantage point than either of them. He’s suggested falling back to take care of the rest of the drones that have settled in a good spot up in a ridge after they finish with the other half.
Moving is an unnecessary risk when Casey is without a doubt the best sniper out of all of them - she’s sure she can take on him but neither are a match for Casey, though he generally enjoys bashing in heads more than shooting them off. It takes some goading to actually make him take out his “sweetheart.”
“Can he actually make those shots?” he asks, crouching in closer than necessary to avoid using comms presumably to avoid hurting Casey’s feelings. She scoffs, turning around to lean her back against the barrier they’re sitting behind and resting her gun in her lap because this is about to turn into a show she’s watched a thousand times.
“5000 credits says he shoots five for five - a thousand for each shot and every time he misses, I’ll give double that.”
“You’re on, XO.”
[later, when Casey hits them all without missing a beat, he’s baffled and out five grand -
“You played me.”
“Commander, I simply made you an offer. A very good offer with odds in my favor, but as my great great great great grandmother once said, you gotta risk it to get the biscuit.”]
Currently, she has a gun trained on her because the fool of a man is allowing it.
She has half the mind to not send a less than subtle shockwave to prove a point. It’s nearly insulting that this child would think aiming a gun between her eyes would be enough to subdue her. But then again, what else does she expect from an N7 operative still wet behind the ears.
The bar lowers even more when she realizes said operative is the same Alex McHugh that Shepard trains from her acceptance up until the day he dies.
While she hasn’t seen her in action, so far she can tell that the rookie’s picked up some of the commander’s less notable traits. For her sake, she hopes that just means she takes after him wholly. Considering Alex managed to graduate even after he died, she’s pretty sure that puts the vote in her favor.
Regardless, this whole situation with someone wanting to off her isn’t something she likes and if he’s not going to do anything about it, she will.
“Commander,” she manages through tightly pursed lips. At this point, she’s unconcerned about concealing the irritation in her voice. He’s gaped at the girl like she’s the one who’s been resurrected long enough.
“Al -”
“What are you doing with them? They’re the same people that have been trying to get rid of you.” Alex’s eyes are trained on her the entire time she speaks. Her tone is defiant, like she’s better than her because she’s on what she’s decided is the right side of things. It’s naïve the way she lets her own feelings get in the way of assessing how dangerous a perceived enemy can be.
A smirk graces her lips and she cants her hips - she can certainly partake in the obvious game, too. “This time, we tried our hand at bringing him back to life. So far, it seems like we have much better luck with that particular endeavor.”
There’s a distinct satisfaction she feels when the younger operative nearly pops a vein and it helps placate the desire to cause harm to her in the moment.
Of course, leave it to Shepard to finally intervene when she’s just begun to have fun with her current predicament. He places himself between the two of them, standing closer to Alex to push the gun away and whisper something that seems to calm her enough to holster her gun and ignore her altogether. While she is slightly bitter about having her fun interrupted, she can’t complain about being left alone.
Finally, they can get this over with.
So it happens, Commander Shepard seems to be a magnet for all things ridiculously horrible in life because pretty much everything that could go wrong has gone more wrong than she ever thought possible.
Starting with their makeshift truce with Alex’s quad going to complete shit as soon as they split up. She begins to put less and less faith in the top notch Alliance training program when they walk straight into a YMIR and get themselves mowed over.
It nearly takes them out too, if Casey didn’t have an affinity for carrying around a rocket launcher when it’s mostly unnecessary. Shepard manages to get ahold of one himself from a nearby compound to end what Casey starts.
Thankfully, it’s the last obstacle they have to face before reaching the control center - not that it makes any difference because that would be much too easy for all of them.
Once they’re inside they find themselves face to face with a highly unstable nut that somehow manages to lock himself inside when the Collectors hit. It protects him from being taken since the swarms unable to reach him. As a safety precaution, he rewires the entire defensive system to attack anything that so much as breathes near the colony.
The videos he has confirm what they already know so far and he seems far too unstable to be of any actual use to them. As much as she would like to take him back, it’s proving to be much more work than he’s worth to argue with Alex. As it stands, the commander is like a puppy who’s just found his way home.
All she wants right now is to be done with this place
Her personal fortress of solitude keeps her isolated to finish her reports in peace, without interruption and without any discussion about what happened to delay her. She puts off settling the grumbling in her stomach in favor of finishing up so she won’t have to come back and work on it more later. It’s just easier to finish in one go, it’s not like she’s starving or anything.
Gardner has whipped up something that looks like spaghetti for tonight. She’s in the middle of scooping some onto a plate when her luck runs out. It seems she’s too focused on praying to whatever deity that will take pity on her for it to actually taste like something from back home, that she forgets to direct some of her hopes in the direction of being left alone.
Shepard comes strolling over, having just left the medbay for whatever reason - she doesn’t remember him getting hurt but she hasn’t received any alerts, so if he was it isn’t anything serious. She shifts her attention to his presence, praying to the same deities to take pity on her again in the form of directing him away from her.
(she gets no such luck this time even though her spaghetti actually tastes like spaghetti despite the odd texture of the sauce - she figures one out of two is better than nothing)
“You disappeared pretty quick earlier,” he says. It’s a statement that’s phrased more like a question, subtly goading her for an explanation he doesn’t want to outright ask for and she doesn’t want to give.
She ignores the social cue and only answers with a curt, “I had work to do.” Again, she hopes he leaves and again, she is denied this grace. Apparently, that would be too easy.
“Look, if you ran off because of what Alex said -“
“Commander, thank you for your concern but I assure you, my big girl feelings are certainly not hurt over some child calling me names.”
“But I -“
She doesn’t mean to let this get to her because it shouldn’t be something that gets under her skin the way it is right now. All he’s doing is being polite, apologizing for his trainee’s rudeness and it’s something that any decent person would do - in fact, she expects this from him which is why she’s tried her best to avoid him since they get back.
And yet for all her efforts, the feeling that she’s been royally insulted beyond reason surfaces anyways and it’s more her frustration that she can’t keep this part of her in check that makes her snap at him than it is her annoyance at him.
“But nothing, Commander,” she cuts, turning around sharply on her heels. “I’ve been called much worse by much bigger people and I don’t intend on letting it get to me now.”
She hates this feeling. The one that makes her question whether or not she’s good enough.
The times she feels this way are few and far between but ever since she brings this man back to life, he manages to make her feel nearly worthless twice in as many days (she thinks that maybe, if she couldn’t see her worth in her accomplishments, she would actually believe this). It fuels this fire, blowing things out of proportion and instead of trying to keep it down, she lets it go as it pleases.
The glare she fixes on him is meant to deter him from continuing this exchange any further and send him back on his merry way, but for a moment he only stares back at you with something she thinks is understanding. It’s very possible that there’s a degree of hurt mixed in, although she ignores that feeling and the slight slouch in his posture that makes him seem less assured than his gaze would suggest.
Still, he looks like he’s about to say something.
She turns back again to go back to her room before he can get a chance to say anything. Out of the corner of her eye before she’s fully turned his back to him, she can see him start to reach out for her. She anticipates the touch, him grabbing any part of her to turn her around but his hand never makes it.
Before her doors close completely, she pretends she doesn’t hear him say he’s still sorry.
/ part 4 (coming soon)