THE UNFORTUNATE PART OF THE CARTOGRAPHY BUSINESS IS THE BUSINESS PART. jules has never enjoyed the inevitability of having to market himself, for any reason. he lacks his father's apparent charisma and appeal, and the extent of his elven mother's alleged beauty – not that the latter lived long enough for him to ever consciously see for himself. so as a purveyor, he doesn't exactly sell well, so to speak. beyond that, he has plenty of other reasons not to want to share his work. there is always something that rubs him wrong about providing the fruits of his labor to others – even for pay, when he cannot properly put a price on what he loves best. if he had his own way, he would wander, and sketch, and keep it all to himself. he probably could, if his elder brother wasn't so stingy, but alas, he must peddle texts he considers borderline religious.
when he has them, anyway.
" you must be joking. " his reproachful tone certainly matches his expression as he stares the larger man down across the shop's wooden countertop. his charcoal-smeared fingers have halted their progress on a topography as though frozen, and his eyes narrow with something bridging annoyance and suspicion. briefly, jules wonders if pema sent somebody to prank him, but quickly dismisses the idea.
finally, he snorts, returning to his work almost flippantly. " of course I don't have a map of that area. nobody does. it's never been successfully surveyed. which you should know, if you're looking to go there. " his gaze flickers briefly up to his guest's face once more, guarded but somehow morbidly curious all at once. " and even if I did, I tend to try to avoid selling my wares to aid a suicide jaunt, since that is the only reason one would want to head out there. "
@m0tiveforce ( as tristan trevelyan ) gets a starter from jules.
you are welcome at any time, shepard - commander. | legion @ m0tiveforce.
PERHAPS THE TINNY MECHANICAL TIMBRE OF THE GETH'S VOICE SHOULDN'T PROVE SUCH A COMFORT. most of her crew would certainly think the commander mad for it, just as they think it mad that she trusts it in the first place. but she's made a career, in a way, out of trusting her gut, out of relying on instinct to inform her of the intentions of others. an uncertain science, some might say, but her engineering background aside, it's one that's served her well. no matter the doubts of others, freya remains confident that legion ( @m0tiveforce ) won't betray them.
while she doesn't relish their suspicion, at least there's one benefit: there's at least one place on this ship where she can slip away and not be found. most areas of the normandy are relatively public to begin with. her cabin seems entirely too obvious and other more secluded places are largely occupied by at least one crew member likely to start asking her about ... well, anything, really, having to do with strategy, or how things are, or the state of the galaxy, or god forbid how she feels about any of it. she feels like every last thought in her brain might spontaneously unravel if she has to answer anything about that.
she can count on legion not to ask such questions.
and she can count on the rest of the crew to give the geth a wide berth. usually.
" thanks, legion, " she murmurs through half a chuckle, more out of relief than anything else. given what it has told her about how it ... functions with the entirety of the geth consciousness – a concept with which she still struggles, despite her scientific background – she doubts the invitation has anything to do with loneliness. after another moment of thought, knowing perfectly well the joke will likely be lost on it, she wryly adds, " if I start to annoy you, feel free to kick me out. "
from where she sits on the floor of the ai core, with her back propped up against the cold metal of the wall and legs splayed ungracefully before her, she glances up at her companion. her gaze lingers on the pieces of n7 armor fixed to its form, as roughshod in appearance as she feels on the inside. there's a poetic sort of irony to that which she's frankly relieved wouldn't land with legion. she's getting damned tired of the tragic hero bit, of the sort of harrowing stories that pockmark old earth literature for centuries past. those stories never end well. and selfish and unrealistic as it sounds, some part of her still hopes for a happy ending.
she's more of an optimistic fool, she supposes, than anybody would guess.
for several minutes, she sits in silence, closing her eyes, allowing every ache to settle into her bones. everything hurts. everything always seems to hurt these days. it matters little that she has a body custom made by the best scientists in the galaxy. the weight of time and memory and responsibility sits heavy enough on her to splinter her to her very foundations. the exhaustion almost overwhelms, a shudder that racks her, that forces a sharp breath from her, and she scrubs one hand over her face to clear it away.
" all geth are ... part of the same consciousness, right? so you can't choose to ... have private thoughts, can you. or the ... synthetic equivalent. what would you call them? " she groans at herself then, the hand over her face running through her hair instead, pulling some of it slightly awry out of her bun. " am I being offensive? sorry. I just ... guess I wonder if it ever bothers you, that you can't keep anything to yourself. or if that's just ... not at all how it works. "
you don’t have to tell me about it. | garrus @ m0tiveforce.
COMMANDER FREYA SHEPARD DROWNS IN A SEA OF FOG AND STRANGE TREES THAT ITCH AT THE CORNERS OF HER MEMORY. in the distance stand the outlines of buildings, the cut of meandering roads, always just far enough away to never reach. still smells like recycled air. nothing fresh anymore. a dead galaxy, choked by the same mistakes again and again and again and ag–
a flash of white, like a beacon, draws her gaze to the base of a gnarled root. a child, small, seated in the grass. she moves, agonizingly slow, as though trudging through water thigh deep.
( faster, she urges to a body that does not listen. )
she stands above him and he looks at her, round faced and innocent, beaming. hero! she is one, isn't she? a statue in the plaza, seen on holos, a voice carried on even in temporary death. a beacon of hope for a people that still search for a place in this vast universe. she smiles back. and suddenly his little face melts to terror as his eyes are drawn to something over her shoulder.
( you can't save me, he mouths again, just like he did on earth. )
a light explodes behind her. she turns to look, too slow, too slow, and when she turns back to the child, he's melted away, gone, as quickly as he disappeared into the air ducts during the invasion.
( duct rat? like mouse. thane's mouse. " where's your son, krios? " he'd asked as he patted down his pockets. son, kolyat, snatched from the jaws of battle sleep by a dying father. reconciliation shredded by life cut short. for her. for her. for her. )
another flash of white. there he is, ahead of her, and she pursues, slogging through some swamp of memory that slows her until her chest seizes in panic. his little shoulders shake, she sees as she draws near. he sobs. his eyes damp and wide with fear as he turns to look at her.
she reaches for him. he reaches back for her, but the flames draw up from the earth before their fingertips brush, enveloping his body inch by inch, consuming. the boy's mouth opens in a silent scream as the fire licks up to his throat.
( you can't save me. why didn't you save me? )
the flesh on his face begins to bubble, to melt, and she cannot tear her gaze away. invisible hands clutch her cheeks, forcing her to watch, and her eyelids are no more, as though ripped from her body, unable to close. melting like clay, like candle wax, dripping and rearranging into folds of charred brown, darker and then suddenly lighter.
another set of eyes opens on his forehead and he is batarian now, but still a child, still wailing as the fire feasts and grows, spreading around him. from the ground rise more batarians, the child's siblings, parents, cousins, neighbors, then strangers on planets he's never seen.
the silence begins to fill, quietly at first, then loud enough to ring in her ears, anguished shrieks of suffering, of unimaginable pain, as they all burn away before her eyes, the strange forest engulfed in a fire of destruction that leaps away from her touch when she reaches for it as though begging to be burned along with them.
( a single chorus finally rises in unison, all dying voices joining to ask: why did you kill us, too? )
in a field of ashes, then, she stands unburned, untarnished, untouched.
and alone.
the commander wakes with a silent start, a single sharp intake of breath with the seizing of every muscle in her body. on instinct, she forces herself to steady her breath in an instant, to let that first gasp out slowly, quietly, to allow herself to lay back against sheets soaked in the same cold sweat that sticks her hair to her forehead and sleep shirt to her body.
what do you see? she asks herself in her groggy haze. her gaze draws to the soft light emitting from the tank on the opposite wall of her quarters and she stares at her collection of fish swimming lazy circles like they always do.
what do you hear? the gentle bubbling of the tank filter registers first as she gazes at the calm water. then the soft hum of the normandy's air purifier. then the breathing of garrus ( @m0tiveforce ) beside her. all of it a symphony of comfort that should ease her pounding heart.
what do you feel? her fingers grasp the damp sheets beneath her, familiar military grade, more comfortable now to her than the fine fabrics in which she was raised. one hand travels to her left thigh, tracing the familiar scar there, one of the larger of many scoured into once delicate flesh. her head slows its spinning but still turns round within her skull. each of her pores seems to prickle, chilly and humid all at once, as her dry mouth begins to fill with saliva.
only when her stomach gives a warning lurch does she fully realize what's happening.
experience has taught her to keep her composure as she silently rises from the bed, trying to disturb her companion as little as possible as she slips from beneath the covers and pads at a controlled walk to the bathroom, letting the door close behind her. pulling her hair expertly back in one hand, she falls to her knees before the toilet bowl in time to be sick. it isn't the first and it won't be the last. and there's nothing in her that wants to know why her dreams are what turns her stomach so easily after everything she's done and seen.
at least she's learned to be quiet about it, enough to hope he won't hear even if she woke him by leaving bed.
for a few moments, she lets her cheek rest on her arm now circling the top of the bowl. one, two, three, four, freya counts in her head as she inhales. one, two, three, four, she holds that breath in. one, two, three, four, as she lets it out again. over and over until the static numbness of her skin begins to subside, giving way to something more mutable, more normal, less a feeling like she'll snap in two if someone were to some much as breathe on her.
she brushes her hair, then rinses twice – thoroughly – with mouthwash before she emerges again, desperate to purge the acrid flavor of bile from her tongue and the back of her throat. the cabin remains still, the fish swimming their circles, the sheets precisely how she left them, garrus's slumbering form exactly where it was moments before with his chest rising and falling in gentle rhythm. briefly, she's able to fool herself that her fellow soldier hasn't noticed a thing, that he's slumbered undisturbed through her little episode. the thought of giving him no cause for concern is the sort of relief she could lose herself in, especially given their history, and the mere notion coaxes her stiff muscles to relax as she tosses aside her sweat-soaked nightshirt in favor of a clean one.
the first few moments after she sinks into bed hang silent with a sweet normalcy freya swears she can nearly taste. they can wake in the morning as if nothing happened and she will be as strong as she's always been. and he won't know enough to worry. an idealistic notion shattered the moment she feels a single turian talon comb gingerly through a lock of her loose hair. suddenly, it feels almost childish to have assumed he wouldn't notice, as if they aren't battlemates before all, as though their nervous systems are not now instinctively tuned to one another.
they exchange no words as they draw together like magnets beneath the sheets, but freya can hear his concern anyway. it sings in the way he guides her cheek to find its place on the firm plate of his chest, in the two knuckles that drag slowly up and down the curve of her spine, in the heat of his breath against the crown of her head. she has always been able to hear his every word in silence. this is simply the first time she's ever wished she couldn't.
when his rumbling voice, deeper still from sleep, finally fills the quiet, her throat unexpectedly constricts and she's forced to swallow back the instinctive sob that rises there. to be so known is as much an agony as it is a divine gift. it's as though all she does not say finds a way to whisper to him anyway, laying bare her fears and worries, even when she fights to keep that burden from his shoulders. it matters little that she knows they balance one another, that she does the same for him ; the guilt of it tears at her anyway.
another drop in an ocean that threatens to swallow her down each day of her life.
and what could she possibly say? how can she explain what drives her so deeply in to shame that it consumes her enough to make her body try to purge it out of her? I did what I thought I had to. and the reapers came anyway. I killed over three-hundred thousand souls to save six paltry months. the rest of the galaxy is no more prepared. all I did was give them less flesh to rend. she doubts more than one or two words could make it off her tongue before she began to scream and tear her hair the way she's wanted to since the day she destroyed that mass relay.
she must stay in one piece, even if the edges of that piece continue to fray, even if she's been doing little more than taping it all back together again for years.
" I'll fall apart, " she murmurs against him, barely tightening her hold around his waist, as if suddenly anxious he'll leave. " none of us can afford that, garrus. not now. "
silence falls again and she breathes him in, finally able to allow her eyes to close again without the creeping sensation of chilling terror. the only thing she hears is the impossibly gentle clicking of his mandibles ; he's as full of thoughts as she is, of that she has no doubt.
it is half to herself, and half in a whisper, when she finally asks, " would you still fight with me if I were the same as a reaper? "
