Who: Nicholas D. Wolfwood and Commander Shepard What: Planning for the future Where: Shepard's house-slash-fortress When: 10/18 Rating: PG13 Status: Complete
Wolfwood had been trying to get a hold of Shepard for a while, but between moving and spending more time with Belle, he’d sort of let it go. He’d even gone down to see his mom for a weekend. But now he was knocking on Shepard’s door, hoping he wasn’t interrupting anything. He had tried to set up a time with Shepard beforehand, and this was kind of important.
Fortunately for him, she was dressed and clean and not rumpled in the slightest. She greeted him with a grin. “Hey there, Wolfwood.”
“Commander.” Wolfwood smiled. “Hi. Thanks for meeting me. I had something to tell you, and a couple of things to ask. OK to come in?”
“Come on in,” She said, stepping aside to let him in. “What do you need to talk about? Need a drink? Do I need a drink?”
“Nah, don’t think so. It’s more about logistics. I wanted to know more about what you have in mind for these strikes, and what being on your team will mean.” Wolfwood came in, sitting across from her as they both got comfortable. “I also wanted to tell you me and Belle’s new address.”
“Grats!” She walked over to a wall, and slid a panel out from behind a picture. It beeped as it scanned her eye, then the wall opened. She pulled out some documents and brought them over. “Most of the missions are recon. Occasional extraction. Name a country that’s even remotely unstable and I’ve been there.”
Wolfwood nodded. “You don’t have to go into detail, obviously, but the nature of the work is what I wanted to know.” He looked over at her. “Recon is going to differ from, say, combat distractions. Could you tell me roughly how many missions would be going at once?” The more, the better. Between his dreams and the discussions he’d had with Belle and his mother, it would be better for him to be hard to find.
“There’s roughly one a month. I have other teams doing most of them, but I’ve been planning on ramping up for some time now.” Shepard opened a file on North Korea. “Still plenty of chance for combat, but we’re not technically supposed to be there. Plausible deniability.”
“The reason I ask is because there is no way Belle and I can be on the same team, like you know. So I was wondering how often we’d wind up apart. Also, my dreams are starting to worry me for reasons that have to do with my abilities in the field.” Wolfwood sighed.
“Too easy to get distracted, I know. Thing is I don’t want you both on missions at the same time unless we don’t have a choice. Easier to work if you know your person is safe back home.”
“Okay. That makes sense.” Wolfwood nodded. And these missions would only last a weekend or so at a time, so they’d still have time to be together. “But the dreams is the part of it that I wanted to talk to you about.”
“Go ahead, shoot me anything.” Shepard figured she could deal with just about anything.
Wolfwood got his phone out, flipping over to the camera. “I found this in my spare room.” He showed her the Punisher cross. “That one arm is the ammo. The other is the machine gun. Another one is the rocket launcher.”
“Why is it a fucking cross?” Shepard asked, tilting her head and raising both of her eyebrows.
“Because in my dreams, I’m a priest.” Wolfwood said. “Yes, a priest. Who also is a gunslinger.”
“A gunslinger priest? Isn’t that kind of an oxymoron?” She didn’t look too surprised, though. “Never pegged you for the religious type.”
“Anywhere but this planet, I think it would be. But in my dreams, the planet Gunsmoke is the kind of place where a priest needs to protect himself.” Wolfwood shook his head. “I told you a little about it when the dreams started, but it’s gotten infinitely more fucked up since then.”
Shepard just looked at him, then poured him a huge drink. She held it out. “Keep talking.”
“God bless you, woman.” Wolfwood needed that. He told her what he’d dreamed up to this point - about his uncle, about being a priest, the Gung Ho Guns, meeting Vash and losing him again, Legato Bluesummers and Millions Knives, everything. He told her about using the Punisher cross, about his talks with Vash on love and faith and optimism.
Eventually, he sat back. “The reason I tell you all this is because first, I’m starting to see my shooting get even better than it was in the army. Like, I can hit a shot four hundred yards away with sniper accuracy with a handgun. And second, I’m starting to get some weird triggers. Almost flashbacks, except I keep my head when it happens.”
“Weird triggers? Tell me about this.” Shepard sat up straight. Those would be important to know, both as his friend and his commander.
“I stay coherent when they’re happening. It’s just like I see it happen in front of my eyes. It’s a hallucination, more than a flashback.” Wolfwood shook his head. “I can see myself, in a quick draw competition against Vash. Another one I’ve seen is Chapel teaching me how to shoot. It’s like phantoms escaping out of my head. It’s fucking weird. But when I’ve got a gun in my hand, it doesn’t happen. Ever.”
“We’ll have to test that theory sometime, in some safe place,” Tyra said, looking at him worriedly.
“It’s starting to piss me off. I want to be on these teams. I never had a psych eval in nineteen years in the army, and I don’t want to start now.” Wolfwood worried. Especially with his mom’s agoraphobia, he figured mental illness might run in the family. “I had to tell you, in the interest of everyone else’s safety. But I can still use a gun - better than before, even - and I don’t think I’m compromised in the field. I really don’t.”
“We’ll wing it. I’ve worked with mentally unstable people too,” Shepard assured him, clapping him on the shoulders with a grin.
“I’m not fucking unstable.” Wolfwood was stung by the word, in spite of himself.
“You’re having hallucinations,” she pointed out. “I can’t say that there’s not potential issues with that, but I’m also not going to push you away or deny you if you’re still capable. And god knows I’m not the most stable person at times either.”
“I just got through saying they don’t affect me in the field.” Wolfwood was instantly regretting telling the truth.
“Have you been in a position to have them while in the field?” She asked. “I just need to know, Nicholas.”
“They don’t affect me when I have a gun in my hand.” Wolfwood sighed. “The four times I’ve had a gun in my hand in the last few weeks, they’ve been absent.”
“Interesting. There’s probably a reason for that, but I’m not going to complain.” She poured herself a drink. “Thing is, I sometimes see things too. Usually when I’m by myself, just walking around the city.”
“Do you?” Wolfwood was curious, almost in spite of himself. “What do you see?”
Shepard’s eyes were haunted. “Las Vegas writ large. Ruined buildings, bodies in the streets, people on the Dragon’s Teeth turning into husks, screaming everywhere.”
Wolfwood shook his head. “With respect, ma’am, if I shouldn’t be in the field, you shouldn’t either. Though I get why you would see that.”
“You got me there.” She smirked at him.
“These fucking dreams.” He shook his head. “I can show you how good I’ve gotten with a gun, though? If we can go to a range or something?”
She pointed down the hallway. “I’ve got an indoor one. Want to see it?”
“Yeah. This entire house is reinforced. Safe room, armory, even an underground bunker.” She smiled, a little sadly. “I wanted to raise a family here, you know? I wanted them safe.”
“You still could.” Wolfwood didn’t necessarily want kids, but he knew Shepard did, and badly. “You’ve still got time. Especially if you adopt.”
“We’re planning on it,” she admitted. Something she didn’t admit easily. “It was something I was going to do with my wife but that obviously didn’t pan out.”
Wolfwood couldn’t help but grin, in spite of all the seriousness. “Yeah? You talked to Moonstar? That’s ... really great.”
“Shut up, I don’t want to hear it.” She led him down the hall into a room that had a short range with reinforced walls. “I can’t really practice my sniping here but handguns are fun.”
“Well, yeah.” Wolfwood laughed. “I’m presuming you have a .38 or five around?” This was the fun part of the dream related crap.
She nodded, opening a safe and pulling her .38 special out. She tossed it to him, then handed over some rounds. “Have at it.”
“Thank you.” Wolfwood loaded the gun, donning the appropriate protections. “What is that, seventy-five yards? Where would you expect to hit with a .38?”
“Should be fine, no wind and it’s a lot closer than the max.”
Without another word, Wolfwood held the gun out, aimed, and shot dead center of the far target.
Shepard queued up another target, bringing them up as rapidly as she could.
He kept shooting, kept scoring dead center. Dream Wolfwood was a gunslinger, and a damn good one.
“Christ, I’d hate to see you with a sniper rifle.” She stopped sending him targets, and brought them up to inspect.
“Even better.” Wolfwood shrugged. “Dream me was basically born with a gun in his hand. I guess it’s just starting to come through.”
She nodded her head in understanding. “Dreams taught me to snipe on the move. Your skills are going to be handy.”
“If I’m stable enough to use them?” He couldn’t resist, even though it was kind of insubordinate. He just worried. A lot. If he couldn’t be military, what the hell could he be.
It made Shepard smirk at him, and waved a hand. “Look stable enough to me.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Wolfwood smirked right back. He did worry, but he didn’t worry enough to stay out of the field. Especially not with Belle going back out. He wasn’t going to be the househusband. Or houseboyfriend. House ... thing. Whatever.
“Can I let you in on a secret?” She asked. She had to talk to someone about this. She couldn’t talk to Dani.
“Of course. Is everything okay?” Wolfwood stopped screwing around, putting the safety back on the .38.
“Yeah, everything is fine. Just considering my team once Dani is better. I’ll function better with her at my back.” She’d had Liara at her back in the dreams.
“What do you have to tell me?”
“She’ll be on my team. And I’m thinking about a future with her. I know you don’t feel like you and Belle can be on the same team.” She shook her head. “But I operate differently.”
She’d made it sound like a big deal. Wolfwood shrugged. “Shepard, we knew about that. I think Belle knew first. You’re not subtle, you know.”
“Quiet you.”
“I hate to break it to you, but seriously, this isn’t news.” Wolfwood grinned. “And as long as you understand why Belle and I can’t be on the same team, that’s all that matters to me. We’ll come to your wedding and send extravagant gifts for when you adopt your forty babies.”
“Yeah, I can understand. Just worried a bit that you’d have concerns about…” She narrowed her eyes. “Who said anything about wedding bells anytime soon. Babies yes.”
“You’d have to convince Moonstar. And thank God you’re going to adopt, because I’m sorry, I apologize, if you wound up knocked up my head might explode.”
“It’s not impossible,” she replied, her grin wicked. “We might not even need a donor.”
Wolfwood stared. “ ... That was so too much information. Ew.”
“Modern science, Wolfwood. It won’t be long and we won’t need men at all. You’ll be redundant!”
“Oh. Christ, I wasn’t thinking that way.” Wolfwood jokingly breathed a sigh of relief.
That made Shepard laugh so hard it felt like she pulled something. “Oh god no, we’re both as woman as they come. Trust me, I don’t touch dick with a ten foot pole.”
“I will cheerfully become redundant if it means both of you are all woman.” Wolfwood was laughing himself. “I mean, I’ve seen your upper half, but not the lower. That one time we were trying to use a cliffside as a shower out along the border?” She had a hell of a nice rack, too, but that would get him slapped and court-martialed.
“I showed you them once, when I showed you my scars,” she reminded him, with a grin.
“You did, yeah. Now that you aren’t my superior, I can say you have a really impressive rack. Respectfully. And I hope Dani enjoys them.” Wolfwood said, still chuckling.
“Yeah, it is, and yeah she does. Don’t think about that too much or Bella is liable to shoot you.”
“Belle has a better one anyway.” Wolfwood wasn’t actually just saying that, either, but still.
“Not as good as Dani’s,” Shepard countered.
“To each their own. And Belle has an ass that’s somewhere around legendary. You’ve seen it, you know.”
She laughed. “Not as good as yours.”
“Aww, Shepard.” Wolfwood pretended to blush. “I didn’t know you cared. But Belle and Dani would kill both of us.”
She reached around and pinched him in the tush.
Wolfwood yelped! “Ma’am! As delineated in the USMC code, you are hereby guilty of sexual harassment, ma’am!” He liked to joke with her.
“Talk to my superior officer. Though you should see his ass,” she said, laughing.
“I’m going home to my hot girlfriend, if you’re going to keep harassing me.” Wolfwood was still laughing, too.
She made grabbing motions with her hands. “Go home and get harassed by your hot girlfriend.”
“I will, dammit.” Wolfwood made as if to leave, but he came back to smile and toss a salute. “Thanks, Shepard.”
She grinned. “You’re welcome. Now go get that tight ass laid.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Wolfwood headed out, feeling at least marginally better about how things were.