"If you stopped acting like a tank you won't get punched so much."
Who: Shepard and Kitty What: Letting off steam Where: Underground fighting ring When: Early this morning Status: complete Rating: PG-13 for violence.
Shepard had a splitting headache. Blood poured down her nose. She was pretty sure a tooth had gotten knocked lose. She was having the time of her life. The crowd roared in her ears as her opponent stomped towards her. Wrex and Grunt would have loved this, she decided. Ducking under the man's next blow, she moved to the side, punching him twice in the ribs and then once in the kidney as she got behind him. The feel of her fists hitting flesh was rejuvenating, and she held back her biotics to make things a little more fair.
He got a couple more blows in on her before a well timed jab to the jaw sent him crashing to the hard ground. Wiping the blood from her face, she exited the makeshift arena and grabbed a towel. "I think I need a short break before going back in."
The brunette waiting for her flashed a grin. Kitty looked relatively untouched, but from what Shepard had observed she hadn't used her powers in the ring either. She was just very dodgey. "Getting tired, Commander?"
"Not even a little, but I'd like my head to stop ringing."
"If you stopped acting like a tank you won't get punched so much."
Her own smile was positively feral. "That's the best part."
"Yeah, I went through that phase too." Kitty smirked, and offered up a water bottle. Shepard took it gratefully, drinking some then dumping the rest over her head. She watched two women go at it in the ring like their lives depended on it.
"Thanks, by the way. I didn't know how badly I needed this."
"Well, after hearing about you storming around, I figured you could use a nice, violent outlet." She glanced at Shepard, concern in her eyes. "Sure you don't want to talk about it?"
Shepard rolled her shoulders. Regrets. Concerns. She'd spent the better part of the past few months trying to get her head back together. Let Garrus and Regina see the parts of her she wanted out, the person she was trying to be. But too much blood from her dreams. Then the monsters and the demons and the skies turning black and she just needed to look up and there was going to be a Reaper. She didn't have a fleet. She had one ship and a couple dozen people who might stand a chance in hell of stopping a single Reaper, let alone an invasion. She'd fight it. By god she'd fight it, she just didn't know if she'd win this time. And then there was the guilt, but all of that paled in comparison to what she'd found out a few nights ago. "Nothing to talk about."
Kitty watched her jog back towards the ring, wondering what was driving her. Keeping it bottled up was never a good thing (she should know). She wondered what kind of shittastic playthrough Jane had gone through. Judging by the scars...
It was a thought like that that caused Shepard to break a man's jaw with a single punch. She watched him fall to the ground, then looked around. She looked a bit like a wild woman, half-wiped off blood on her face and her scars glowing faintly. "That it?"
No one moved, except for the people dragging her opponent off.
Kitty rubbed the back of her neck. "Okay Shep, I'm going to collect our winnings. Why don't you know, not try to kill anyone?"
None of it was real. Shepard had made the mistake of looking for references to the Normandy or her Mass Effect drive, and had stumbled onto a fucking video game. None of it was real. It was like a mantra in her head and the further she dove into articles and wikis about this game, the more incensed she'd become.
There had been other choices. Wrex could have lived! Her crew! Miranda and Jacob and Zaeed and Thane and....And she'd damned her soul and for what? There were other ways and she'd never stopped to consider any other options.
All the things she'd done. All the weight on her shoulders and the nights spent staring out into space and second guessing herself and it wasn't real. Scars and biotics and the implants that were a constant aggravation and she couldn't wrap her head around it. Were any of them real? How could she talk to Garrus about this? Tell him someone had written that hellhole of a galaxy for entertainment. That people wrote stories about them? (okay so that one was really hot). Or Regina? She couldn’t even make herself tell her she loved her.
"Uh, are you sure you're okay? You're starting to glow."
She visibly calmed herself. "Yeah, I'm fine. Do you want to see the Normandy?" She needed to ground herself. By going onto a space ship.
If it'll make you feel better, Kitty thought. "Sounds like fun. Can I fly her? I promise you I've flown a space ship before."
"Sure thing!" This had helped though. The pain made her feel real.