Chapter Text
“What’s going on?” Kaidan says as he walks out of the elevator and stands next to Wrex as he observes the spectacle at the end of the cargo bay. A gaggle of the Normandy crew, including Ashley, Tali, and Liara are observing the Commander spar with Garrus.
Wrex looks at Kaidan briefly noting his confusion and maybe a little jealousy and chuckles evilly. “What does it look like, runt? She’s putting Garrus through his paces.”
“Why isn’t she sparring with one of the marine detail, or with Ashley? Hell, she could have asked me.” Kaidan says and then cringes when Zyn grabs a hold of Garrus’ armor at the buckles near his waist and with a deft move and surprising strength, she flips the Turian to slam him to the deck plating.
Wrex chuckles when Garrus hesitates to move from his sprawled position on the ground before he tries to get up and promptly falls over again.
“Huh, I thought Turians were better at hand to hand combat than that,” Kaidan mumbles to himself when Garrus takes Zyn’s offered hand to help him up and concedes the match to her.
Wrex looks over at Kaidan and stares at him until Kaidan looks away uncomfortable. “You missed most of the fun of watching my Zee beat the crap out of your marines, Ashley, and now Garrus. I’ll give the Turian some credit, though. He’s not bad. They were well matched, but my Zee knows a few unorthodox moves, growing up with ex-Alliance soldiers and a bad-assed Krogan. That last move you observed? Yours truly taught her that one. Hell, she knew every weak point on an opponent even before going to N7 training. She’s a badass, just like me.”
“Well, mark me as warned.” Kaidan says then looks at Wrex thoughtfully and quietly asks him, “Uh…have you talked to Zyn? How is she?”
“How do you think she is? She’s a mess. Talking down that poor girl from Mindoir, from killing herself, really freaked her out. She was stalking around the cargo bay like a caged varren, spitting venom at anyone who took notice of her. She kept repeating that if not for me she could have ended up like that girl or worse. Since she wasn’t listening to me try to placate her, I figured she could use the stress relief of sparring, so I mentioned that Tali and Liara had been asking me about grappling techniques. She took it a step further and made it into training for the marine detail since you were busy and it just snowballed from there,” Wrex explained pointing at the sparring ring.
Snowballed? Obviously, Wrex had picked up some human language idioms from Zyn over the years, he thought to himself. He nods at what Wrex revealed about Zyn’s mood and started to move off toward the gaggle of Normandy crew still standing around the makeshift workout space. “Actually, now that she’s done, I have messages for her. Talk to you later, Wrex.”
Wrex reaches out and stops him from walking past and leans in to say, “If I were you, throw your damn book out for the evening and distract her. She needs you,” he grumbles, making Kaidan smirk, “to help her through this. I was there for her on Mindoir, but now she needs more than I can offer. She’s too serious. This mission is weighing heavily on her and what happened on the Citadel didn’t help either. She needs cheering up, damn it. Do whatever it takes to help get our beloved smartass Commander back.”
“Are you telling me to ‘sleep’ with your daughter, Wrex?” Kaidan says air quoting the sleep comment.
Wrex glowers at him and mutters, “Puny pyjak.”
Knowing his barb about his and Zyn’s intimate relationship bothers him as her ‘father,’ Kaidan smirks.
Wrex clenches his fists and frowns at him. Then surprisingly he huffs and rolls his dark red eyes and says, “Yes. If that is what it takes.”
Kaidan blinks at him and says, “Uh…okay.” Then before turning around to walk over to Zyn, he winks at the big Krogan and adds, “I’ll do my best.”
Wrex just grunts and grumbles something akin to ‘ass’ under his breath and waves him on dismissing him. Kaidan shakes his head smiling and walks over to the practice arena set up next to the Mako. He stops when he sees Zyn wrap one of her arms around Garrus’ hunched shoulders and steer him over to the workbench next to the Mako and leans him up against it. When Garrus grimaces that he is okay for the moment, Kaidan notices what only can be an expression of sexual interest on Garrus’ face as he watches her walk away to talk to Tali, when the Quarian asks a question about one of the choke holds that she demonstrated earlier.
As Kaidan is about to go and confront Garrus, Liara skips over to him and gushes, “Isn’t she amazing? I can’t believe our Commander just took down three Marines, Ashley, and Garrus! All without getting seriously injured in the process.” Liara lets out a loud breathless sigh and fans herself as she looks at Zyn across the mat.
Kaidan looks at Liara’s purple cheeks and Garrus’ apparent interest and starts chuckling. Liara looks up at him, surprised, “What’s so funny?”
“Sorry. It’s nothing, Liara. I will agree that Shepard is amazing. So, how did our Commander end up sparring with five people?” Kaidan says not revealing that his jealousy at Garrus has now been turned into awe. Having both Liara and Garrus make it abundantly obvious that they are attracted to Zyn, not just because she is an amazing woman and their Commander, inspiring respect and loyalty from others, but also because she is the ‘badass’ that Wrex claims her to be. He suddenly feels honored that she has picked him to be hers.
As if Zyn could feel his eyes on her, she turns around and looks at him. Seeing him smiling at her, she smiles in return. The noise of the cargo bay falls away and it is just the two of them, looking at each other. Recognizing the heat in Zyn’s gaze for what it was, arousal, Kaidan was about ready to beckon to her to follow him up to her cabin, when Liara distracts him by coughing. He breaks eye contact reluctantly and looks down at Liara, noticing that she was looking at him a little enviously, which helps further his resolve that he is damn lucky.
“Tali and I had asked Shepard to show us some hand to hand combat moves, without the use of biotics or tech, just in case we may need them in the field. She gathered the marine detail and paired them off with help from Ashley and asked them to show us in slow motion different holds, blocks, and attacks. When Tali asked to see a real sparring session, Shepard asked if any of the marines would like to volunteer to take her down, and three of them raised their hands. Ashley and Garrus both mentioned that they would spar with the winner. It was awesome, Kaidan. Shepard took down the Marines in less than a minute each and took down Ashley in under three. It was when she paired with Garrus when things got more interesting. A pool was started regarding who would win, headed by Joker, of course. I think he and Shepard made quite a bundle of credits.”
“Oh?” Kaidan asked, not really surprised that not only Joker but also Zyn, started the betting pool on the outcome of the match.
“Yeah, I think there were several crew members who thought that Garrus could beat Shepard, especially with his background in the military and C-Sec, and her having taken on several other opponents first. I wasn’t sure, myself, but ended up winning about 50 credits. So, in retrospect, I think I’ll bet on the Commander from now on. She’s a sure thing.” Liara says, clearly awestruck.
Kaidan smiles and decides internally to not enlighten Liara on what the statement, ‘a sure thing’ really means, knowing that Zyn certainly was, in regards to him, at least, and asks, “How long was the match between Shepard and Garrus? I only caught the ending.”
Liara smiles fondly remembering the match, “Well, it was really close for at least 10 minutes. All of us thought that Shepard was about to lose, when she changed tactics on him and during his attack, she used a technique I’ve never seen before. Ashley was clearly impressed that the Commander would use what she called a ‘dirty move.’ She assured me that had Garrus been human, the Commander could have done real damage to the area where she kicked him. After seeing the winces of the human males who were watching, I agreed with her. Ashley laughed and said that that move was inspiring enough that she will use it on the next male who doesn’t know the meaning of the word ‘no.’ Whatever that means. Anyway, Garrus was slow to rise from his knees, after going down from the kick though, so I’m not really sure if he was injured, Turian or not. He did finally get up and proceeded to sweep the Commander’s feet out from under her, but backed off once doing so, to readjust his armor. Then, Shepard rolled over and did some sort of impressive flip thing to stand back up. She’s extremely graceful, when fighting.” Liara pauses briefly when her face begins to turn purple again, and then continues, “That is when she grabbed Garrus around his waist and flipped him over her shoulder, ending the match. It was so exciting!”
“Glad you enjoyed yourself, Liara.” Zyn says as she walks over to them. “Did you learn anything, regarding the hand to hand tactics?”
“Oh, yes. Thank you Commander. I will practice the ones you showed us before the matches. Please excuse me, Shepard. I want to talk to Tali. Goodnight,” she says waving at both of them before joining up with Tali and starts to discuss what they both observed, gesticulating wildly.
Zyn laughs looking back towards ‘the girls’ and turns towards Kaidan grinning. “It ‘was’ fun. It was a great stress reliever. You missed some good matches, Kaidan.”
“Sounds like it,” Kaidan says grinning at Zyn. “Did you actually kick Garrus in the balls, so to speak?”
“I did. He almost had me and I knew that I needed to surprise him enough to let go, so I kicked him just hard enough that it would dislodge his hold on me. It didn’t hurt him too much. As a Turian, his ‘junk’ is protected inside his body. He’ll be uncomfortable for a few days, but all in all, it worked.”
“Ouch. Just thinking about that makes me wince.”
“You asked, Kaidan. Besides, I would never do that to a human male unless I had to.”
“Good to know.”
“Anyway, did you want something? You just got off shift, yes?” Zyn asks.
“Yeah, actually, I had several messages for you.”
“Okay. Give me a few minutes to clean up in my cabin and then we can meet to discuss anything pressing.” At Kaidan’s automatic ‘aye-aye’ response, Zyn walks by him on the way to the elevator. Before moving two steps, she pauses and turns back around to face him. “Hey, thanks for stepping in as XO while Pressly is sick with the chicken pox. I needed the time off.”
“Of course, Shepard, you know you can count on me. Joker has relieved me until 2300 and then Lt. LaFlamme will be taking third shift till 0700.” Kaidan says brushing a strand of her hair that has come undone from her bun behind her ear.
Zyn shivers at the slight contact, “Good. I’ll see you in 10 minutes,” she says breathlessly and nods at him before turning away towards the elevator and then her cabin.