#two spiteful idiots with a grudge and with alien boyfriends

[wardencommanderrodimiss]

Okay but... does this mean Cerberus has to spend 8 Billion credits and they bring back two alien fuckers that flip Cerberus off constantly?

hOLY SHIT THEY DO

They are all sitting quietly, in separate stages of grief and guilt, trying to figure out how to grapple with the words “Commanders MIA, presumed dead.” All of the debris of the Normandy, still exploding after the escape pods had cleared, meant that there was almost no chance that their flight suits escaped without damage that rendered them nonfunctional; most of the wreckage is gone from the area now, fallen far through the atmosphere of the planet below, and even the smallest falling stars burn up on entry.

The first sound is from Ashley. “Look, I know we’re all thinking this,” she starts to say, quietly, but with some sort of harsh, angry edge to her voice. Wrex and Liara look at her; Joker and Solo stare at the far wall, Garrus at his hands, Tali at the ceiling. “How the hell did the two of them both manage to get themselves killed at the same time?! What - friggin chances -”

“Ash,” Kaiden says, and nothing else.

“You were thinking it too, LT, I know it,” Ashley says. 

“Now’s not the time,” Kaiden says, not denying her charges.

“Isn’t that what they’ve always done, though?” Liara asks. “Charging one after the other into danger?”

Joker rests his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands, staring at the floor. The silence returns.

-

“Where is the Illusive Man going to get eight billion credits?” Jacob asks, looking over Miranda’s shoulder at the expense reports. “Or does he just have it already, somehow?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Miranda says, in the tone that means I don’t actually know. 

“That’s an entire economy, eight billion credits,” Jacob says. He shakes his head. “Of course they had to just both go and die right at the same time. Inconvenient for us.”

“Inconvenient for everything,” Miranda agrees. “I suggested looking into just one of them” - Jacob chokes on air - “but I don’t think that would do us any favors with the one we chose.”

-

“Where were you?” Joker calls up from the cockpit. “Didn’t you guys say you’d be back sometime last night?”

“Then we got arrested,” Elliot calls back, heedless of all of the Cerberus personnel who all freeze in the midst of whatever they were doing to stare.

“We graffitied the human embassy on the Presidium,” Zofia says cheerfully. She turns to Elliot. “I’m thinking that ‘fuck Cerberus’ would look good somewhere in here - or maybe outside, that would be nice.”

“We spent eight billion credits on them,” Jacob says. Miranda sighs.