"Ahh!" Jack reeled away from Jacquen as the rapier sharp blade traced across the back of his hand, fingers refusing to hold onto the pistol as blood welled up. He clamped a hand over the cut to try and keep the bleeding to a minimum before putting it to his mouth, as a man who had just hit his hand with a hammer would. Initial anger washed over Jack, as his Sicariun friend kicked Tasha's pistol away, the expensive weapon skidding across the floor, through the hall and under the bed in his room.
As the initial shock of the gash across his hand dulled, and Jacquen admonished him "You promised this one that you wouldn't anger the Night Mother with this...foolishness" Jack took the back of his hand from his mouth and let it fall limply to his side. "That was before we were dishonorable discharges, before Hayes offered an EC upgrade that would create an even bigger problem than I already have." It was as Jack turned towards the room that he realized the memories he'd been shuffling were still playing loud from inside. He called up his EC and ordered it to shut off, which it did, though painfully slowly to Jack, who couldn't believe the memory his friend had just heard. Shaking his head, Jack walked the few paces to his room and got on hands and knees beside the bed, fishing the pistol out from underneath.
Before Jacquen could get angry again, Jack turned about quickly and thumbed the magazine release, the huge bullets that went into the gun tumbled from the well, still attached to the mag. Jack, having made the pistol completely safe, slid the mag across the floor towards Jacquen. Then he reached onto the bed and took the shoe box that contained the three other magazines. He put the lid over the box and shoved it under his arm, before returning to the front room, where he dropped the other magazines next to his friend before sitting down in a chair beside the desk.
Jack felt completely and utterly defeated. He had come back to his apartment, through thousands of other aliens, to get the pistol he now held in his palms again. He had been so close, actually having dry fired the pistol at his head once before. And just when it all looked as though he would get his wish, Jacquen stopped him. Silently, Jack resigned himself to the total despair and loneliness he felt inside himself, even in the company of his only friend.
"That one...she was your mate?"
Snapping upward at the question, Jack followed the line of Jacquen's gaze and realized that he'd forgotten to put Tasha's picture face down before opening the door. He kicked himself inwardly, as he reached up for it. Having sat the pistol upon the desk beside him, Jack took Tasha's photograph in his hands and looked down at it.
Quarians were, physically, very close to human in appearance but for a few differences that made it abundantly clear that they weren't. In the picture, Jack and Natasha stood next to each other, one of the first things one would notice about the differences between Humans and Quarians in this picture was the way their hands differed; they held each other's hand out in front of them, their fingers intertwining, but for every five fingers Jack had, Tasha only had two and a thumb. Their heads were each titled slightly, resting against the other, though Jack was a few inches taller than she. Making a triple line across her forehead, Tasha had three black lines, each ending in a very small circle, staggering from each other until they stopped, halfway across her forehead, stopping just below her hairline. Her hair was light in color, too dull to be considered blonde, bobbed off in a pixie cut that accentuated her delicate face -- at least that's what Carlyle believed. Their eyes were another difference obvious at first glance, while Jack's eyes were a light blue in color, the irises of her eyes were almost beige, the pupils jet black, and encircling the irises was a bluish color, that's why you could always see the outlines of a Quarian's eyes in their suit -- their eyes outlined themselves. Jack wore basically what he did now, a pair of navy blue cargo pants dark enough to be considered black and a grey tank top that showed off the musculature one gains from years in a Drop Crew. Flowing around her feet - which only had two digits - of a light purple color, Natasha Carlyle was clad in a dress that hid the way Quarian's legs bowed backwards slightly at the knees.
"No one is supposed to see her like this." Jack placed a hand on the glass and traced his finger around the curve of her chin "They spend so long in their suits, not even taking them off around family that when they finally do take their mask off for someone, it's a very intimate thing." Jack couldn't help a few more tears coming from his eyes as he thought of the first time he had reached to the back of Tasha's helmet and pressed the small, hidden button that would allow the mask to come free. "Neither of us had ever had anyone else."
"How did she come to join the Night mother Jack?"
Where as before, Jack spoke of her life, their love, now he was being questioned about those last painful weeks, as he watched her slowly slip away from him. He'd never even spoken of it to himself -- in his own head. But maybe that was the problem, he'd never sought help aside from downloading an ebook to his EC that he promptly deleted as the words inside were too painful for him to read. His hands began to shake again, and he flipped Tasha's picture over and sat it face down on the table, next to her pistol "The Collective killed her." Jack managed to let slip from his mouth, before putting his head in his hands "Quarians have terrible immune systems, that's why they live their entire lives in self-contained suit environments. One day The Collective Bio Engineers assigned to this HR decided to change the air composition, they put some basically harmless - to the human engineers - germs into the air, that would hopefully reduce the more harmful airborne bacteria that thrive in business districts."
Turning away from the Sicariun, like he had aboard the Void's Warden, Jack looked at the top of the desk he sat at as he continued "The next day she had a cough, day after that her nose was stuffy, next day nausea, and then came the fever. That's how Quarian immune systems react to foreign bacteria, they run fevers until the alien bacteria is no longer harmful." Jack remembered the first time they had kissed, Tasha had been sick for three days, she was sick for an entire week the first time they spent a night together. Reaching out, Jack caressed his fingers across the engraved pistol "But she didn't get better. The Bio Engineers just kept pumping into the air throughout the entire ring new germs, new bacteria for her to fight.
And because we were not legally allowed to be married, the medical insurance afforded servicemen's families did not apply and when I finally managed to get Tasha to the hospitals for servicemen and their families up in the Military Rings, they refused to treat a Quarian." The words spit from Jack's mouth, his hatred for his own species evident in every spat syllable and every jagged word "They only gave her a room and monitored her condition, though the treatment for a Quarian fever was available and would have saved her life if they would have, but they didn't. The Collective insurance that would have been afforded to any other family didn't apply to us. And she suffered another entire week before she died."
Turning to Jacquen, he stared into the Sicariun's eyes "That's why I hate humans. That's why I don't give a damn that they're being enslaved by Adaris. They murdered her slowly, painfully. Made her spend her final hours puking her guts out, when she wasn't caught in fever nightmares. I hate them, Jacquen." There was a churning deep in his stomach, where rage, grief, love and hatred bubbled together. Jack hated humans, with everything in his own human body, he hated them.