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The Translation in Blood	By : Mayamahal Category: +M through R > Mass Effect Views: 19003 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Bioware or ANYTHING in the Mass Effect universe, including the characters therein. I make no money on this story.

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Hannah was getting a little worried by the time they got to the underground lake, and then, she forgot what she'd been so anxious about.
They'd had to squeeze through a glowing chink in a wall, sideways, with enough grumbling and grunting to make them both breathless with swear words. If it hadn't been for the increased brightness outlining the cavern beyond, there were several points Hannah wanted to just turn around and find another way out. For almost a hundred yards, they inched and squeezed towards the light, the ripple of water echoing around them and about ten yards out, the sound became motion, liquid shadows on the wall all about.
Stumbling free of the rock's embrace, they both took a moment to inhale deep and hard, straightening carefully to take in the sight before them.
Glowing green, blue, and the new shade of soft pink, the lichen and moss chased patterns across the walls but especially through the high cavern ceiling far, far above them, arching over a lake that seemed to stretch out for miles.
Clear, impossibly clear, the water rippled from droplets that fell from massive stalactites high above. Phosphorescent light reflected itself back across the distant, making it brighter here than any they'd seen so far.
It was breathtaking.
The sigh they both released made them glance at each other, each giving the equivelent of a small smile before looking back out again. Hannah even forgot to feel hungry for a moment, but she nudged his hip anyway.
"Scan for anything edible for me? Life forms too, while you're at it; I don't want to get eaten by anything crawling out of that lake."
The amber glow of his interface seemed out of place here amidst such beautiful, natural light, and he seemed to think the same thing as he closed it as soon as he could. He murmured something and pointed to a smaller pool several yards away.
"Food?" she perked. Her stomach growled. The Turian raised amused brows at her, then nodded.
Scampering over, she noticed that the light lining this particular pool was much brighter, and in it she could see pale, sheer green weeds growing in the water. And flitting about them-
"Please," she mumbled, "Please tell me the weeds are the food, and not those. Please."
There was a whuffle of laughter behind her.
"I knew it," she sighed.
A little bit later, eyeless fish with far too many legs as to seem natural were skewered and set to cook in the handy little portable heating unit the Turian had in his kit. If she weren't so hungry it would probably have looked creepier, as it was she was just going to have to deal with eating something that didn't have eyes.
It was impossible to keep their eyes open, nothing but food and good scenery on their plates. No captor, no captured, no war, no responsibilities but surviving. Hannah was worried about her daughter, but it was a balm of solace that she was safe and so far away from all this.
They agreed that it was best to treat each other as partners until they could get out of here, and it was hard to distrust someone you laughed with and owed your life to. The one sided communication was a little irritating, but they were working around it. Especially now that the Turian was showcasing his secret talent.
While her meal cooked he had taken a moment to examine the wall by the little pool of fishy things, staring at the solid glow of green lichen with a strange tilt of his head. After a moment, he pulled off one of his armored gloves and flexed his fingers, then began to carefully scrape at the stone.
In the wake of his talons, black lines emerged, sharp against the green. She was sitting on the ground, ankles crossed with her legs stretched out, leaning back on her hands, watching. After a minute or so, she realized he was sketching the image of a relay. A reverse image too, the black lines the dark, shadowed places, the light green left in place to catch the gleam of ancient metal.
"That's really good," she murmured, smiling at him when he turned to look at her. He seemed almost surprised to find her watching, gave a half shrug and checked on her meal.
She was looking on it now almost an hour later, belly fully of strange meat, eyelids heavy. It was hard to forget the first time you saw the massive relays, so unexpectedly wonderful, mysterious, advancing their technology as a species at a pace that was dizzying. They could explore as far as they wanted to, see past suns and stars and nebula that before they'd only glimpsed through telescopes...
She was mumbling this to her new friend, trying not to nod off.
"...to know... we aren't just pioneers, but a small piece of a bigger picture, rising to meet others that can show us ... so much..." she mumbled. He rumbled a reply, sounding far more awake than she, but he was still chewing his rations. She sighed and lay back, looking up at the cavern ceiling with its own little universe etched into it, greens and blues. It was so very beautiful.
"We aren't all soldiers," she continued, arms pillowing the back of her head. "Some of us get to be artists, or poets or writers... the lucky ones get to be just parents, mothers and fathers to beautiful children ... little girls with sharp eyes and clear voices and bright laughter... never needing to know what a gun is ... " Her eyes were closing. "You birds seem so good at it, though, the fighting ... took us by surprise... which is funny..." She gave a soft laugh, just as sleep came up to claim her. "It's usually humans in the stories that make the rash, fatal choices ... that pull the trigger and reap the repercussions later..."
Sleep claimed her quick and hard; she didn't even feel him draw up the blanket around her shoulders.
ooo
She woke up to the same soft brightness of glowing lichen, stretching her limbs quietly and looking about for the Turian. He was sprawled on his back, pistol nearby, not four feet from her. Her lips twitched at that, and she didn't know if she should feel offended that he felt the need to sleep so close, or pleased that he felt that comfortable with her.
What a strange pair fate had made of them.
She didn't know how long she slept, she couldn't resist looking at the clear glowing lake again, plucking at her dirty fatigues and wondering if she dare risk a swim. Glancing down at her company, sleeping soundly away, there really wasn't anything else to do.
Quietly as she could manage, she walked to the bank and stripped down to her dog tags, pulling tangled pins from her hair, letting loose the long, thick coils of braids. It was her one true vanity, she'd admit it freely. Her hair hung in deep waves to almost her knees, a feminine expression not often found in the military. It was the one thing she'd refused to give up, a facet of herself that she felt she didn't need to sacrifice. So she hadn't.
It made things a bitch in combat training, but she'd learned a few tricks to keep it up and tucked and tightly put away.
Now, free and loose, it felt so good to get those damn pins out of her head. She started to wade into the crystalline water, feeling the bite of a chill but not much more, and dove in.
After days of dirt and sweat and heat and anxiety, it was blissful to float in that lake made of green, living starlight. Years and years from then, moments of dread and fear would fade beneath the memory of the long, long hours she spent drifting on her back in that lake, at peace with the universe, content with her lot, the water cradling her in cool, sweet solace. She'd float on her back and then roll over and swim towards the shore and their makeshift, spartan camp, then go back to drifting and floating. Time was swallowed up here, aimless and purposeless, but finally, worried that her skin might prune off, she submerged one last time and swam in long, underwater strokes back to the bank.
Her hair fell in ropes around her shoulders as she drew from the water, reminding her that she had a long hour of untangling ahead of her. But before that, she gathered her clothes from the rock she left it on and brought them back with her into the water to do something about cleaning them.
Slamming them against the rocks and ringing them out was a noisy affair, and she apologized to the Turian who wandered over to her while she worked. Bare skinned and still wet, she didn't feel the least bit uncomfortable; military life rubs the self-consciousness of nudity right out of you, and Hannah was no exception.
"I hope I'm not making you uncomfortable," she told him during the last rinse, ringing out her pants and her skivvies last. She gestured to her body, breasts covered by her long hair pulled over her shoulders. "I have to sit around and wait for these to dry too."
He seemed ... intent on her, curious, she'd guess. He didn't seem too keen on the idea of swimming, and she was tempted to ask if it was a issue of body density, but thought better of it. She didn't want to know anything remotely like a weakness about his kind.
Just ... it was better that way.
He was perched on a rock that rose a little higher out of the water, kept him safe from splashing but gave him a good view of what she was doing. When she waded over to a nearby boulder to lay out her stuff to dry, she sat next to him on his rock (there was ample room), and went about untangling her hair while the water evaporated from her skin.
Within minutes, her teeth were chattering.
Before she could explain to him what this meant, he had a blanket around her shoulders.
This surprised her.
"How did you know to do that?" she asked, blinking at him as she coiled her damp hair and pinned it to the back of her head, before drawing the thermal blanket tight around her.
Now he looked guilty. And very hesitant. But Hannah was nothing if not patient.
When her shivering ceased, he pulled up his arm and queued a video. In it, a distinctly female silhouette was revealed to be a creature, a woman, with blue skin and violet eyes. Unlike the Turians she'd see, this woman bore an amazing resemblance to human women, with five fingers to each hand, a protruding nose, two eyes, lips ... the only difference, besides coloring, was the way her head sloped back into what looked like tentacles, or horns, much like the spikes that grew out of the Turians' skulls.
He rotated the image and showcased her many similarities, then queued up another image of a female physique. Here, her legs were bent back, two-toed, but her body had a similar shape and build to humans above the thigh. But she was masked, a helmet over her head and a hood draped around it. Hmm.
"Are those the females of your species?" she asked, guessing the answer. He shook his head.
The third image was of a Turian, without a doubt, with broader hips but slimmer chest and shoulders to the one sitting and breathing next to her. Elegant, very graceful, and very sleek.
"Oh. So... Those... blue women. They're like us? Like me?"
He gave a shrug, then gestured to her teeth, rubbed his upper arms and murmured a few words.
"They get cold like us, sensitive to temperature?" Again he shrugged, but also nodded. It was the best he could do with her limited comprehension, so she let it go. "Do they cry like we do?" she asked, remembering the other day when his fingers caught her tears.
Again he nodded, albeit slowly, almost wary.
"Interesting," she murmured, taking this in.
When her clothes were dry and she was dressed, they packed up their gear and considered their options.
According to the scans he'd taken, the lake went for miles, and directly across from them was an opening in the rock that had an ascending slope. Water-formed, most likely, as there were several echoes of moving water in this place. It was the best place to begin looking for a way back to the surface, if there was one. A few formations on the way around held some promise too, but not as much as that singular upward opening.
It was a long way around the lake, so Hannah cooked a few more of those fish things to bring with them. She was looking for something to wrap them with when he gestured to the sheer weeds growing along the remaining living fish.
She shot him a dirty look. "Are you saying those are edible?"
His mandibles fluttered it what she was quickly recognizing as a smile, eyes bright with mischief. She punched him in the arm. "Really? REALLY?"
His whuffling laughter made her smile, though, and she shot him a few good curses as she wrapped the fish in the water-weed.
She insisted on carrying half of their gear, arguing that if he got the gun, she could get his rations. It made him laugh again, and she decided there were worse things in the galaxy than a Turian's reverberating, resonant laugh.
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The Translation in Blood