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The Nomad rolled to a stop at the mouth of the small cavern, an exit to one of the many caves and tunnels that littered Kadara’s surface. This one had been pleasantly absent of the larger, nastier surprises that nested in the area; all the native fauna that could royally mess up anyone’s entire day. To a tired Ryder, it was just another silver lining. He climbed out, hearing the passenger's side door closing right after his. The flora sample he’d been sent out here to collect was somewhere in the area, and a short glance around is all it took to find it. He crouched down, digging it out, eyes drifting behind him and settling on his partner.
It was just Vetra and him on this one. Drack had come along initially, but the old fossil had left to do something right as they made another pass by the Kadara slum gates, leaving the company - and the Nomad - a little lighter. Ryder was thankful, even if he’d never admit it. These past few months had been tiring and he needed…
Vetra was lost in her omni-tool, likely supplying the Tempest with something from the endless list of components or necessities that kept the Tempest and its crew functional. Irritation flashed on her mandibles, and retroactively he felt a surge of appreciation for her. She matched, if not surpassed him in her dedication to the Initiative, dealing with living filth day in and out just to get him, and everyone else, whatever they needed. Appreciation, the word fell bitter on his tongue. He dug into the soil a little harder, pulling out the little plant with all its roots and securing it in the little science box he’d been given.
With that, he freed himself from Kadara’s clutches. It was only inevitable that another issue of great urgency would present itself, and he would be called upon to resolve it where a squad thrice his’ number had floundered. Three people keeping count of the dozen that lost their lives beforehand. Irritation and desperation mixed, and he never had anywhere to place either.
His feet carried him to the edge of the cliff where the cave had ended, a scenic spot overlooking the relatively flat plains. Water, no longer sulphurous and toxic, dotted the landscape, framed by the distant mountains and the setting sun. It was as though embers had ignited the sky, just catching the kindling set beyond the horizon, promising a larger fire had he simply had the patience to wait, simmering somewhere in the distance. Maybe Addison’s poetry was rubbing off on him…
The flatter ledge extended a little past the mouth of the cavern, a patch of mossy stone just wide enough for two or three people to settle down for a bit. It called to him, and like a man possessed Ryder dropped down on his ass, shuffling far enough so that he could rest his back on the odd, porous stone dotting much of the landscape.
“Ryder?” Vetra’s voice rang out not too far away, and soon enough he could see her look at him from the other side of the Nomad. He patted the ground next to him, hoping that she wouldn’t question what the Pathfinder was doing, sitting around like this.
A few moments spent looking, but not actually seeing the vista before him, and he felt Vetra sit down next to him.
“It’s a nice view.” He started, just to fill the silence.
“It is.”
She sounded confused, yet it was nothing if not professional, a tone that asked of the Pathfinder more than it did of Ryder. Why weren’t they leaving yet? What were they waiting for? Is there a reason he stuttered and lost composure like that whenever she entered the room?
If she had ever asked him any of it, he was certain at least one of those questions would’ve stopped his heart.
“Did you secure the sample?”
“Yeah, I got it. Tucked away near the Nomad.”
“Good, Suvi will want to get a look at it. Should we get moving?”
Ryder felt like swallowing his own tongue. “...Mind if we just sit here for a bit? It’ll be doing me a favour.”
She laughed, and it carried lightly in her voice, a sound he’d never tire from hearing. Still, he could hear the force behind it, the need to stay useful to him and the cause. “Don’t need a favour for that, Ryder. Damn if it hasn’t been a hectic few days, could use a nice spot like this.”
He felt her lean back against the stone. Still, she remained rigid, not letting herself go. Anything for the Pathfinder, and Ryder felt all the more like a stranger.
“What do you think about Kadara?” He asked, hoping to fill the silence. Plus, Vetra was a self-admitted smuggler at one point, and maybe a bit of him hoped that a place like this would let him learn just a little bit more about her.
“It’s full of desperate people willing to do anything to carve themselves something just a little bit better. Reminds me of the Nexus before you arrived, actually. Countless months of rationing and gutting anything non-essential just to give ourselves a little more time, people bargaining for necessities…makes it a good place to bargain.” She stared ahead, not noticing him looking at her through the corners of his eyes. He didn’t doubt for a moment that she’d spoken from experience.
“No comments on the actual planet, then?”
Vetra chuckled a little. “Well, it used to be a shithole. Then the pathfinder came around and fixed it, and now it’s not so bad. Nice cliffs, plenty of scenic spots, a thriving Initiative outpost at the centre of it all.” She trailed off, the small smile on her face fading. “...With that port back there though, it’s still just like all the other places Sid and I had to run to. I guess it’s a reminder that no matter where we go, it’ll always be like this. ” Her voice grew quieter, softened, and Ryder could feel that maybe this was something she hadn’t intended to let slip.
Indecision tore at him, as much as he wanted to keep pushing and uncover more about her than just this little snippet. Still, it was tempered by the cold waters of fear, the worry that he would push too far and risk Vetra closing herself off to him. Christ, Ryder, get a hold of yourself.
Before he could choose one or the other, Vetra’s voice interrupted him with a sharp sigh. “Ryder, we have to talk.”
He found himself unconsciously sitting a little straighter, possibilities about what exactly this could be cycling through his mind. One thought bugged him more than the rest, equal parts in how likely and troublesome it would be.
“Lexi and Cora happened to mention that it felt like you were struggling, and after asking around we all agreed that it was pretty obvious something’s wrong. You zone out when they’re talking to you, and sometimes you look like you’re on the verge of collapsing. Whatever it is, we need to start fixing it before it starts affecting you in the field.”
Discipline managed to mix itself with concern, and what carried in Vetra’s voice felt like the exact tone she carried for her sister. That odd warble lacing her speech. What did she call it– subharmonics? He loved it, and could feel himself getting lost in the melody of her just talking. It pained him to hear her like this though, worrying. He didn’t deserve it, even if it felt like a scolded child.
Mustering a soft chuckle, Ryder tried to put down some levity in the conversation. He didn’t want to chance it going somewhere it didn’t need to.
“It’s just a little fatigue. I’ll see if I can convince Tann to finally give me a day or two off, but knowing him it’ll be like pulling teeth. Until then, I promise I’ll try not to shoot any of you in the back or anything.”
Something about the way Vetra tilted her head, eyes digging into him, told him she wasn’t buying it.
“I remember Lexi running off to the Vortex a few days ago. She was miserable because of Peebee. Didn’t stop you from bothering her during shore leave, pestering her until she started talking.”
“She told you about that?” He could see where this was going, neither of them were stupid.
“She did. Talking to you and finding out that it was just Peebee being neurotic seemed to pull her right out of it. You’ve seen it work, Ryder, don’t be shy.”
“Uh..well, you know how the team is. Can’t really talk to them about everything. Plus, I mean, I’ve got an image to maintain, can’t have you all thinking I’m growing soft.” He chuckled, though judging from how Vetra’s face tightened, she still wasn’t buying it.
“What about Cora and Liam? They’ve been with you from the Hyperion, I can’t imagine they wouldn’t hear you out.”
Scott huffed, a little more sharply than he intended, not quite noticing the grin on his face turn sardonic. “Cora’s still stuck on my father choosing me as the next pathfinder. God forbid her ‘asari huntress instincts’” – he put the title in air quotes – “ever tell her to let go. If I find myself talking to her, I can call it now that she’ll end up twisting it around to be another reason she should’ve been father’s first choice.”
“And Liam?” He couldn’t identify Vetra’s tone.
“Liam’s a child. There’s a reason I haven’t brought him anywhere for a while, and that’s without the clusterfuck of an mission that rescue was. The stunt he pulled with Verand? It’s not happening again, not on my damn watch, especially when he doesn’t have the spine to admit that he was wrong, or the capacity to realise that we’re not here to fuck about and make mistakes like that.”
Hearing the words come out of his mouth, he realised they sounded a lot better in his head. The constant whine in Liam’s voice was one of the reasons Ryder couldn’t stand him so much, and here he was emulating it to a tee. Shame and indignation nipped at him, but Scott just couldn’t find it in himself to stop.
“I can only listen to him shill the same idealistic nonsense for so long. As a matter of fact, I reckon the only reason he got the spot in crisis response was because someone in there liked the sound of a young kid spouting quotes from a coming-of-age teens movie. So no–”
The sound of a snort grinded his tirade to a halt. Vetra was looking at him with the kind of humoured expression that sent shivers up his spine. The way her eyes lingered, her mandibles splaying a little. He understood what it meant to be weak in the knees. He also understood reading into something far too much, her actions warped by what he wanted them to be.
“I didn’t know you felt so strongly about our valued team members, Ryder.” Her body twisted a little turning to face him as though he was something to bemuse her while she lounged on the couch, arms crossed. A brief bit of panic overtook him, but before he could backpedal Vetra pulled him along. “And what about Peebee?”
Despite his choice opinions on the asari archaeologist, Ryder recognised before him the opportunity to salvage the situation, to gather his appearance as the Captain before he tarnished it further. But, looking at Vetra, he realised that there was a very distinct possibility she wanted to hear the exact opposite- the truth, as entertaining as she hoped it to be. Trepidation and gratitude mixed into something that caused his stomach to do flips, yet he pushed on.
“I asked Kallo the same thing, and he said that ‘she should read a safety manual’ or something of the sort. And honestly? I wholeheartedly agree.” Evoking his own frustrations with Peebee was effortless. “She’s impulsive, reckless, oblivious to her surroundings and utterly incapable of basic communication. I’ve had her write mission reports ever since that stunt with the remnant core, because that’s the only way I can think of to drill into her the need to let me know what we’re going to do. I would have thought it common sense given I’m the fucking pathfinder and captain of the ship but hey, what do I know.”
“Yeah, that was…something. We’re damn lucky we got out alive.” Her comment only bolstered his want to carry on.
“Precisely. It never should have been luck, there were a dozen things we could have done to prepare. And had it been anyone but Peebee that orchestrated that mission, we would have. Maybe paying off the new escape pod will teach her something about consequences, but until she matures, she’s the last person I’m going to with my problems.”
“Alright, Drack next.”
“‘...Next ’?”
She raised her hands up in mock surrender. “Hey, I would've never thought it would be so fun to hear you complain about everyone, and honestly now I’m just curious.” She smirked. “So come on Ryder, loosen up a little. Drack next, for me.”
“What’s there to even say about him? An old fossil like that won’t care about what ‘the kid’s got going on. I mean, I appreciate the old man, but we both know he would want that appreciation shown by leaving him alone in the kitchen.”
Neither could stop the light chuckles escaping them, and for a brief moment, sitting here like this with her, Ryder could almost forget how this conversation started, and where he was trying to steer it away from.
“Alright, that’s fair. He never was very good with words. Reminds me of that time he came down, complaining about Kesh bothering him. Said she worries too much, and that he wasn’t that fragile.”
“That does sound like him.”
“Yeah…yeah it does.”
It was only because of how long Ryder had spent watching her that he could recognise the subtle signs of Vetra steeling herself, watching him like a deal about to go wrong. Clearly, whatever attempt he’d made to push this whole thing away hadn’t been enough.
“It sounds like you, too. Ryder…is there nobody on the ship that you can speak to? We’ve had our fun, and trust me, with those three I’ll be the first to back you,” It never escaped Ryder how Liam spoke to Vetra in the quieter moments on the Nomad, even if he couldn’t quite bring himself to interject, “but you can’t just keep running like this.”
“I’m not running, Vetra. There’s just…more important things than me going on, things I need to focus on. After that, who knows.”
“Ryder…” He could hear her tense up.
The pressure that had built up all this time finally became too much, and Ryder directed it at the first person in front of him.
“What? What do you want from me? You want me to start whining to Gil, to Kallo or Suvi? Vetra, these people know the Pathfinder, they know the man working out there to colonise worlds, the man who took it all in stride. I need to be someone people will follow, someone people can trust because they know that no matter what, I’ll be out there, fixing problems they didn’t dare to imagine gone! When I come back limping, I see people falter, I see people start to question if everything will be alright, people wondering if they’d come out into the world too early and if right now, right this moment, is when they’ll have to watch the only pathfinder doing anything die in front of them.” He didn’t mean to snap at her like this. His own voice wasn’t heeding his pleas to stop.
“I know that everyone on that ship sees the same god damned person. I know Jaal sees me like this, even though he can’t ever shut up about how easy I am to read and how clever the angara are emotionally compared to us, even if he tries to prod at me every fucking time we talk. Because the truth of the matter is that me moving forward, and dragging everybody with me, is the only damned way anything’s going to get done. And if I stop even for a moment, even if I just sit down and take a breath–” Ryder heard SAM’s voice in his head, alerting him of his heightened heart rate. He didn’t care. “I know that people will start wondering and asking questions, doubting if I’m really the person that will get them to the finish line. Nobody knows me, and if I come to them asking about these ordinary things, these soft things, asking if they think I’m cut out for this, the illusion will fail.”
The harsh silence that followed his tirade sat heavy in the air, and Ryder began to wonder if the ringing in his ears was just from how long ago he’d taken a breath, or if that was the regret bouncing around in his head. Vetra was more unreadable than ever, but her eyes had left his face long ago, staring through the mountains in front of them more than she was looking at them. No small amount of him began to believe that this one choice he’d made, the one time he decided to truly let loose and tell someone what he really thought, was what fully pushed Vetra away from him. It certainly hadn’t brought her any closer, even if sitting like this was the closest they’d ever been physically.
Still, he couldn’t let it just end like this, and the sigh that flowed through his lungs might as well have carried out all the heat in his voice. He couldn’t muster himself to keep speaking to her like that.
“...It’s just…tiring. I wish I could do it, Vetra, I really do. If I go to Lexi and if all of this shows up on those psych-evaluations she’s doing, there’s a very real chance that’s ending up in someone’s hands. Be that Tann’s, Addison’s, or someone else’s; it doesn’t matter. They’ll see that the guy they sent out to make all the difficult decisions can’t cope with what’s going on inside his own head, and maybe they’ll start thinking ‘Hey, this guy might not be the best choice we have after all’. That’s what I’m worried about.”
“...What about me?” She asked, still just as unreadable.
“I’m not going to talk to you about you like you’re not here.”
“Okay, then pretend I’m really not here. I’m just some random turian you found and now you’re telling her everything you thought you couldn’t tell anyone. Humour that turian.”
“Are we really doing this?”
“Yes Ryder, we are really doing this. I can sit here all day, you’re not the first stubborn brat I’ve had to deal with.”
“Okay…” He fought not to look as though he was sulking. There was a definitive anger somewhere beneath Vetra’s words, and if that hadn’t been apparent to him, the not so subtle amount of venom in that little insult certainly had been.
“...I think that Vetra is by far the most capable member of my team, and I worry that if I go to her, she will see it as a problem I want her to solve, even if she isn’t equipped to do so. I don’t want her to feel as though I am another thing she has to keep an eye on, because I recognise the already insurmountable amount of effort she puts into making sure everybody around her has everything they need, especially when she has family she needs to worry about in what is a very precarious situation. I also don’t want it to look like I’m using my authority as the Captain-”
“You really think that?” She cut me off, harshly. “That you talking to me is something I can’t handle? Ryder I have to make sure my sister doesn’t run off into danger every single day. I have to handle an incompetent crew making repairs and retrofits to the only damn ship that can get us anywhere. There’s a dozen people right now that are waiting for me to solve their problems, and it’s been like this since I woke up on the Nexus. There isn’t a damned thing you could tell me that would be more difficult than anything I’m doing right now.”
“Yeah, see, you’re looking at it like a problem to solve! I don’t want this to be another thing on your plate, Vetra. I just want to talk to somebody about anything that isn’t the mission.”
“Then do it, Ryder! You’re fucking drowning, you know that? Maybe you don’t see the bags under your eyes or maybe you’re just ignoring the fact that your hands shake every morning like you’re on oblivion withdrawals. One of these days we’ll have to watch you finally go under, knowing that it clearly didn’t matter how many times we asked for you to finally open up, simply because your martyr complex prevented you from not being the hero!”
…
Ryder didn’t know what to say. It wasn’t as though he was trying to be the ‘hero’, but it’d been made pretty clear to him by many, many people that failure just wasn’t an option. So much of what he’d already told her today had been brewing in his head for days, sometimes weeks. There wasn’t any catharsis in letting it out, be it because he was worried that through all of this he had somehow managed to wound her, or simply because the one thought bouncing around his head the most still lay unresolved. Either way, maybe this was something of a wake-up call, a sign that letting everyone meet Scott Ryder was something long overdue.
“...please, Ryder.”
And maybe…maybe Vetra Nyx was the first person he’d introduce himself to.
“...Alright. There’s something that’s been eating away at me for a while, almost ever since I first stepped into the Tempest. It made everything else worse, simply because it was just another problem I couldn’t do anything about, stacked on top of all the other shit thrown on my lap.”
He looked at Vetra, just to see if she was paying attention. She was. It felt as though he was the only thing she was seeing, and that gave him the confidence he needed to push forward.
“There’s this turian I know.” He couldn’t bear to keep eye contact, and so looked away in fear of quitting on himself. “She’s tall, assertive and intense, and she knows how to get what she wants from people. She’s the only person I feel I can rely on to watch my back, and there’s nobody else I can hold a conversation with as easily as I can with her. The thing is, I’ve been thinking about her, and for the life of me I just can’t figure out where we stand. I don’t know if she doesn’t know that she’s the only person I flirt with, or if she just doesn’t care, and that determined strength she carries around– even if it’s one of the things I like about her – I can’t read her, can’t figure her out because of it.”
He took a deep breath, steeling his nerves to keep going.
“And, more than anything, I don’t want anything I say to get in the way of her life or family. Her little sister, this girl that just can’t keep away from trouble, well she’s already a handful.” He heard a quiet snort, but he didn’t dare imagine it to be anything other than the wind or the grinding rocks as Vetra shifted around. “And I help out however I can, but a part of me worries that it just makes me look like I’m doing this just to reach an end goal, as though I don’t actually care– even if I do. The truth is I’d do just about anything for either of them, and the thought that she doesn’t know that, it kills me. I can’t stop thinking that all of this is for naught, and that she and I will…y’know, stay distant.”
Just like that, his bravado ran out, and he couldn’t push himself to do anything more than to stare straight ahead, his hands tucked between his legs. It wasn’t too long before he heard the sound of someone standing up, and in that moment all of his fears came true. It was his fault for daring to hope for anything else, and now he was going to face the consequences. Still, he would preserve his, and more importantly her dignity; he’d try to take it all in stride.
“Well…” her voice rang out above him, and he looked up to see an outstretched hand. “This turian you know hasn’t found the time to properly talk to you about it, and maybe you should’ve considered she’s just as nervous. You are the pathfinder, after all, a relationship can’t be good for you, especially when you’re stuck in your little head.”
He grabbed her hand, mustering a smile that didn’t feel quite right as she pulled him up.
“But maybe if you come down to the engineering room once in a while and talk to her about it, you’ll find out that she has started to wonder what all this flirting is about. Just a guess, Ryder.”
And just like that, she turned around, bent down to grab the sample he’d long forgotten about– lingering like that a little longer than he thought was strictly necessary, or maybe that was just his imagination again, and got into the Nomad.
Uncertainty, relief and adrenaline mixed in his veins, and his feet felt like they’d float out from under him as he made his way to join her. Maybe Scott Ryder, not just Pathfinder Ryder, would go visit Vetra Nyx in engineering more often.