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WHO: Kaidan & Jaime
WHERE: Misc Training Area
WHEN: 3rd week of November
WHAT: Jaime has requested that the cool space marine help him with his self-defense in case the power nullifying collars rear their ugly heads again... but he feels too guilty about asking for help without telling Kaidan what it's for. This is why you can never keep your secret identity, Jaime...!
WARNINGS: PROBABLY NOTHING they're pretty wholesome.

When Jaime had asked Kaidan for self-defense lessons, he knew that he was asking Kaidan to take time out of his busy schedule to help him, and as such, in their first few lessons, he had remained attentive and focused, scarcely uttering a word of complaint no matter how tedious the task. He hadn't been nearly as good a student to Peacemaker, but that had been before he knew how easily his powers could be kept in check. He was no slouch when it came to sparring - he had been going through training back home, after all - but he had been woefully lacking in the basics.

He wasn't sure if Kaidan noticed that he knew an alarming amount of dirty street fighting or not, but it wasn't anything he cared to conceal. Peacemaker's methods of fighting were simple and straight to the point, focusing on facing down opponents that were bigger and stronger than you, but that shouldn't mean too much if you knew the right way to fight. Anyone who prized the art of the fair fight would be frankly shocked at the lessons that Jaime had already learned, but then, anyone who prized the art of the fair fight likely hadn't been in any real fights to begin with.

Regardless of what Kaidan was teaching him, Jaime did his level best to soak it up like a sponge. There was only one problem: he hadn't been truly honest about what he had wanted it for. His request had been an innocuous one, and there was no denying that his intentions were good, but the more he became aware of the fact that Kaidan probably had better things to do, the guiltier he felt for not telling the truth. Who knew if Kaidan would approve of what he was doing out there? If he knew, would he still even continue to teach him?

With these questions weighing on him, his demeanor during this little training session had shifted. He was distracted and fidgety, his feet dragging almost as much as his response time was. Eventually, he took a step back and shook his head, motioning for a time-out. He wished that he at least knew what Kaidan's perspective on the vigilante game was, but he knew that deceiving him for any longer just wasn't the right thing to do.

He had made up his mind.

"Um... Kaidan?"

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Honestly, Kaidan noticed a lot more than what he let on. The fact that Jaime came to him for self-defense lessons was one point that stated very clearly that there was something up. It wasn't enough of one, when considering that happened recently, and the fact that all-too-many imports had nearly been kidnapped said very clearly that they had to be careful, for certain. That he could understand, and supported very clearly. He wanted to help him, but Jaime was also a teenager, and a teenager normally wouldn't put up with -- wordlessly -- the number of stretches, rolls, crunches, and miles that he'd expect to be jogged to just warm up for self-defense.

Mind, Kaidan was nowhere near an expert. Every person in the Marines had a basic, rudimentary understanding of how to fight. Hell, he'd gone through quite a bit of it at brain camp too, but it was all about how to make it work with his biotics, and had he trusted Thane -- or approved of his career choices -- he may have even suggested Jaime go talk to an expert. Get some real self-defense training, but for the moment, he didn't, so he'd taken it on himself.

Which hadn't been going too bad, he had a foundation, such as it was, although he didn't approve of the dirty street fighting techniques. At least not as a...foundation. Sometimes, of course, you couldn't fight fair, but sometimes, when the signs came out, there was a faint thread of disapproval there, before he'd try and (gently) correct him, show him a quicker, more efficient way. It helped, of course, that humans had learned quite a bit from being out in space. New ways of fighting, while not natural, sometimes came up.

But when Jaime timed out, he stopped, and relaxed, letting the pads he'd been holding fall to his sides, while he tipped his head.

This didn't sound like it was a normal question. "What's up?" he paused, to run a hand through his hair. Was this too much for him? Maybe he was going a little hard on him. "Am I going to hard? I can...slow down if you want."

"What? No, no, this is nothing," Jaime said, which wasn't necessarily true - he was certainly winded every time they got down to it - but Kaidan was a far gentler teacher than Robin or Peacemaker. Peacemaker's methods were to show him exactly how much everything hurt, and Jaime couldn't help but feel that anyone that didn't make their student puke on purpose was a step up, and a step gentler. He liked Peacemaker a good deal, and if he ever arrived in this place, he'd pick up his training where he left off...

But Kaidan's way of doing things was certainly a lot less frightening. It would be a pity if telling him made these lessons stop, but Jaime could always go to some of the other heroes for lessons - when it came down to it, half of the reason he had asked Kaidan was that he simply felt more comfortable around him, more comfortable being himself than the Blue Beetle.

"It's just that I haven't really been honest about why I asked you to help me out," Jaime said, huffing a sigh and running one hand through his hair. "And I know that's not right."

"Ah," he said, simply, as if that said it all. Well, he knew that things weren't normal with Jaime, too much evidence stacked up that said he was more than a normal teenager, but enough lacking that he wasn't going to point it out. It wasn't his business, after all, it was Jaime's, right? Kaidan wanted to respect the guy's privacy, especially considering how he was a good kid with his head on straight most of the time anyway.

He pulled the pads off, and set them down, before he crossed his legs and sat, and gestured for Jaime to do the same. Even in workout attire -- a tank top and some loose fatigues he'd gotten from Heropa's military base -- he moved like he was still expecting to have something heavier on, taking his time. He frowned, but didn't look at Jaime like he was disappointed -- yet. After the past few weeks, he could go with not being disappointed for once.

"So, what's the real reason?" he asked, a little softer. "Does it have to do with..." he gestured, indicating the thing that Jaime'd alluded to, but never really discussed.

"I wasn't lying about the Hornets worrying me," Jaime said earnestly, sitting down as Kaidan had bidden him to, arms looped around his knees. If Kaidan ended up disapproving of what he did, it wasn't as if Jaime was going to stop, or even change - he just preferred not to burn his bridges. Superheroes were always a given where he was from, and it was odd in no uncertain way to meet people who thought that they were a bad idea, that by going out there and helping everyone they could, they were just playing into the government's hands.

"This has to stay a secret, okay? It's important." He didn't think Kaidan would give him away, not truly, but it had to be said. Between Brenda's presence and people like the Manipulator prowling about, he had to make sure to cross his Ts and dot his Is. "You know how I told you that there's a lot of people from my world who were superheroes before they ever even came here?"

The more Jaime talked, the more Kaidan's eyebrows did that thing where they drew down in concern, his mouth hardened into a line, but he didn't say anything for a long time. He shifted in his sitting position, looking him over, like he was seeing Jaime for the first time. Or rather, trying to put things together. There was a reason he was addressing this, wasn't there? Jaime had to be saying this for a reason, right? He sighed, and nodded.

"Yeah, I remember," he admitted, but his voice sounded like it was threaded more with concern now. He couldn't help it, being worried about him. There was something to be said for danger, and superheroes, but it was the kind of life that Kaidan didn't really understand much about, other than it was what they were expected to do. "I promise, that it'll stay secret. Is it someone close to you?" he had the sinking feeling that it wasn't.

The more Kaidan's expression changed, the worse Jaime felt for just springing this on him. Kaidan worried about as much as any responsible adult his age would worry about a teenager, Jaime knew, but as far as he was concerned, he didn't have to. Jaime could take care of himself out in the field and had been for a good year or so. All this training was was... a precaution. He didn't intend on getting caught by surprise again.

"No. No, it's me. You, um, might have heard of the Blue Beetle?" Jaime glanced down at his hands, fidgeting a little like he had been caught in a lie instead of confessing the truth. He knew that the Blue Beetle was in the news, but that had been some time ago.

It took him a few minutes, of course. It wasn't like he actually followed vigilante antics all that much, too concerned with scouring news articles and information for every scrap he could find, like he'd been trying to find a hidden truth about who was behind everything, like he could figure out how this all worked together, if he just looked enough.

"Blue Beetle?" he asked, after a long moment of looking very blank, like he was trying to remember where he'd heard it before. He was coming up blank. "I think I've heard it...somewhere?" He rubbed the back of his head. "So you're..." he didn't really have a good idea of what that entailed, beyond some old serial vids they used to play. "Run around in spandex and rescue people from burning buildings?"

People always mentioned the spandex, but to be fair, a whole lot of them ran around in skintight outfits. They could get away with it, Jaime had always figured. If they weren't built like Wonder Woman, they were built like Superman - which was to say, they were built like brick shithouses.

Jaime couldn't quite get away with that, and more than that, he didn't want to. He always thought that they looked awfully uncomfortable even if that was a horribly hypocritical thing to think, all things considered.

"Well, no to the spandex - I wear armour. I've been through a few burning buildings, but mostly, we go where we're needed."

No matter where that may be.

"Oh," he said simply. It was...weird, hearing this kind of thing. He thought Jaime was a totally sensible kid, and going around like a vigilante didn't seem like a sensible thing. It was one of the things he and Garrus had always...disagreed on. Garrus felt there was a place for Vigilantes, but despite Kaidan's Spectre status -- outside of the law if need be -- he was still very firmly the sort to believe in it wholeheartedly.

Probably one of the reasons why he was a Spectre. Which sounded a lot better than the fact that Cerberus had probably arranged for it, but Kaidan didn't want to go down that road, that train of thought was...uncomfortable, and not something to worry about right now. Not with Jaime not only confessing something that was obviously very big to him, but something that he was expecting more than silence and thoughts he wasn't voicing.

Jaime always waited for Kaidan. He liked that. It wasn't that he was slow, but sometimes, decisions had to be made from the head, and Kaidan excelled at that.

"So, you wear armor. I'm sorry, I guess I need to pay more attention to vigilante things from now on, don't I?" of course he would. Because he would worry. "Are you safe? When you're doing it?" he had a feeling he wasn't, but this wasn't the sort of thing he could be safe doing.

As patient as Jaime usually was, Kaidan's silence as he ruminated on what he had been told was killing him. He had grown used to the blase acceptance of everyone who had found out here, or at least, the disbelief and confusion that had radiated off of his parents when he had attempted to explain the truth of the situation.

This slow, careful approach was nervewracking and wholly unfamiliar. From Kaidan's quiet, deliberative words alone, he had no idea what Kaidan truly thought about it.

"You don't really have to pay more attention than before. If something big happens, you'll know it," he pointed out, tone eminently reasonable. Most of the time, nothing out of the ordinary happened, just a blurb in the paper here or there about one of the local imPort heroes helping out during a local crisis.

"You don't have to worry about me being safe. So long as I have my powers, I'm, ah..." He paused, and when he spoke, it wasn't with any of the bravado most would attribute to his age. On the contrary, instead of bragging, he merely sounded cautious, almost a little reluctant. "I'm really strong."

It wasn't something to be proud of. It just was.

"Being really strong doesn't keep you from getting hurt," he pointed out, but it didn't have any of the bite that would normally come with that kind of statement, just a low-level of concern. He looked at Jaime for a few long moments, still trying to puzzle out how he felt about the whole thing. How was he supposed to react to this kind of thing? It was normal where Jaime came from, sure, but other than codenames during operations, people didn't really take on names like this -- unless they were Garrus Vakarian, but he was a special case.

"I don't really...know much about these superhero things," he admitted, before he rubbed a hand at the back of his neck. He wondered, for a moment, if maybe it didn't matter what he thought about it. Jaime was pouring this out on him, and it seemed like he was looking for something from Kaidan. Maybe this was just as much for Jaime as it was for Kaidan.

"But, if you're sure you're safe... I mean, I know I can't stop you, but I'll probably worry a little bit more," his lips twitched with a shot of amusement. And here he'd been thinking Jaime had a girlfriend or something. Seems that was the stupidest assumption of all time, now. "You know, if you need help with anything, I'm here, right?"

Hell, he didn't really know if he approved or disapproved, but that wasn't his business. He did, however, like Jaime, and that meant he'd trust his judgement if he thought he could do something.

"Most people here - most imPorts here don't. I've talked to a lot of people who're from worlds where it's just stuff they saw in movies, or in comic books. Where I'm from, being a superhero isn't exactly normal, but superheroes sure as heck are."

It was hard for people to wrap their heads around, sometimes. For Jaime, it was hard to wrap his head around a place without heroes, and from what he had heard, things might be a little better in some of these worlds with heroes hanging around. Ellie's world could have certainly used the Green Lantern Corps to come flying to their rescue before life in her galaxy had been exterminated, and no matter how brutal Titans were, would they really stand a chance against Superman?

People made a big deal about the costumes, but the costumes were the least important bit. It was just part and parcel of being a superhero, of being a symbol more than you got to be a person. That was a big responsibility for anyone, let alone someone his age, but people his age and younger had been doing it for as long as he could remember.

It was a hard thing to vocalize to anyone who didn't grow up with it. "Thanks, Kaidan. If you're still okay with training me, I'd like that. It's just - it wouldn't be right for me to get you to help me out with this without you knowing what I was using it for, and I'm sorry for trying. When I've got the suit on, I'm solid, but the Hornets have power nulls. If that's the tech they've got, I need to be better. That's all."

He sure didn't last long before spilling his guts, he thought to himself. He just didn't have a life of duplicity in him. Using people he liked and respected was too high a cost, even if it did help save his skin in the future.

It took him a few, still weighing it. He understood, at least in part, about why people did what they did. Hell, they'd asked for a codename, when he'd first showed up, didn't they? He suspected that, had he chosen to take to the streets like some vigilante, he'd be called by the name he'd provided, somehow. He'd spat off the title without thinking, but he was starting to wonder if maybe there was more of it than that, to some people.

And while he was disappointed in the lie, he understood, in some small way, that sometimes you couldn't tell the truth. As much as it was ideal, as much as Kaidan prided honesty and integrity above all else, he was also well aware that sometimes you simply couldn't. He was a Spectre, and special ops like that often had to tell lies to get where they were going. He understood the reality.

Hated the reality, too, but he understood it. It didn't make it easier, but he knew that while he and Jaime were close, they weren't...great friends. It wasn't like he was Jaime's confidant, but... well, if he trusted him this much, he couldn't just mess that up, could he?

"I'll keep training you, I, ah. Even though you're strong, you need your fundamentals, even so. No matter whether you have powers or not."

"Thanks. I appreciate it."

If Kaidan had said no, Jaime would have gone to someone else - and, quite possibly, to someone who didn't know his secret, someone he never intended to tell. As much as he wanted to be truthful with the people around him, he had to establish some modicum of trust before spilling his secrets.

He was a little surprised that Kaidan wasn't prying any more than he was, but one thing he had learned about this place is that everyone respected each other's privacy. Their histories, powers, worlds - that was all each person's business. If you wound up prying into everyone's lives - which wasn't dissimilar to what Jaime himself did - you'd end up with a head full of information you didn't know what to do with.

This place was a blank slate, for better or for worse.

"I figured if anyone understood that, you would. You know, with the whole biotic thing."

It wasn't that he wasn't curious, he was. He wanted to know everything, why'd he decide to start doing this, did he get the powers with the porter, did he get them from before? Who just up and decided that this was what they wanted? Wasn't it hard, to balance school and work and this? He suspected that there was no money involved, from the get go. There was no payment.

You couldn't make a living like that. Kaidan believed in doing the right thing too, but with as many nights as Jaime had been out when they were living together, he had a sneaking suspicion that this was more than the average volunteer. He shook his head, and started to hoist himself up to his knees.

"This just means I want to see what you can really do," he pointed out. "No more going easy."

It wasn't that Kaidan didn't want to know, he did. He was also a Spectre, and a bit more practiced at getting what he wanted out of nuance more than out of outright asking. He had a feeling, with as much as Jaime was skittish about this, that asking all the questions -- being as thorough as Kaidan Alenko liked to be -- was going to be nerve wracking, and also a little scary.

"You know, I taught spec ops back home, right?"

"You never told me that you actually taught anyone," Jaime said, taking his cue from Kaidan and rising to his feet. That was a plus in his book, he figured. He could certainly do worse than learn from someone who actually had experience - no matter how little - in teaching people who, knowing military, were probably not that much older than him.

And when it came to Kaidan going a little harder on him, well... that wasn't going to be much fun in the moment - unlike many of his fellow heroes, he didn't find training to be all that enjoyable - he knew that he'd be better off in the long-run. He hadn't asked Kaidan for help just to slack off, after all. He wanted to be prepared, and a part of being prepared, a part of being a superhero, was to have to do a whole lot of prepwork that just wasn't all that fun.

"You have seen what I can do, though. Out of the suit, I mean. I don't actually have my powers unless I'm all geared up." Knowing that his statement could be easily misconstrued as him not having any powers whatsoever, Jaime tapped one finger against the back of one shoulder, a little tellingly. "It's not sitting around at home, or anything. It's inside me."

"Huh," he said simply, squinting at him for a moment, a little curiously. He supposed he should have guessed that, with a name like Blue Beetle, and the fact that he wore armor, that he would have some kind of way to suit up fast, right? Wearing armor was not a fast thing to do. God knew how many times he'd had to run practice drills to get into his armor as fast as possible, and how many times he "got people killed" in the scenario, just because he hadn't done it fast enough. Hardsuits were tough to get into, and he suspected that didn't change if you were in anything less technologically advanced.

And he had no idea what Jaime's was like. "That sounds a little...creepy." Honestly, it did, even though he knew that most powers came from "within", the and even his biotics were due to the implants they'd shoved into his brain as a child -- something he often tried to not think about. He could see it, but something about the way Jaime said it still creeped him out.

"Anyway, I taught special biotics operations for a while, ah..." he rubbed the back of his neck. "I haven't really talked about it much because they're missing, back home. Things went bad pretty fast." That's what they were supposed to do, but it still... well, he was worried. Kaidan excelled at some things a bit too well, and worrying was one of them.

Jaime didn't bother addressing Kaidan's assertion of his power being creepy aside from a quiet, congenial hum of assent. Having the Scarab inside of him was no longer creepy to him, nor was it at all out of the ordinary, but he wasn't so used to it that he didn't realize how creepy it was to other people. As powers went, it was unsettling at the best of times.

Nobody who had found out about it ever simply blithely accepted it without considering the implications, and that was probably the way it ought to stay. Jaime was more concerned with what Kaidan was telling him about his old team, a rare glimpse into Kaidan's admittedly enigmatic life before they had been whisked away from their own universes and into this one.

"Oh - I'm sorry," he said, and while it was a polite platitude, he did sound sorry. "What happened?"

Kaidan hadn't talked about it much, and considering now, that he'd been away long enough, it didn't feel like he was eating, breathing, and sleeping the war. Even on his hospital bed, he'd been focused on the mission, on taking care of Earth in whatever way he could, and then it was constant PT, trying to work through his injuries so he could get back to the field -- get back to the place he was needed. It seemed, or it had started to seem, like that place was the Normandy.

That did nothing for his students though. It really didn't.

"Earth was attacked --" he paused, and shook his head. "Well, not just Earth, but they hit us hard first, but the entire galaxy got hit. We're under attack. Ah, lines of communication, things like that go down pretty quickly, and they're really good at vanishing. Spec ops usually are." It just didn't help him now, when he was trying to find them, figure out who was still around, so he could get them talking with the Alliance.

"I remember one of you telling me a little about the galaxy being under attack, but it sounded like it was over and done with already."

They never talked much, and Jaime could see why. The threats Kaidan and Shepard faced down went beyond threats encompassing a city, country, or even the world; whatever they faced down had the potential to hurt the entire galaxy. That was a hard one to wrap his head around, space travel or no.

There being more than one threat to the galaxy just seemed like overkill. Green Lanterns would, in all likelihood, disagree with him. "I guess it's just a matter of finding them, huh...?"

Finding one group of people when everyone was capable of interstellar travel was a tall order, perhaps, but not impossible - just very, very close to impossible.

It was weird for Kaidan, to remember that there were other people around to tell the story about the Reapers, honestly. He was the only one who was from so far that he'd had to see one up close, and watch Earth burn beneath them. Just because he was the one who was the furthest out didn't mean everyone else didn't know what was coming. They all knew what was coming, didn't they? It was probably fair that someone else might have talked about it. Kaidan was...probably not going to that much.

He had enough problems, thinking about the way Earth looked when they'd watched it from behind. The burning, the flames, everything was still finely burned into his mind just as much as everything else.

"It's a little bit of that," he admitted, and shook his head. "On a good day, it would be hard. Without the Reapers. With them? Galactic communication is down, it's getting harder to coordinate, and who knows how many sites have gone black because of the comms, and how many are because there's nobody left."

God, he hated thinking about that.

"Right."

Jaime was optimistic, but he wasn't stupid. In the face of an intergalactic threat where you couldn't even hide from planet to planet, the chances of there being survivors probably weren't great. No matter how narrow the chances were, however, there was one thing everyone needed, and that was closure. How could Kaidan rest without knowing for sure?

He glanced down at the ground, rolling that thought around in his head, suddenly glad that he only got Ported in after his business was all said and done. "I hope you can find them. Being stuck here must be driving you crazy."

Kaidan couldn't help it, because sometimes, if you didn't laugh, you cried. He shook his head gently, while he let that bitter sound escape his throat, nearly breathless with how right it was. He shook his head, to let Jaime know it wasn't him Kaidan was laughing at. "That's just the tip of the iceberg, honestly. I just..."

Well, between the Cerberus invasion of the Citadel, and his dad missing, and his recent return to active duty... It was hard to know where to start these days, in what made Kaidan sleepless at night, and anxious during the day.

"I don't think there's ever been a war like the one I'm in the middle of, honestly. Who knows how it'll turn out? Being here might be my last chance to live a normal life and I don't even know it.". Maybe that was the worst part.

Jaime was quiet for a moment, considering that even Kaidan had something awful to return to. It was a trend around here, he was beginning to realize; if his friends weren't outright dead, they were going home to potential apocalypses, zombies, political unrest and god knows what else. He felt that his own world was peaceful enough, but he knew how they were averting disaster at every turn. It was enough to make him wonder if the default state of the world was a bleak one, that his peaceful life was the exception rather than the rule.

Poor Kaidan, he thought. He deserved better than what he had gotten. They all did. There was no reason for such uncommonly good people to go through all this.

"Well... I hope it's not. No matter how big it gets, you can fight against it." He gave Kaidan an apologetic smile. "Well, you don't need me to tell you that - that's what you guys are already doing."

"It's nice to hear, though, but anyway, it's not going to change it here, is it?" that was the only thing that Kaidan could really focus on. The fact that he was facing almost certain death and destruction was the kind of thing he couldn't really focus on, or else he'd probably start to think life was a little more dire than it seemed. He didn't want to live like that, honestly. He wanted to make the most of what he had here.

He slid down into a position, like he was ready for Jaime to come at him again.

"Why don't we hit some more drills, anyway? I'm pretty sure my galaxy will be waiting there for me no matter if we talk about it or not."

It probably wasn't healthy, he knew it wasn't healthy not to talk about it, but... right now, a distraction sounded pretty nice, and a hell of a lot better than just... dwelling, and moping. Maybe he should take that psychiatrist's offer for help, sometime. So he didn't unload on kids like Jaime out of nowhere.

Edited 2014-11-23 20:25 (UTC)

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