1. The Methods of a Monster
Shepard woke, a scream trying to claw its way out of her throat. Wires and flesh, blood, teeth and shearing metal flashed behind her eyelids. The Protheans haunted her, tormented ghosts crying out for a savior, fifty-thousand years too late to help. She could still hear the whine of the saws, the agonized screaming ...
She forcefully pushed it aside and sat up in bed, activating the clock's holo-display: 0300 aboard the Normandy. She rubbed at the corner of her eye, just above the scar on her cheek. Another early morning.
Shepard pushed herself to her feet in one smooth motion and headed to the mess.
This late, the deck was empty save for the sleeping pods nearby. There was no fear of waking the crew, but Shepard was loathe to break the peaceful quietude. The gentle thrumming of the engines soothed her, the heartbeat of the ship like a mother's comforting hum.
She activated the replicator in the makeshift kitchen, chartreuse green eyes blinking owlishly as the haptic interface sprung online. Once adjusted, she made some coffee for one. While it brewed, she went back to her quarters to snag a datapad from on her workstation. She activating the screen and resumed reading where she had left off.
She frowned. Saren's past reports to the Council weren't exactly soothing reading. Then again, she spent a good part of her days chasing the bastard. What difference does a little more contemplation make?
She tucked the datapad under her arm and walked back to the console to get her coffee.
Shepard poured herself a cup, took a swallow and suppressed a grimace. Yuck. Better tell Kaidan to keep trying. She smiled to herself. The Lieutenant was always tinkering with the replicator in his moments off, handsome face scowling in concentration at the uncooperative machine. It was a wonder all that staring at wires and haptic displays didn't set off a migraine.
Of course, as biotics, they had to eat almost twice as much as other soldiers. So, Kaidan said, brown eyes laughing, why shouldn't it taste twice as good? She shared the sentiment, though he still had a long way to go before success.
She made her way to the table in the mess and sat down. She could have, and maybe should have, returned to her quarters.
Shepard looked down at herself, wryly. It probably wasn't proper for the commanding officer to walk around the ship in her sleepwear. But honestly, her quarters were the last place she wanted to be right now.
Snatches of the Prothean vision sprung back into her mind. Shepard vigorously shook her head, fighting to keep the screams at bay.
She took a sip of her coffee, trying to focus on the datapad.
I wonder if Saren ever dreams of them. Her brows knotted at the thought. He'd seen the same things she had, the beacon and the Cipher. The death throes of an entire race weren't exactly easy to ignore. He had to know he was helping their executioners. So why ...?
She heard a soft sound. Her head snapped up, eyes scanning the room.
A dark shadow shifted in the hall. There was a soft breath and Garrus sheepishly stepped into the dull orange circle of light from the overhead lamps. The reticule on his visor shifted with the sudden change in light, obscuring his eye.
"Garrus," Shepard said, keeping her voice low to hide her surprise. "What are you doing up?"
His mandibles flared and he rubbed his neck. "Just stretching my legs, Commander." He shifted awkwardly, the orange light sliding off his crest. "I didn't mean to disturb you."
She set the datapad down and waved away his apology. "You weren't bothering me, Garrus." Actually, she was rather grateful. Saren wasn't exactly the best of company. "Most people don't think the middle of the night is a good time for exercise, you know."
He shrugged. "Well, turians don't sleep as much as humans. We sleep a couple of hours at a time, usually." His mandibles twitched in a way Shepard was coming to understand as humor. "I usually just walk around or work on the Mako."
Shepard waved at him to sit.
"If you don't mind my asking, Commander, what are you doing up?" Garrus sat, carefully folding his legs to avoid knocking his spurs against the chair. "I thought humans needed about eight hours of sleep?"
She gave him a weary smile, brushing her black hair away from her face. "We can function with less. Coffee helps." She gestured at her cup. "Unfortunately, sleep doesn't come easy for me these days."
She took another sip, smiling grimly around the cup. Not that it takes the skills of a former C-Sec officer to figure it out. Even Dr. T'Soni figured it out, socially awkward as she was. Though to be fair, after seeing the visions through Shepard's own mind, Liara probably understood better than anyone.
"What are you reading, Shepard?" The orange of the lamps muddied Garrus's normally steel blue eyes into a brownish-grey. "Anything interesting?"
Her smile dropped away and she put the cup down. "I guess you could say that."
"Commander?"
"When I became a Spectre, I asked the Council for any records about Saren." She stared at the pad, hair falling over her face like a black curtain. "Anything that could tell me what contacts he might have, how he thinks, plans, strategizes." She glanced up, tucking her hair behind her ear.
Garrus nodded. "Good thinking."
She looked back at the pad, still frowning. "I also contacted the Hierarchy for anything I could get. Military service records, assignments, evaluations ..."
"The Hierarchy gave you records?"
The shock in his voice startled a laugh from her.
"I am a Spectre, after all." She snorted at the skeptical look on his face. "I convinced them it wouldn't look good to block a Spectre's investigation. I asked them nicely to send anything useful. I even made a point of saying that I didn't need any information on classified ops."
That was understating the wheedling she had to do. She contacted them as a Spectre, not Alliance, but Garrus was right. It's not like they could miss my humanity. The redactions showed their opinion pretty clearly.
Garrus leaned forward. "Did you learn anything?"
She frowned again, looking down at the pad. She remembered him saying he'd tried to get Saren's records himself, back when he was investigating the case for C-Sec. Of course, he didn't have the clearance. Saren's information had been classified long before he became a Spectre.
"Well, you were right not to trust him. He was hiding things. I don't know, Garrus. None of this sits right with me." She put an elbow on the table, propping her head up as she read. "Some of this, I read and wonder how the Council could just sit by knowing this and not stop him."
"They sent you."
"After the fact." She drummed her fingers on the table. "The Council knows their Spectres: their tendencies, their moral stances. Or lack of, in Saren's case. I know sometimes extreme measures are needed. The ends justify the means, necessary evil and all that. But if Spectres are instruments of the Council's will, Saren is a nuclear bomb."
"A ... bomb?"
She looked up at Garrus. His mandibles were fluttering in what she could only assume was confusion.
"Saren kills indiscriminately." Shepard frowned. "He doesn't care if you're good, bad or indifferent. All lives have the same value to him: basically nothing. He would've done anything the Council told him to do."
The worst part was that they knew. Other Spectres had moral objections and lines they couldn't cross. Saren has no boundaries. His only limitations were ones the Council put on him, and they were damned few.
"I don't understand, Commander," Garrus was saying, slowly. "Are you saying the Council was telling him to do these things?"
"Not exactly, no." She exhaled, trying to figure out a way to explain. "Saren is ... not sane."
"No kidding, Commander."
Shepard shook her head. "He'd save someone one minute and kill them the next if it served the mission. He doesn't see things in right and wrong, good or evil. Just actions and consequences. Saren would have saved lives if the Council told him to, but the Council has other Spectres for that. He was valuable because he didn't care about saving lives."
"So, the Council ignored it because it benefited them." Garrus leaned forward, mandibles tight. "But we knew that. Isn't the whole point of being a Spectre to be above the law?"
"It's one thing to have discretion, Garrus." She speared him with a look. Are we back to this again? "What he was doing was not discretion. Remember when I said if you didn't care about people you're supposed to protect, you were a terrorist with a badge? That's exactly what Saren was."
The things Saren had described in his reports, the cold, almost clinical way he described what he did ... And these were what the Council gave her. She was afraid to imagine what was in the ones they didn't give her, or what details Saren had conveniently left out.
Shepard rubbed her arms, warding off a shudder. "Torture, murder, you name it. Even if it would violate the Citadel Conventions, they were willing to overlook it if he got results and no one could point the finger at them."
"Is there evidence he broke the Conventions?" Garrus pointed at the pad with a talon of his three-fingered hand.
"You mean besides using the geth and Sovereign? Of course not!" Shepard huffed. "He's not stupid enough to put it in his reports." She gestured at the datapad. "He's a ruthless, brutal bastard who doesn't care who lives and dies. But reading this, it's hard to doubt his loyalty to the Council. That's why none of this makes any sense."
"But you just said he was willing to do anything, Commander." Garrus cocked his head. "Why wouldn't he turn on the Council if given a chance?"
"Everything I'm reading shows he believed it was all for the 'greater good.' Why throw it away to work with the Reapers?" She looked up at him again, troubled. "I know he hates humans, but he's hated humans a long time. What changed?"
"Maybe he saw his chance for power," Garrus said, shifting in his seat. "Sovereign and the geth could give him far more power than the Council."
Even as he was talking, Shepard was shaking her head.
She looked at the datapad again, as though the answers would be there. "I think he sees power as a means to an end. He likes getting his hands dirty. But what end does he achieve by helping the Reapers? They want to exterminate all life— humans, turians, everybody. He has to know they wouldn't just destroy humanity, but also anything he's ever thought was worth saving."
Garrus shrugged. "Maybe he just wants to save himself."
"And throw away everything he's ever tried to accomplish?" She raised an eyebrow at him. "Saren may be a lot of things, but he's not a coward. Why help the things that want to destroy everything you stand for instead of trying to stop them?"
Garrus was silent, looking down at the table. Apparently, he was just as stumped as she was.
She looked down at the datapad and absentmindedly took a sip of coffee. She grimaced. It had gotten cold. She set the cup down with a harsh clatter, and pushed it away.
"I don't know, Commander," Garrus said at last. "Maybe there's something missing from the reports you received. Either way, does it matter?"
Did it matter? On one hand, they had to stop him. No matter why he was doing it or what his motives were, she couldn't let him see it through. On the other ...
"Maybe if I knew why, I could make him stop." She rubbed her temple. "He knows more about the Reapers than anyone. Like you said, he's always one step ahead of us. If he would help us, maybe we could find a way to stop the Reapers."
"What?" Garrus' mandibles dropped. "After everything he's done, you'd work with him?"
She sighed. "I don't like Saren's methods, but there's a reason he was the Council's top Spectre. He isn't fit for society, but he is an effective weapon. He has no empathy, no fear, no morals. He'll do anything to win. Against the Reapers, well, we can't afford to lose."
"He's already tossed everything aside. Do you really think he would help?"
"No, not really. Whatever's motivating him, I think he's long past seeing reason." She looked up at him, giving him a quirky little smile. "Not that I won't try, if I get the chance." The smile dropped again. "But you're right. No matter why he's doing this, we have to stop him from succeeding."
Shepard lay in bed, looking up at the ceiling of her quarters. It was fine to say they had to stop Saren, no matter what. But how could she explain this insidious feeling of doubt in her mind?
She learned a long time ago to trust her gut. It kept her alive on Akuze, when every way looked like death. When things didn't feel right, they usually weren't. And now, her gut was telling her that something about this puzzle didn't fit.
She rolled over in bed, hugging the pillow.
No matter what she did to turn it over in her mind, she couldn't find the missing piece. What is it?
Saren was a monster; there was no two ways about it. If she'd gleaned anything from his reports and the evals about him, it was that 'terrorist with a badge' was putting it lightly. Of course, Anderson could have told me that.
Shiala had called him charismatic, but Shepard couldn't see it. To her, Saren had all the charisma of a rabid dog.
Then again, she thought with some humor, some people call me charismatic, too.
It was obvious morality meant nothing to him. He did seem to have a sort of code, but Shepard had no doubt that if circumstances demanded it, he would break it.
His job seemed important to him. Maybe being a Spectre fulfilled something in his life he couldn't generate on his own. But then he threw that away by betraying the Council.
He has to have something to motivate him, some guiding purpose to strive for. She just couldn't see it.
Saren had to know what would happen if the Reapers returned. There weren't any Protheans left. The Reapers destroyed them all and burned their empire to the ground. Couldn't he feel their despair? Didn't he hear their screams in his mind? How could a person to know those things and ignore them?
How could someone go from protecting the galaxy to wanting to help destroy it? The Reapers would annihilate everything, and then what would he have left?
Shepard sighed and turned over again. She was just going in circles.
If nothing else, she thought as she put the pillow over her head, at least the Protheans agree with me.
A.N.: Part 1 of 4!
One of my greatest disappointments in Mass Effect is Saren. I feel he was a character with a lot of potential. Unfortunately, that potential wasn't really explored at all. I even read Mass Effect: Revelation hoping for some development of Saren, but alas, it was not to be.
I see Saren as basically the most extreme kind of Knight Templar you can imagine. Revelation pretty much portrays him as your common psychopath, and that's fine, really! A psychopath with the full authority of the law, who is above the law himself, and feels the ends justify the means is a great base for a Knight Templar. I just don't feel he was utilized to the fullest extent possible.
That's only part of my motivation for the fic, though. The main reason is that on one play-through, I really noticed that paragon Shepard seems to have a strange degree of empathy for Saren. Of course, paragon Shepard has a high degree of empathy for everyone, but there was something about the reaction to Saren specifically that caught my attention. So I tried to get in a paragon Shepard's head to see what it was about. The Shepard in this fic is Aleta Shepard, my paragon, spacer, sole survivor vanguard.
Comments, critiques, reviews, opinions or what have you all welcome!