One more Shenko fanfic! This one takes place in the ME3, when Kaidan has joined Shepard's crew for the first time after her death to help her unite the races against the reapers, right after the Reapers attack Earth.
I have written this to focus on his feelings about whether Shepard is still Shepard, even after having died and being rebuilt by Cerberus.
No spoilers for ME3 included, this is just speculation.
Alot of the style is intentional, but there may be a few grammar errors (which I apologize for :) )
I'm not 100% satisfied with this, but sort of want to publish this before I move on to something new.
Still, I hope you enjoy it!
He found himself walking the Normandy's corridors again.
Not the same Normandy, of course, just a replica, but similar enough to fool the eye.
Similar enough to give the illusion that it was the same ship, if you didn't look too close into details.
It was strange- the last thing he remembered of the Normandy was a wreck, a ship in flames. Debris floating through space and pieces- titanium, aluminum, steel, plastic, everything broken and burnt, scorched, destroyed. And yet, here it was, the pieces put back together, seamlessly, without a trace of the damage.
Or so it would appear.
He walked through the past. He found Joker on the bridge, Dr. Chakwas in the medbay, Tali in engineering and a Krogan in the cargo hold. He found he knew where all the rooms were located even the first time he set foot on this new ship.
It was like walking through a memory, an old, almost forgotten and faded dream.
He walked the hallways of the new Normandy and heard voices that had been out of his life since that time right after her death, when everybody had gone their separate ways, everybody burdened by guilt or sorrow or regrets.
He heard conversations that might as well have been held years ago.
It could have been like coming home.
###
It could have been like coming home. He would have enjoyed letting it trick him to believe that this was indeed the original Normandy. At times he even allowed himself to believe it, but scratching a little on the surface made it clear it wasn't. Amidst all these memories, these rebuilt ashes, he would notice a new detail or pass somebody he had not known then. There was an AI on board. There were reminders of Cerberus everywhere, small reminders, but still there. There were new faces in the crew quarters, talking about things he did not know- about the Collectors, about the Omega-4 Relay, about places he had not been and never would.
And every time he came across one of these differences he realized that what he was standing on was just a ghost of the original Normandy, disguised to look like the first one, but not being quite the same.
With a woman who was the ghost of the woman he had loved, who looked and smelled and moved and talked like her, but who could not possibly be the same.
###
They had left Earth a burning pyre when the reapers attacked. Now they were adrift- gathering allies, armies, having left to make sure there would one day be something to go back to.
Everything was burning. The entire galaxy shattered to pieces in the reapers' presence, and all around him were dying shells which at best could be rebuilt to resemble something that had once been whole and intact. Shells of cities. Shells of worlds. Buildings, homes, lives, that would be torn down and rebuilt in the same soulless replicas as everything else he was surrounded by.
Rebuilt, but not the same, not beneath the surface.
It frightened him to be surrounded by all these ghost fragments. They were a constant reminder of everything that could be lost.
And once you lost those things, there would be no getting them back the way it had been.
Replicas- yes, even such very alike the original. But the real thing, the thing that mattered- that was lost.
###
He reminded himself that he could not trust her. That it was not her, that the likeness was only skin deep. He reminded himself that it was not the time or the place for that kind of things- in the midst of the chaos the reapers had brought, old, dead feelings were unimportant. Had to wait.
And he kept reminding himself that despite the fact that she looked like the woman he had known, he did not know this one.
Not that he saw particularly much of her. She not only looked like a ghost, she acted like one too- she drifted from room to room, sealing herself off alone or in calls with the Alliance, with the Council...
He only occasionally met her in the corridors. All conversations they had were brief, and very professional and matter-of-fact. She gave her orders, but not much more than that. Occasionally, she asked what he thought about the last mission, but she never asked about anything personal, anything private. They were back in the Alliance, like it had been before Eden Prime, a commander and her crew, following all the regs, doing everything by the books. Everything was done according to the rules. He did not treat her like a lover, a friend, or even an acquaintance. This woman who Cerberus had created from dead things was merely his commanding officer.
They had not talked about Horizon. In fact, they did not talk about anything personal or private. Sometimes he wondered if she even remembered about what they'd had. Or cared.
###
Sometimes he wondered what was left of her. He would see the scars. When she reached for something and her shirt slid up a little too far, or a sudden move tossed her hair out of the way to reveal her neck. Scars from where Cerberus had opened her, or sites where they had injected her again and again with god knew what substances, small marks and cuts on her skin, pale, shimmering pink, detectable but barely more than so. He would shudder at the thought of them cutting in her, doing her harm, even if it was supposedly done to save her.
He was uncertain what they had managed to save. If you could even use that term.
He had heard talk that she had implants. Cerberus tech, even inside of her.
And he realized that even with this person claiming to be Shepard, he still mourned her, the person who died at the Normandy.
When talking to her he often wondered how much of this replica of Shepard was a machine. How much Cerberus had altered her. How much they had meddled in her mind, her memories, her. If you could rebuild somebody fully, why not add extra pieces and remove the unwanted ones? Induce loyalty to your organization, implant control chips and alter synapses and nerves to wipe out any trace of a past that could be used against you? Remove memories and feelings that could become a liability to the cause? He expected no less from Cerberus.
And he knew for certain she had changed when he talked to her, and all the words they exchanged were strictly business, when she displayed no hint of emotion or recollection and when he felt nothing but grief and loss in her presence. When her face was so close that he could have touched it by just lifting his hand a little, that he could have kissed her if he had only leaned in. But he didn't feel the urge to because he knew that it could not be her. He knew that whatever they had had was gone, lost when she was. In fact, he was certain of it.
###
He was certain of it, as they visited world after world. As they landed on one ghost planet after another, finding only corpses and ruins. As they wallowed through dust and destruction.
He saw the whole galaxy being torn asunder, knowing that whatever they did, they could not bring these shells of worlds back to life. Everything they encountered were dead and ruined things. This replica of Shepard moved among them like she was one of those things, never flinching, never showing her feelings about all this destruction, never airing her thoughts, just pushing on, quiet and shut off. She was a ghost, walking on ghost worlds.
He was certain of it.
###
But then, other times...
He would hear a laugh from one of the ship cabins as he walked by, and glancing in through the crack of the door she would be standing there, talking lively to somebody. He would overhear her making a joke to Garrus or a smartass comment to Joker. He would hear about how she had made the engineers lose big time in Skyllian five.
He would see her in a fight, her reflexes astonishingly quick, like always, and hear her
make choices that the Shepard he remembered would have made, help the people Shepard would have helped.
It made him question those things he was so certain of.
And he would see her respond to a joke about the Council. About the Citadel. Even about the chase for the conduit. He would hear her talking about things that happened two years ago, and even before that. Things that had happened long before he entered her life. And it would strike him that perhaps, perhaps, there was something of the old Shepard in there. Not fully her, but a part. It seemed impossible. How was it possible?
How could you go through all that and not be changed by it?
###
It would have been too painful.
That was the reason he told himself for not going further, not daring to ask her all those things he wanted to ask, not tell her everything he wanted to. To tell her what she had meant, what he had lost, to light that spark of hope that she was still in there. Too painful to find another ghost shell with nothing in it.
He was afraid that once he started to tell her, to talk to her, he would find that too much was lost. To be correct when he assumed a person could not be recreated. To find that the likeness of the Shepard he had loved and the Shepard onboard this ship indeed stopped at the surface.
Having lost her was less painful than losing her again. He had mourned her once.
He was afraid to find this image of her to be somebody changed beyond recognition. He was afraid to put his trust in this illusion and see it spent.
But he wasn't correct. He grew increasingly certain of it.
###
And one day they were talking- like usual about the mission, about orders, about what needed to be done, all business, and all of a sudden she let out a sigh. Just a weary sigh and a comment about the Council and politics. A joke. It was the first thing she'd said to him since Earth was attacked that wasn't just orders or about the mission. Something silly. Something about that turian councillor. Probably wasn't that funny, actually, but it had made him smile. His heart had skipped a beat then.
And then it kept coming. Those small comments, those little things, always the little things, reviving something that had died when she did. Small details about her that he had forgotten. Creases in her cheeks when she smiled. And that she smiled- she hadn't smiled to him since they left Earth. Carefully pushing away those things he had believed on Horizon. Who had been right, there? Had either of them been? Why had he been so certain it had been him?
It seemed every little comment she made made it more difficult to remember.
###
He reminded himself that he could not trust her. That it was not her, that the likeness was only skin deep. He reminded himself that it was not the time or the place for that kind of things- in the midst of the chaos the reapers had brought, old, dead feelings were unimportant. Had to wait.
But wasn't this the time when those feelings were the most important? If there would come no other time or place for them?
And if it not only looked like her? If it sounded like her, talked like her, smiled liker her, joked like her? If this rebuilt replica acted like her, like the Shepard he had known and loved and cared for? Who was to say she was not the same? Who was to say he couldn't trust her, like he had trusted her before?
It seemed every little comment she made made it more difficult to remember.
###
And eventually they were standing on the observation deck, vast space stretching out in front of them, stars and meteorids. When everything seemed to be drawing towards an end, whatever end there could be.
Darkness, with flickering planets of light. Millions of lives, everything stemming from soil and ashes, rebuilding from the things that used to be. Behind them the quiet humming of a spaceship in motion, the dampened sound of footsteps from somewhere above them. And Earth, below, in the distance, so far away, blue and green and with spots of orange where the cities burned. Something so important, everything that was humanity, on one tiny, otherwise insignificant place in the universe.
"Do you think we can save them?" She had asked, frowning.
The ceiling lights cast shadows on her face, cleaving it in light and shades. A scratch on her cheek
revealed a piece of red, glowing metal from some Cerberus implant.
He did not know what he thought any more.
"You can." He had answered.
"Can I?" That had made the frown deepen. She was looking straight ahead, and for a short moment, she appeared to gasp for air before she said: "On Horizon, Kaidan. You said that I had betrayed you. That I had betrayed the Alliance. But I never did that."
He swallowed.
"I know."
"I worked for Cerberus because it was necessary. I took down Saren and Sovereign because it was necessary. And I am doing this because it is necessary."
"I know, Shepard."
"I wish it had been different, Kaidan." Her voice trembled slightly. "I wish there had been more time. I did not leave you by choice. I did not…die…by choice. But maybe it was necessary. To get me here." She grew quiet. "And if it is necessary again…To end the reapers, Kaidan, I will do anything required."
But he already knew that, already feared that.
"And I want you to know" she continued "that even if you do not love me anymore, I.." Her voice trailed off.
He took her hand.
They stood there watching the fires on the planet far away, on their home world, burn everything to the ground so that it could possibly one day be rebuilt again. And he was certain she had never died, never left him, never betrayed him.
All his love, and all his fears, entwined there, next to him.
Everything he loved and everything he could lose again, everything burning, the whole world in flames, torn down and rebuilt, a replica, not exactly the same, but still intact and the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.