Summary:
Waking up after being brought back to life is the best and worst way to wake up.
Notes:
This story is stuck in my head, so I figured I might as well write it.
Chapter 1
Woken up like an animal
Teeth ready for sinking
My mind's lost in bleak visions
I've tried to escape but keep sinking
.-
Shepard is disappointed that she doesn't get to see the Illusive Man in person, but she guesses it's a smart move on his part: she is certain she would have punched him repeatedly if she had - at the very least for Akuze, Toombs and for stealing her corpse and experimenting on it. Shepard even tries to mention what happened to her unit on Akuze, but the Illusive Man quickly deflects - which is hardly surprising.
Shepard tries to recall what she can about Toombs' story as the Illusive Man talks, what he said about the cruel experiments that Cerberus submitted him to that lasted for years. Cerberus did that to him, the only other survivor of Akuze, how isn't she supposed to suspect they did the same to her?
They could have tampered with her memory while she was being "reconstructed". They could have implanted the Normandy's crash memory itself. It's been years, who knows what Cerberus might have done to her just for the hell of it.
The Illusive Man's face and words blur into the background as Shepard's chest starts feeling too tight and cold creeps up her spine. Shepard clenches her fists. If that was true, they wouldn't have left her with the memory of Toombs or the knowledge of Cerberus' involvement in the incident on Akuze, she reasons with herself. She's not sure she's convinced - it might just be a clever gamble on their part, and how can she ever be certain?
Shepard hates working in the dark, standing unknown ground, but she doesn't have a choice right now. She will have to do without any certainties, 'cause she's all alone - all her friends and team members have moved on.
She should not feel betrayed by that. She knows she shouldn't blame them. Not when working with or for her had gotten so many people killed before.
Death follows her steps, but never strikes her, it strikes those around her. And what is coming back to life if not further proof of that?
The Illusive Man asks for trust and she almost laughs in his face. She would have to be crazy to trust them, and he has to be either really stupid or really naïve to believe she ever will - and Shepard may not know a lot about Cerberus, but she knows that the man in charge is none of those things.
Cerberus is almost as smart as it's cruel, and she will better remember that.
Shepard agrees to go to Freedom's Progress through clenched teeth. She needs to see for herself if the disappearances are true, although deep down she knows she doesn't have any other options.
Not if there are lives on the line.
It takes Shepard a few days to realize something isn't quite right with her after Cerberus brought her back. It goes beyond the sharp and numbing pain in her jaw and ribs, or the vague but constant ache that floats around her still-mending body - she has known worse pains, so there's that, but she has also never died before, and she guesses all in all the pain it's not that bad. Chakwas says she is alright, in the most general meaning possible - she has no experience treating dead patients either.
She died. She should not be alright. She was dead, but someone decided that was not good enough, that they were not done with her, so they stole her corpse and did things to it because she was a unique and skilled tool and they would hate to just throw her away.
The worst pains are dealt with easily enough, all she needs to do is tell Chakwas and a quick scan and a bone mending after it's all better, but the other one fluctuates. It's never crippling, but it is distracting and irritating. More than an itch and less than a throb; it's there, always there, just underneath her skin and beyond her reach. It's impossible to pinpoint its origin. She tries to scratch it when no one sees her. It has not worked a single time so far, and yet her nails keep digging into her skin until it's red and swollen when she's half paying attention.
Luckily she has been able to keep it to the places usually hidden by her clothes and armor. If Shepard is sure about something it's that she would hate to give the Cerberus crew the tiniest chance to doubt that she is anything but unflappable - especially Miranda. Shepard knows that Miranda would see a chip in her armor from a hundred yards and exploit it, while managing to look impossibly smug at the same time. By all that was sacred, Shepard could not stand even the thought of seeing that expression on the face of the same person to admitted wishing she could have put a control chip in her brain.
The rest of her crew seem to be mostly ex-Alliance and Shepard senses a pattern there. They may be sincere about their intentions or they may not, that remained to be seen, but Shepard only knows that they are not her crew and she doesn't trust them.
Meeting Tali throws her off her feet more than she thought it would, if she had actually thought about it. Shepard has been trying to ignore the fact that she has been dead for two goddamn years as best as she can, and Chakwas and Joker have let her - for now at least. But they knew she was alive, that she was being rebuilt
(like a toy, a broken VI, just replacing some pieces and codes with new ones should do the trick, maybe even upgrade her a little)
while the shock and relief and disbelief in Tali's voice is authentic.
She really thought Shepard was dead. Shepard has really been dead.
She knew it, but she hadn't grasped the full meaning of it - she had rejected the thought and avoided most obvious reminders like newsfeeds and personal accounts long closed by now. But Tali's gasp and quiet question "You're alive?" and suddenly the weight of it all hits Shepard squarely in the face.
Shepard swallows hard, gritting her teeth, trying to keep from swaying. Trying to keep the bile down. Trying to breathe evenly, like she had been taught after Akuze by her therapist, longer exhalations to avoid hyperventilation.
Shepard hasn't needed that trick for years, not since a year after Akuze. Not even after Virmire.
Tali is disappointed that Shepard is working with Cerberus, and Shepard understands. She is disappointed too.
Shepard falls into autopilot for most of the mission. Point and shoot, those are things she doesn't need to think about, things her body remembers well enough. The heavy mech forces her to pay her full attention to it and she is thankful, even if the feeling of moving underwater doesn't go away completely.
When they find Veetor, the quarian Tali was looking for, he doesn't even pay attention to them: he just keeps staring at endless surveillance feeds and mumbling to himself. He is obviously traumatized and Shepard finds the sight of him painfully familiar. It shakes her deeply, more than any mechs could have. She closes the feeds, biting the inside of her lips to keep her composure.
He should never had gone through this. He deserved better. He deserved a pilgrimage that was an adventure, not a lifetime of nightmares and panic that weakened him at the worst times, he didn't deserve to get broken because it never got to be the same, and he would never forget the colony or his dead parents and siblings…
Shepard blinks hard to focus again. No dead parents of siblings here, not for Veetor; those are for Shepard and will always haunt her.
Miranda says that Veetor should be taken in for further questioning, and surprisingly Jacob immediately agrees. Just the suggestion is like a slap across Shepard's face.
Really? What more could she possibly get from him? Is whatever little information they might obtain worth putting him through endless interrogations that would no doubt traumatize him even further?
It probably is worth it to Miranda and to Cerberus. Veetor is just a quarian, after all; not human and therefore not worth any kind of consideration.
Shepard wonders again how was she supposed to work with these people? If this is the kind of thing Cerberus expects from her, then they have no hope for a happy working relationship.
And yet Shepard meets no resistance when she decides they let Veetor go back to the Flotilla. Not even Miranda seems to truly disapprove. Shepard watches her on the shuttle back to the Normandy and thinks the other woman may be still testing her character, trying to get the results of her little science project.
Nightmares of Akuze come back with a vengeance, only they end with her getting spaced instead of getting burned to death by acid. When Shepard wakes up, panting and sweating, she curses whoever it was that decided putting a window right above her bed was a good idea.
She fists her hands in the sheets to avoid falling back into the void, into the dark and cold space. Again.
Shepard can't catch any more sleep that night. By morning the scratch marks on the inside of her arms are only this far from bleeding.
In retrospect, Shepard should have known that the Council would not believe a single word she uttered. They had been sending her on ridiculous patrols to clean up any remaining geth cells after the attack on the Citadel for months before she died, quickly closing ranks and dismissing their previous admission that the Reapers were real. Shepard had tried to be understanding, but even her patience has a limit and by the time the Normandy was destroyed her tolerance for the Council's political bullshit was coming to an end.
Since waking up after being kidnapped and revived without her consent the word "Cerberus" has been becoming a nuisance; it's being used against her more often than in her favor and it seems to close doors everywhere she looks. It doesn't matter she assures the Council or anyone else she has no lost loyalty towards Cerberus. It doesn't matter that she came back from the dead or that she saved the Council once before. It's exactly as it had been when she warned them about Saren, only even less fun this time around. The Council has declared the Reapers a myth and forgotten about all of her accomplishments like she never did a single thing for them or proven to be right from the start.
Sparatus is still the most condescending and irritating turian Shepard has ever met.
Garrus suggested losing the Council wouldn't be worth losing so many Alliance soldiers - they hadn't listened and hadn't believed her, and for a moment, as Shepard remembered Sparatus' mocking words and the way he never admitted she had been right, Shepard considered it. It would be just pay for doubting her, slowing her down and grounding her. But then she saw the eager look on Garrus' face and remembered having seen it once before: when he was begging to kill the fugitive Dr. Saleon. Shepard hadn't let him and in that moment she remembered why she hadn't, why personal satisfaction was never the same as justice.
Garrus had unwittingly been the main reason Shepard decided to save the Council. A small part of her regrets that decision now.
Shepard accepts the Council's offer of reinstating her Spectre status, barely holding back a sneer and biting words. She figures since they are offering, it won't hurt to have official authority again. No matter that the offering is basically scraps and leaves her with a bitter taste in her mouth, she has enough foresight to take anything that can be useful to her cause.
At least, she hopes it will be useful.
Shepard reminds herself that even if it's not, the only thing that has been harmed is her pride. And one of the few things that Akuze taught her is that prides are meaningless in the grand scheme of things. Meaningless when lives are on the line.