Mass Effect isn't mine, and nothing is beta'd.
Colorblind
Shepard's blind, but she dreams in color.
In her dreams, she sees the universe in different wave lengths of the sun, and this is the universe she wants to save. One full of asari blues and tapestries of turian hues. She sees the angry red of the sand beneath her as she walks, the tranquil blue of the ocean at Earth, and maybe something else, but she doesn't remember. Her dreams always clogged together, overtaking memories and stretching out others, until they reached a pale that reminded her of how she really saw the world.
Her favorite dream, by far, is when her mother, one that she'd had forgotten the face of but swears for a fact has grey eyes that matches her, takes her out onto a ship. The lull of the ship is calming, and she wants to sleep, but she stays up, eyes taking in the ocean and the sky that seemed to blend together to her. But in her dream, she makes out the lighter hue of the sky and the bolder blue of the ocean.
And sometimes, when she turned to look at her mother, she remembers her face, too. She'd have hair that would fall onto her shoulders, and they'd be a rich, warm brown, one that she thinks would have reminded her of a darker shade of mahogany, and eyes as grey as hers, but Shepard doesn't believe it. She hasn't seen her mother in twenty-eight of the thirty-one years she's been dead and alive, so this was just a fallacy she'd created for herself. After all, Shepard had red hair.
But other times, she doesn't look to her mother at all. Just stares ahead, trying to decipher the difference of the sky and the ocean in her eyes. One she could see in her dreams, but one she'd never make out.
Maybe that's why she had joined the Navy then, one where they had ships up in the sky.
Or maybe she joined because her mother died in a batarian raid.
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Sometimes she wonders.
She's taken her share of biology classes, and it's her favorite subject actually. The study of life. Go figure.
Well, genetically speaking, her father had to be colorblind and her mother had to be a carrier or an affected one to give her color blindness.
So, Mom, did you see the world as I see it?
The gray and all the fighting.
Did it come to be too much?
Because she knew her mother saw the crack in the ship that would have been exploitable to pirates and batarians by the way her eyes lingered on that spot and the hug that lasted too long to be comfortable and left a feeling on her shoulders that she didn't understand.
-x-
I don't know what to do with gray…
Shepard didn't either. She grew up struggling, asking whether ones should be spared under the circumstances. She used to look up to the pale, gray sky, where it always looks like it's about to rain to her, and clutch at the cross that hangs around her neck. The things she's seen here. Were they justifiable, or should she think akin to a justicar.
She doesn't remember when she got her answer. Just remembers the dream, and the flash of understand that went through her mind, and if she had to give it a color, she'd say it was a gentle blue, one that she wished she saw in the skies.
She'd never told anyone, actually.
The crew finds out after Shepard tries to find the intercom button to deliver a speech right before they march into whatever Hell is waiting for them, but she falters, unlike the swagger and confidence she is, to find the button that Joker tells her is green.
Her team of commandos eye her, a mix of confusion evident in their faces at various levels.
Miranda, however, just smirks amusedly and points her to the right direction.
"I should have probably fixed that, Shepard," Miranda says, a knowing smile now on her lips, and Shepard frowns.
"No," she says, nothing else leaving her lips.
She'd have nothing to dream of then.
But the crew still stares, watching the exchange, and Miranda liberates them.
"She's colorblind," she says succinctly.
Jack's the first to laugh, and says with a grin, "Hell, I am, too."
Makes sense, Shepard thinks to herself.
The rest of the crew looks to her in surprise, and nothing else is said as she presses the intercom and starts her speech.
-x-
The crew thinks she's lying when she admires the sun's red bleach the sky, but he believes her. Because that smile she flashes as her grey eyes take it all in, a smile that's a bit crooked and he won't have it any other way, tells him everything he needs to know, and this is why he's willing to walk into Hell with her.
Even if Shepard's a bit colorblind…well he knows what she dreams is more important anyway.
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