Disclaimer - I'm not affiliated with BioWare, don't have any claim to the Mass Effect universe or its characters, and don't receive any compensation for writing this. Yadda, yadda, yadda.
A/N: This follows as part of my Mosaic Project. See the A/N there for the full setup, but it's not necessary. Synopsis – Ash and Shep have reconciled, they're talking and getting to know each other, and it's a series of standalone vignettes. Shep is a colonist war hero. Hope y'all enjoy!
Long fingers gripped the stem of the wine glass, swirling gently as brown eyes found themselves fixed upon the liquid moving within. It was a good bottle of Cabernet: thick and viscous, deep red, feet trailing down the sides of the glass in firm little rivulets.
She was lost in thought, searching to put words to the thousand bursts of questions flitting through her mind. There was so much that Ashley wanted to know about Shepard, and quantifying the things to ask of him was proving substantially more difficult than anticipated.
And, as prone to happen when one opens herself to reflection, her mind sought the recesses of things once tidily stored away. Strange thoughts gripped her now that had nothing to do with the man across from her. Eyes were transfixed on the deep red liquid swirling in a lazy vortex in her glass.
Red.
Red as the deep, sticky sweet liquid dribbling down her lips as she bit into a strawberry plucked from her mother's garden. Strawberry jelly on toast every morning. Routine patrol.
Two creatures held the colonist by his shoulders and forced him down upon a spike protruding from the ground.
Red as hot blood trickling down the side of the man's face, spilling with pained gurgles from his mouth, as lips contorted in a single and final shudder. He twitched violently, as if some cruel puppeteer refused to stop pulling at the strings bound to his hands and feet, and his head rolled as his body suddenly sprang skyward, muscles no longer able to still to him. One, two, three tremors coursed completely through him, leaving Ashley wondering if the force of the convulsions could loose him from the spike on which he was skewered.
And then it stopped.
Eyes, fixed and glossy, intent in their vacancy – locked only on her below.
She laughed outright at her own first thought: he was at peace now. Some terrible peace this was – to end one's life as an alien shish kabob.
Her mind swam, a vast tangle of word and impulse, fingers pulling through threads as if searching for the simple act that would loose the knot.
She remembered the advice given her during training, one that she'd repeated often to her men: compartmentalize – deal with it all later; don't deal with it now.
Those eyes locked on her … a mother dressed for mourning, a father's head buried in hands, faces of sisters and brothers blotched with tears, a wife and son and daughter crumpled on a grave, and a coffin closed – should his family even be alive to bury him. Just hours before when beginning their morning patrol … He had passed them - his puckish face, short hair parted neatly in the middle and rising in the back in hints of a cowlick, nervous fingers dancing and pulling at loose hems at the bottom of his tunic.
For the second time that day, she failed.
"You want your oldest to take up a rifle, then?" Her grandfather's gruff and graveled voice, dripping with self-satisfaction, in a conversation with her father she'd overheard as a girl. "It's in our blood – the honor to serve one's homeland." It was the voice of a ghost, haunting her still.
The honor to serve one's homeland: sweet and fitting it is to die for one's country. They were ancient words in conveyance of ancient mentality; though she could never stop believing in her duty and her birthright, it was the time-honored characterization of death that shook her now. How sweet and fitting was that end? What could those who came before her have ever known of the type of death that confronted her now? She could not look away from the civilian's stone and ashen flesh, blood-spattered face, hollow eyes. If the eyes were the window to the soul, he was now an empty shell.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,-
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
There was nothing noble about that fate.
She should have died on the field with the others, weapons afire with final blaze, a simple fall to the ground, bodies frozen, knees buckling, helmets rolling. Make her not some trophy of an alien race, body suspended in air as example, like a tyrant would mount the severed heads of those foolish enough to cross him on pikes outside of ancient city gates.
Her body threatened to betray her as what little she'd eaten earlier that day began to rise into her throat. What kind of marine gets ill from death? You've seen men die before – this isn't any different.
But it was different. His face, slack-jawed and hanging … blood pooling on rocks below as it ran, dripped, leaked from his mouth, painting his lips, a single red river trailing down his cheek.
She swallowed repeatedly, forcefully, willing the bile to return to her stomach. There was no time to fumble with a helmet now.
GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
Damn it!
No – pull it together. If you can't focus, you can't survive.
Her father had often reinforced his Rule of Three - three tasks you outline, three seconds to think, three seconds to move your feet. It was his battlefield metaphor for life: don't stay in the kill-zone, retreat to cover, reassess.
Three tasks … Three seconds … Go. First task: lift the rifle limp in your fingertips and point it at them. Second task: find cover and get off at least one decent shot; a Williams doesn't die easy. Third task: make your peace with God.
One, two, three.
She couldn't dispatch stone feet, couldn't dispatch widened eyes from the drip, drip, drip of blood running thick from those lips.
They turned towards her – slow and strange, empty but intelligent, that clattering – speech? … Synthetics, expressing no more concern for the life they took than if it were as soulless as themselves. It was fitting for them to have lights instead of eyes, as eyes would be useless windows to nothing but mere circuitry, and those lights were shining directly into her face now …
Oh look, Ash. You're next.
These fought, in any case,
and some believing, pro domo, in any case ..
Some quick to arm,
some for adventure,
some from fear of weakness,
some from fear of censure,
some for love of slaughter, in imagination,
learning later ...
some in fear, learning love of slaughter;
Died some pro patria, non dulce non et decor
Her feet found the turf, propelling her in ragged movement behind an outcropping of rocks. Rocks. Stone. Hard. Solid. Jagged edges smoothed with time. It was something real and natural cutting through that imagery – those eyes, those filmed and empty eyes! Blood pooled from the wound in his stomach through which that spike protruded, blood pulled by gravity to splatter in a small pond filling craggy rocks below.
She retched.
"Whoa!" Shepard leaned forward, covering her hand with one of his, stilling the motion of her wine glass. She blinked rapidly, watching the swirling liquid settle.
"I know that look," he breathed, large fingers working to gently peels hers from their grasp on the glass's stem. "After the Blitz ..." His voice trailed off, begging her in its silence to look up at him – and so she did. Eyes, heavy under the weight of concern, wrinkles gathering at their corners as his brow furrowed.
"It's me, isn't it?" he asked pointedly, wincing as he spoke. "You went somewhere just now – back to the Normandy? To the day the Collectors -"
She recoiled, eyes widening in alarm. "What? No!" she interjected, voice sharper than she'd intended. "No … not you," she added, her tone softening somewhat as her mind worked to fit the memories and images together. "It was Eden Prime."
"Eden Prime?" he repeated, a brow raising. His obvious relief at not being the cause of whatever had gripped her so suddenly slowly succumbed to a rising curiosity. His head tilted slightly. "That was a long time ago, Ash. You always seemed to have dealt with it."
"I thought I had," she admitted, pushing back from the table slowly but moving her thumb to pin Shepard's hand against hers in case he were tempted to pull away. "I was thinking about this colonist -" She stopped short, frowning deeply. The man had been dehumanized enough in death; it wasn't right to do the same to him now. "Mr. Cooke, I think – nice guy, kind of shy … used to always pass him on morning patrol. He had a family. I watched the geth shove him onto one of the Dragon's teeth. I was just thinking about that … about how the husks were once people – some of them were my people."
"They weren't your people when we shot them," he reasoned carefully, a small frown crossing his lips.
She nodded absently and sighed. "No, I know."
Shepard paused, raising his free hand to rub the back of his neck. Hers had been a look with which was all too familiar – fixed stare, empty expression, but a spark of intelligence playing over features with each twitch of an eyebrow, each small movement of muscles in cheeks and lips. He'd his own experience with it: color, bursts of sound, small wafts of scent all recalling things he had hoped to forget and had long-since repressed. But to come this much later … Though healing could not be ordered, nor could the mind be made any less inflexible, it was something worthy of worry. What other triggers remained unknown until she lowered the barriers that allowed them now? What other events lurked behind that intent, deep brown stare – waiting to be elicited at any moment?
"What happened next?" he ventured, his voice strained with forced nonchalance. The more he could coax out into the open now, the less she would prove herself a liability at some point when he was depending on her – and he needed to be able to depend on her.
She snorted and released the clamp on his hand, dropping her knuckles limply to rest against the table. "Well, you showed up."
He swallowed. "Do you want to start at the beginning then?"
Her eyes dropped from Shepard's, resting on her hand – on the faint line traversing the base of her fingers, built on callouses and re-calloused with time.
Red as the brightly stinging burning across her palm, soliciting a quiet yelp and forcing her to drop her assault rifle with an unceremonious thud. She peeled back the glove of her left hand, cursing loudly at the sight of a long and thin welt rising across the flesh of her fingers. Stupid mistake – rookie mistake.
It was a failure that was as embarrassing as it was ill-timed: a frenzy of fire, a rifle overheating, a unit of men and women looking at her, as if hers were any example to follow now.
Her eyes were still locked on her palm.
"They just came out of nowhere, Skipper," she breathed, her voice very small and distant. "We were patrolling, and they just started spreading out over the hills. We were in a small valley – right in the line of sight. It was like shooting livestock sitting in a pen. I told everyone to fall back to the next ridge, and I dropped behind some rocks, right where we were – tried to cover their retreat, and I was just firing … firing at anything that moved. Just firing, and firing, and firing … couldn't take my fingers from the trigger. Damn rifle overheated and burned me – and I dropped it."
Her fingers retracted sharply into her palm, a hand clenched into a fist as her face contorted in a grimace. Her voice low and dangerous, Ashley hissed, "Stupid ..."
Stupid.
Red as the deep auburn shadows cast upon her armor, sun bearing down on the rocks covering her back. Quickly, she shoved her hand back into her glove, grunting as mesh pulled and dragged across the stinging skin of her palm. She stooped, quickly recovering the rifle, and settled into a crouching position behind the rocks. Her mistake had cost her precious seconds. The soft crunch of grass under heavy footfalls – they were coming; and they were close.
A burst of fire from ahead – two men lying on their stomachs, sniper rifles brandished in outstretched arms, muzzles flaring with each shot and a small whir and hollow clank as fire impacted targets. They were picking off the advancing synthetics, providing cover needed for her to escape; and they were exposed; and they were going to die.
These men were born to drill and die
Point for them the virtue of slaughter
Make plain to them the excellence of killing
And a field where a thousand corpses lie.
Lungs filled in frenetic bursts, greedily soaking up the thick, smoke-filled air. One: stand and turn towards them; two: fire as you move; three: reach that hilltop. She closed her eyes and pressed her back against the rocks, tensing the muscles of her calves and thighs. Run.
"So, you dropped the rifle – what then?"
Ashley stiffened, the fingers of her left hand quickly flying away from her palm as Shepard's voice cut through the thoughts, a thin curtain drawing sharply between past and present. Her jaw clenched involuntarily, as she forced herself to look up again.
Was it just moments before she had been rushing headlong up the hill, feet flying in rapid succession as her hands braced a quivering weapon, fingers tapping against the trigger?
She cleared her throat, blinking a few times, as if she were regaining her bearings. "Umm … I picked it up, some of my people provided cover, and I ran like hell."
Shepard nodded, the corners of his mouth twitching. "That sounds like a good plan … not stupid at all. And then?"
Ashley snorted, biting back a laugh. "Milton."
He leaned forward, his forehead wrinkling. "One of your unit?" he asked gently, a small frown stretching across his lips.
"No," she replied slowly, drawing a deep breath and leaning back in her chair. "John Milton … the poet."
Shepard's frown eased as he mimicked her action, leaning back in his chair again. "So, you were running and then John Milton showed up?"
She offered a small chuckle, folding her arms across her chest. "Kind of ... I went on a little 'Eden' kick while I was stationed there; boring place – needed lots of things to read. And these lines from Paradise Lost just kept going through my head the whole time ..."
Whether in Heav'n or Earth, for then the Earth
Shall all be Paradise, far happier place
Then this of Eden, and far happier daies
Red as the thick, sweet, and sticky layer of strawberry jelly carefully spread across a slice of toast, oozing into cracks and crags, dribbling down the side of the bread to pool on the edges of her fingertips: eggs and toast, her choice for breakfast every morning at the garrison.
A small breakfast – but one that threatened to betray her with each jostle of her stomach.
Red as the deep, dark, thick blood of corpses oozing forth from cracks in plate armor. Smoky, sour scent of burning flesh and plastic, the resin of body armor melting into bodies from the heat of weapons discharge – some barely discernible as human as helmets became absorbed into faces.
As her feet led her up the hilltop, more and more of them came into view. People – her people – left there amidst the charging synthetics, a sickening crunch audible across the plain as flaked and charred skin was sloughed from bone with each contact. Her eyes rested on one face, half-skeletal from depth of burns, a tuft of dark brown hair edging past the remnants of a helmet – was that all that was left of Private Bhatia?
Feet picked their quick and careful way through a maze of motionless limbs, as if she were running the obstacle course back during basic. Two pairs of legs – her snipers – both still from deep, seeping wounds that had pierced their helmets. The ridge. The remains of her unit. What sordid sort of Eden was this?
"What lines from Paradise Lost were they?" Shepard prodded.
Ashley cleared her throat, swallowing away the lump that had risen once again from her belly. "Oh – ummm … Something about Eden from when Adam and Eve are forced to leave the Garden. About how it wasn't all that great anyway." She paused and looked away – not waiting to say the actual lines. It didn't strike her as appropriate, for some reason she couldn't put to words, that she utter them aloud.
Shepard paused, large fingers idly pulling at the loose cloth bunching on his pants as he sat. He hadn't intended to upset her with his questioning – he wasn't even sure if she were upset at the moment – but he sensed he was getting close to breaching the threshold of her patience, with him and with herself.
His silence, his downcast eyes … She sighed, lifting a hand to rub her forehead. "So, I made it to the hill and to the rest of the unit – all seven of them. I didn't realize I only had seven left until I got there. We stayed behind whatever rocks and trees we could hide behind, just shooting at the geth in the valley. Then – some recon drones came up on us from behind, and I realized that the 232 must have fallen too, so I ordered everyone to retreat back away towards dig site, thought maybe they'd coming looking for us – not really sure why, now that I think about it. And I looked around … and I realized they were all gone. All of them."
Shepard looked up again. She was still with him in the room this time, deep brown eyes over-bright with tears as she stared past him. It was, at the very least, an improvement.
"So you went back towards the dig site by yourself with the drones following you," he offered gently, "and you saw the colonist being put on the Dragon's teeth. Then I found you."
Ashley nodded brusquely, turning back to look at him now. "I thought I was going to die there," she breathed. "I really did."
He smiled softly, reaching for her hand again. "You said as much. For what it's worth, I'm pretty glad you didn't."
"You know what the weirdest thing is?" she asked, her voice quivering with faint strains of incredulous laughter. "I was there, against those rocks, making my final peace with God – and I kept thinking Psalm 23, but just the first line … like it was on repeat in my head … just 'the Lord is my Shepherd.' Over and over again – 'the Lord is my Shepherd.'" A sharp exhale of breath hissed through barely open lips. "And then you showed up – Shepard. And it just seemed ..."
He blinked, eyes widening at the inference. "I- I wasn't sent by God, Ash ..."
She stiffened, her stubborn chin jutting forward. "And how can you be so sure of that?"
"I can't be," he admitted quietly. "I never thought of it like …" His voice trailed off as he stopped short, eyes narrowing slightly. "But you always did, didn't you?
She noticed his hand covering hers and pushed away slightly to slip her fingers between his, squeezing tightly. "Doesn't matter. I, uh, thanks … for listening."
He looked down at their intertwined fingers, his brow creasing. Her words contrasted sharply with her actions – but if the old adages held true …
"You never get over it – you can't – and you can't bury it either. I learned that after the Blitz. Like I said back after it happened, you just resolve to do better."
That wasn't her type of resolve.
They had their own way of doing things, of restoring the soul, of stilling tumultuous waters. But he was with her now, as he had been with her then, and knew it was something she wasn't meant to ignore.
Ashley studied him in silence, a small smile tugging at the corner of her lips, as John Milton and Paradise Lost came to her once again:
The World was all before them, where to choose
Thir place of rest, and Providence thir guide:
They hand in hand with wandring steps and slow,
Through Eden took thir solitarie way.
Red as scars cut into body and soul – though raised and tender, slowly smoothing and fading, but never to disappear.
Works referenced, in order:
Owen, Dolce et Decorum Est
Pound, Hugh Selwyn Mauberly (Part I)
Crane, War Is Kind
Milton, Paradise Lost (12.458-465)
Milton, Paradise Lost (12.645-649)