For the Fallen

CLANG!

"God damn it!"

Commander Hannah Shepard gently pulled her bruised fist away from the wall of the Captain's Quarters aboard the Normandy and contemplated delivering another punch to the metal bulkhead. The pain that lanced through her knuckles after that last punch had convinced her that she had fractured at least one of her fingers, but she was beyond caring. Instead of going to find an ice pack for her battered hand, her mind latched onto the pain as she attempted to distract herself from her darker thoughts.

Unfortunately, her luck seemed to have deserted her for the day, and she quickly found her thoughts returning to the catastrophe on Virmire, the planet from which she had just returned.

When the Normandy reached Virmire, everything seemed to be going well. Hannah, Tali, and Wrex were dropped off in the Mako first, to disable the Anti-Aircraft weapons that were keeping the Normandy from approaching their landing site. Her team ran into resistance in the form of Saren's Geth, but the synthetic enemies were taken care of with little difficulty. They soon arrived at a camp that had been set up by the Salarian STG, where the Normandy dropped off the rest of its fighting force.

There was a momentary hiccup in their plans when Wrex discovered that the cure to the Krogan Genophage was in the very facility that they were planning to destroy. The artificially-engineered disease had decimated his people, and he wanted that cure so the Krogan race could return to prominence. Luckily, Hannah managed to talk him down after reminding him that he owed her a favor, and convinced him that it needed to be destroyed. With an army of Krogan soldiers augmenting his already-impressive Geth forces, Saren would be unstoppable.

Then, Captain Kirrahe, leader of the Salarian forces, asked for one of her teammates to accompany a secondary team that would serve as a distraction while the primary team infiltrated Saren's base. The request worried her; she did not at all like the idea of splitting up her team, but she was never even given the option to say no, since both Kaidan and Ashley overheard and volunteered. Despite the sinking feeling in her stomach, she had to pick one of them.

In the end, she chose to let Ashley go with the distraction team, while Kaidan would remain with the Normandy in order to arm the bomb they planned to use to destroy the base. So they split up. The distraction team performed their job admirably, while the infiltration team made it into the base with much less resistance than expected. After a few Earth-shattering discoveries about the Protheans and the Reapers, they finally reached their target. Unfortunately, after the Normandy dropped off Kaidan and the bomb, disaster struck.

And that would be the moment Lady Luck decided to take a vacation.

Ashley's voice blared through the radio, shouting that she was pinned down in one of the towers by an overwhelming amount of Geth. Hannah left Kaidan to finish arming the bomb while she rushed off towards Ashley's location.

When she was half-way there, Kaidan called, shouting over the radio that the Geth were attacking him as well. Then she was given a choice.

Save Kaidan, or save Ashley?

She knew that she couldn't save both of them. She knew that there was no way she would be leaving Virmire with both of her human teammates. As Kaidan and Ashley started to argue with each other about who should make the sacrifice, since both of them apparently wanted the other to survive, Hannah fought against herself as well, endlessly weighing pros and cons and coming up with no answers.

Save Ashley, or save Kaidan?

She knew she was running out of time. If she spent too much longer being indecisive, both of them would die. Better to save one than to lose both, after all. So she made her choice and ran off to save one of her human companions, hoping against all hope that the other would beat the odds and survive.

Sadly, it was not her lucky day.

"And now I have to live with my choice," Hannah muttered as she slumped back against the cold wall. She had to live with the knowledge that she had allowed a skilled Alliance soldier, a valued teammate, and a close friend to die. She hated it. She hated Virmire, the beautiful planet that had hidden an ugly secret. She hated Saren, whose insane plan to join the Reapers had started this whole mess. She hated the Reapers themselves, who had turned Saren into the monstrosity he had become. She hated Captain Kirrahe for making her split up her team.

Most of all, though, she hated herself.

Survivor's Guilt was an old adversary of hers. After her entire unit had been butchered by Thresher Maws, she had spent many sleepless nights wondering why she, out of all the members of her unit, had survived. She had blamed herself for each death, had seen their blood every time she closed her eyes, had heard them screaming in her nightmares.

Now, another voice had joined them. A scream that she had never actually heard, but one which her imagination could easily provide. A death that she had never actually seen, but one which she would witness every time her eyes closed…

She spun around to slam her fist into the wall again, bruising her knuckles further. A third punch sent pain shooting up and down her arm as she split her knuckles open and pulled a muscle. The pain didn't bother her though. She hardly even felt it. She just continued pounding her fist against the wall until it became a bloody mess, too lost in her morbid thoughts to even acknowledge her pain any more. Finally, her strength gave out and she collapsed against the wall, sliding down until she was seated on the floor with her knees drawn up to her chest.

"Why did you save me?"

She looked up to see her only remaining human teammate in the doorway. She hadn't even heard the pneumatic hiss as it slid open. Unable to bear the gaze that was leveled upon her, she turned away to look back down at the floor. She didn't care that her fist was bloody, or that there were unshed tears in her eyes. She didn't look like a commanding officer, like a Spectre, but frankly, she didn't care.

"I made a choice," she replied after a while, knowing it wasn't much of an explanation but not wanting to talk much.

"Why did you choose me? You could have just as easily picked—"

"I know," Hannah interrupted, unwilling to hear the name of the person she'd left to die.

"Then why?"

"I don't know," she replied quietly. When her visitor just glared silently at her, she lost her temper. "What do you want from me? Why do you need to know so badly?"

Her teammate just continued to glare, not that she noticed, having found a very interesting spot on the floor to observe.

Unable to bear the silence any longer, Shepard looked up again and met the stoic, angry gaze with her own. "Because I had to," she eventually answered steadily, before tearing her eyes away to glare at the wall on the other side of her quarters. "Because, in the long run, your abilities are more valuable to the team. Because I know you better. Hell, maybe because I flipped a coin. If you need a reason so badly, take your pick."

She fell silent again. After several minutes of staring at the wall, she looked over at the door again to see that it was closed, her visitor having departed some time during her silent introspection. With a sigh, she looked down at her hand, noticing for the first time the crimson streaks of blood that certainly hadn't been there when she entered her quarters.

Closing her fingers to form a bloody fist, she contemplated it for a moment before looking up at the ceiling with her eyes unfocused.

"I swear, I'll avenge you. Saren will pay for what he's done."

With her solemn promise still echoing in her mind, she stood up, wiped her eyes with her good hand to rid them of tears that were ready to fall, and left the room. After a quick stop at the infirmary to have her hand treated, she headed towards the Bridge. The past was over with. It was time to save the galaxy.

As she stepped into the Briefing Room to give her report to the Citadel Council, she had the strangest feeling that someone was standing behind her. A tiny gust of air tickled her ear as she heard a quiet whisper in a familiar voice:

Go get 'im, Skipper.

Maybe she misheard. Maybe it was her imagination. Maybe she was hallucinating. It didn't matter. For the first time that day, Commander Shepard allowed herself to smile.

"I will, Chief."