First she was sixteen, and Mindoir was burning.
Before that, she was the one lit alight with fire between the thighs, eager trembling hands running over the boy's sunburnt shoulders, farm children hiding amidst the fields.
"We shouldn't be doing this now!" But he's not stopping her; he's pulling her to him, they're circling each other like heavenly bodies.
She grins against his skin and tugs it with her teeth, promising to make it worth his while, promising to cover for him. Her hand's insinuating itself into his jeans, his are gripping her ass tight enough to bruise, she's shaking with the need for it so badly she almost doesn't smell the smoke.
Her eyes don't fly open from the pleasure of his hand drifting downward, but from the shock of that stench, that horrid smell she can't name. It's like when dad burns the steaks on the grill, but thousands of times worse. In his grip she trembles, insides twisting from this touch of ecstasy but she can't shake this feeling building in her gut that is the opposite of orgasmic.
Face rising towards the sun, eyes rolling towards heaven, still she shoots skyward towards that implosion – when she hears for the first time a sound which will define her life.
She doesn't know it then, what the sound is. It's almost electric, like lightning condensed, and it makes the air shimmer and that stench rise. But then she sees the boy in her arms shaking, eyes wide. He's not reaching that delight, no; there's something terribly wrong, and they're falling together –
The aliens who shot the boy leave them. They don't see the girl beneath the dying body, practically orgasmic and horrified. She's trembling and her heart's pounding and she's sweating and she wants to scream –
Her first sexual encounter, and her partner is dead, and all she can do is lay beneath him, crying.
In the aftermath, she gets married to a way of life, to duty. She is always where she's needed, always putting the mission before herself. She doesn't date, doesn't drink, never goes out on the town after a long day. She will never be caught off guard, never be seen putting her desires before the mission, never allow herself to be in a field fucking while her family dies again.
That does not seem to matter. Despite her adherence to the rules, her strict control of self, people still die all around her – dozens upon dozens of them lost in a single night, their blood painting the ground, that stench rising again. They dared to sleep and were paid for their troubles.
She won't make that mistake. She hears the screeches that taunt her all around and her breath hitches, but that is the only weakness she allows as she presses closer to the cave wall.
It's coming closer, but there's a divide in the path and she desperately hopes it takes the other turn, that it moves away and not toward. But if it doesn't…? Eyes darting across the way, she sees the gun that Thompson dropped when he was decimated, half his body eaten before he'd finished screaming.
If she goes for it, the Thresher will hear, and certainly turn towards her. But if she doesn't, and it chooses the path she's on, it will likely reach her before she can ever touch the gun.
Shepard hesitates, her eyes dance, her hand freezes midair. For an instant it's like there's someone else there with them, a silent audience; a shadow over her shoulder. She feels abysmally cold. Then she jumps for the gun and the Maw shrieks and she lets loose with a roar and the ratta-ratta echoes through the cave drowning out her screams.
Virmire. The name is like a punch to the gut, like a trigger that sets off a gut reaction, and she hates how weak it makes her. She's been on plenty of missions by now, stared death in the face and dished it out with equal measure, and here she stands, in the aftermath of a technical success gripping the back of her desk chair and fighting tears.
For years she'd been celibate, had been cut off from romance and the softer side of life; told herself it was unnecessary, dangerous. Then she had wavered with Kaiden. She fought with herself over the choice, allowed herself to indulge in his company but never admitted how much she wanted him.
Well, it didn't really matter anymore. Finally she lets out a ferocious growl and tosses the chair across the room, listens to it bang around and then slams her fists into the desk.
It seemed all her life that she was living with a shadow. Since the day she'd moved out from under a teenager's body, walked her town and been subject to the sight of more than a dozen corpses, of the signs of struggle that could only mean so many more suffered a more horrific fate. That day she'd felt a darkness seep into her bones, a cold hand on her shoulder.
It had followed her, mission to mission, battle to battle; from Mindoir to Akuze. Even as she looked enemies in the eye and decided to be the Reaper of their lives, she felt a scythe against her own neck, always nicking the skin but never quite taking her head. Again, and again, and again, she lived.
And on Virmire, listening to two of her soldiers – goddammit, her friends – listening to Ashley and to Kaiden and realizing that saving Ashley would save more lives, that it was the strategic choice, that even as her feet took her further and further from the man she could have loved she asked herself, why?
Why was she always the survivor?
Her whole crew has been taken.
She's trembling with anger and fear and self-loathing, fists clenched so tight her nails bite into her skin; she hates herself and this life and everything she wants and can't have.
The ship is empty because she left it, because she wasn't here, she is never there when the ones she loves need her. Though they are already on their way to save them, though she refuses to think of any other alternative, the truth burns inside her throat like rising bile and she stumbles to the bathroom just in case she needs to throw up.
They are gone but I'm still here.
Kneeling at the toilet, she thinks of Thane. She thinks of this dynamic, fascinating man she could've loved if that spectre hadn't been standing just behind him, if she hadn't recoiled at the knowledge that, no matter how much she loved him, he would be taken from her by that, that thing which would claim his life. She thinks of Garrus, puttering away, while she stands so close behind him, wavering at the door, wanting something for once in her life and being physically unable to reach out and ask for it.
After a time, she reenters her cabin, feeling only slightly better, but her mood rises significantly at the sound of the door opening, at Garrus's nervous expression, at the tender, slow love they make. She won't allow herself to feel guilty, not this time, because if she doesn't occupy herself with something she will fall apart at the seams.
She falls apart with him anyway, though he's kind enough not to mention the tears, to ignore the sobs which erupt from her throat when she comes the first time, when he holds her instead of trying to finish himself. She sobs into his chest, and then she shows him the benefits of a mouth which can be molded around flesh.
They rest in each other's arms and don't talk about the elephant in the room: the shadow behind her shoulder. She thinks of the suicide mission and she knows, deep down, it's not that she's afraid of dying.
She's afraid that they'll all go in together, and she'll be the only one standing at the end.
They keep dying.
No matter what she does, what she tries, they slip through her fingers: because they're too noble to take the coward's way out; because they're too good to sit back while others are in danger; because they're too kind to put themselves before the betterment of their people. She traces their epitaphs on the wall and sighs their names into the air. In dreams she searches for them and can always hear them, just out of reach.
She knows, intellectually, that she died once. She doesn't remember it. It's as if she went to sleep and then woke up in that Cerberus building. But sometimes she wonders if Death isn't angry at her; for slipping through his fingers, for defying the laws of the universe and coming back. But then, that doesn't account for everything else, for all the shades and spectres, for all the times she's felt that shiver and wondered if she was really alone.
Death had been after her since that day on Mindoir, when she made love with a corpse.
The more she sees people die around her, the more she wonders. Sometimes she sees faces in their faces – people she knew, sometimes herself. But she never falls. She's brutally injured, she suffers and stumbles, but she always keeps moving, despite everything.
But her friends, her family, even strangers who happen to be near her – they keep being torn apart. And as she is the only common denominator, she can't help but feel she's done something wrong.
"Go!"
She shoves Garrus towards the ship, and stumbles as she does. She's badly wounded and she knows it –not since the Normandy exploded has she come this close to courting Death. Garrus looks about ready to leap after her. If it were anyone else, she might try making it an order. As it is, she infuses her voice with as much passion and raw feeling as she can and begs him.
"I need to know somebody's making it out of here alive."
And not just Garrus; Liara is holding him up, she can see Vega up the ramp, and she knows the ship is full of people. There are others, around her, feeling Harbinger's gaze, running from the beacon that will take Shepard to her destiny, to the thing that's been chasing her all these years, the goal she's been running both to and from.
She sees the resignation in his eyes, the realization that the only thing he can do to comfort her is live. It will hurt him; she knows what her death has done to him before. But he'll do it for her.
It is that knowledge – the knowledge that he will live, that they will all live – that gives her legs the strength to move.
In her mind, she holds their names.
Anderson. The Illusive Man. She can count backwards through all the people she's lost, people she's watched die. She remembers faces turned grotesque, bodies devoid of life, the corpse of a boy still warm and lying on her half naked form.
She has killed hundreds of thousands of people. Once, she killed 300,000 at one time. In that moment particularly she felt so frozen, so un-alive, as if Death had embraced her and she had acted out his will. For a moment she had become a cruel God, and condemned an entire system to destruction.
But here, now, standing before an actual God, or as close as one can get, she feels free – freer than she's been her whole life. It's not cold anymore. She knows he is at her back, the scythe at her neck still cutting the skin, and she's grinning.
The little boy that's not is still talking, still explaining its harsh logic, trying to make her choose. She already knows what to choose. She has always known.
Ever since she was sixteen, since she lay unmoving in a field and mourned the loss of everything, since she was the sole survivor of Akuze, since she took on this impossible mission and kept losing people, since she fucking died and was brought back, since she watched over and over as friend and stranger and lover gave their lives so hers could continue, so her mission could continue –
Dizzy from blood loss, she suddenly recalls a distant memory. There's the scent of lilac in the air, and the soft warmth of summer at nighttime, and there's a hand carding through her hair.
"Tell me a story," She says. "Tell me something new."
"I've told you so many." The voice is kind, and indulgent. "What would you like to hear?"
"Something scary!" She declares her desire loudly, so her little sister will hear it and know how big and brave her big sis is.
"Ooh, a scary story?" The voice is on the verge of laughter. "All right. Let's see…"
She doesn't recall what it is exactly, or where it was from, or whether or not her mother simply made it up. But she remembers vaguely what it was about – there was a girl who worked for a midwife, and somehow she could always tell when the child would not make it. The village became suspicious, thought up old things like 'witch', and the girl was thrown out. A black-clad man in the forest found her, and after a great many terrible and deadly things happened around him, around them, the girl realized the truth; realized who he was, and that he was there to take her.
Shepard feels a similar revelation. Her whole life she has defied death, has thrown it the finger and survived despite it all, and all around her bodies have fallen to the floor. All that time, so many close calls, so many times others died before her but she managed to keep going. All those days she was the only one left standing – she realizes now.
It was all for this. This moment which she had to survive to, because no one else could, no one else would be strong enough to make it, because she was the only one who could save everyone. She had to live, even as Death tried to sink his claws in, she fought her way free, even as those she loved became collateral damage. She was meant for this.
She leaves the boy, forces her tired, haggard body to move. The pain is starting to numb, and her limbs have lost feeling, and sight is blurry and obscure. It won't be long.
Stumbling towards the red light in the distance, Shepard raises her gun.
"Take me, you jealous bastard," She whispers. "Take me, and spare the rest."