So. I've wanted to write something for Mass Effect since I first played the game, because, well, Mass Effect is awesome. Up until now I've never managed an effort that got beyond a few ideas or a couple of paragraphs, but Mass Effect 2 – though I have serious issues with it overall – did manage to spark inspiration. So I wrote this. And this is… something. It kind of wrote itself, I'm not really sure what it is. A string of observations set throughout ME2 is the best I can describe it as. And it is Shenko-focused, but in an understated way, because this is a more introspective piece than anything. I'm just trying my hand at writing the universe.
Fifteen seconds.
Safety is in reach, but chaos is swifter. Gloved fingers rake across slick metal, a futile search for purchase, scrabbling for a grip amidst the disorder as the ship teeters dangerously and alarms flash crimson in the shadow. The shelter of the escape pod's interior is but an arm's length away from her, but she just can't get there, and the spread of icy panic beneath her ribs tightens its grip as the rumble of an explosion begins to tear through the Normandy's hull. A beam of light and the ship jerks hard to one side, and Shepard is thrown back, slammed into the far wall as Joker cries out in alarm.
One last lunge for the safety of the pod eludes her; another blast knocks her away, and as her breath is forced from her in a hard exhale the ship tears apart.
Multiple small explosions culminate in one devastating blast, a searing lick of flame and smoke and death that flares to life for an agonizing instant before the fire is devoured by the empty vacuum of space. A knifing pain bolts abruptly through Shepard's body as she careens through the wreckage into blackness, and through the panic and shock and dazed stupor her mind can only partially register the frantic message flashing in her suit's internal HUD. The exact script is indistinguishable, shattered into pinpoints of red by the fractured state of her visor, but the meaning is clear and stands out in stark clarity against the fog of near-unconsciousness.
Hardsuit breached.
Fifteen seconds.
Fifteen seconds, and the jagged edges of that reality are difficult to grasp, and she feels the knife's blade of pain begin to crawl over her skin like a film of ice. Suddenly it's everywhere at once, driving deep and drawing life from her, slamming her down into a realm of bitter vulnerability. She kicks out at nothingness as the emptiness of space begins to press in, her fingers scrabbling futilely at her visor. She gasps in the vacuum and finds no air and the panic is suddenly like a devouring beast chewing through her consciousness. She's drowning in a sea of stars, surrounded by the wreckage of her vessel, and the world begins to darken and…
There are approximately fifteen seconds of conscious awareness when exposed to the devastating nothing of space. Fifteen seconds, and there is not a thing she can do with them.
She is dying, with no Reapers and no Geth and no spattering of gunfire around her. Alone, save for the remnants of her ship.
Sluggishness begins to join the pain, and then it begins to cancel it out, and her thoughts slow alongside her movements. The pain is there, a red hot flame and a frosty burn all at once, but it suddenly doesn't matter and her head is spinning and she's losing the ability to keep her thoughts in focus. They're slippery, distant, brushing against her like an unseen sea creature only to vanish into shadow again.
She struggles with dying ferocity in rebellion against her body's failure and thinks of the Reapers, of the threat she hasn't quite managed to stop, and the vision burns hot in her mind and entangles itself in her fading consciousness as shadow begins to seep in.
She feels the pain bleed away into the void threatening to pull her down into it and thinks of Kaidan, and the world is sapped of color and the clench of some indeterminable emotion shudders through her with the last whisper of awareness.
And then she goes still in the blackness of space and thinks of nothing at all.
She doesn't expect to wake again, and she doesn't expect to dream, but in the end she does both.
She dreams, first. Of the Reapers, of destruction, of death and the chaos they will bestow upon the galaxy as a whole. Like it had been in life she sees the Protheans brought to ruin, a long-lost message from a piece of ancient technology, a tattered story and a weight she bears the brunt of. She feels the panic and the distant flavor of horror, the urgency of needing to do something about it, but finding that she can't. Because she's dead. And she isn't supposed to be dreaming.
She wakes to pain and bright light and the chaos of the world, and somehow, that seems unfair as well.
Waking from death, as it turns out, is a complicated situation.
Memories as fresh as yesterday are two years outdated now, swept away by time and abandoned alongside a past lost to her. The team she built in her pursuit of Saren has dissolved, the ties between them having frayed and snapped in the absence of the one who forged them to begin with. And she's right back where she started, with the urgency of the beacon's warning burning hot in her consciousness, and with a pursuit splayed out before her, and with no team to stand behind her. Not yet.
"It isn't the same, is it?" Dr. Chakwas asks one day, finishing up the routine physical check the Spectre is now subjected to regularly in the wake of her death and return. The new medbay is considerably larger, outfitted with the best medical supplies available, and the soft lights overhead reflect off of gleaming walls and the Cerberus logo that rests starkly against them.
"No." Shepard shakes her head, emphatically, raking a hand through rumpled hair. "It's not."
And Chakwas only nods quietly, the rueful smile she offers in return accented by the slant of warm light across her features. "We'll make do, because we have to," the doctor declares. "But it will never be the same."
And yes. They will make do. Building a team – a team that meshes well, a team that she can trust – Is a slow and precarious process, but she's done it before, and she'll manage it again. They don't have a choice, not with the Collectors at their heels and the Reapers waiting in darkness just beyond. She's Commander Shepard, and she'll do what she has to.
And yet. Yet, she had a team, and they're gone. And he isn't there. And the ship feels empty.
They're well into their fourth week aboard the SR2 when she stumbles across the picture frame.
She's pawing through her desk drawer for her datapad – where did she put that? – and she's all but given up on rifling through a mess of assorted belongings when the light from her quarters glints off of something black and gleaming. She pauses; her gaze flicks downward, brows furrowing in thought as she scoops up the item in question. It's a flat device, a blank display panel, and she is baffled for a long moment as she runs a hand over the smooth surface. Her fingers find a switch, and she activates it cautiously and watches as the screen flickers lazily to life.
And it's a picture frame. And that revelation amuses her enough that she doesn't register the image peering back at her for several moments.
And then: oh. Oh.
There is uncertainty and longing and weariness and reminiscence all at once, a tangle of emotion that scuffles for dominance, and wordlessly she sets the frame atop her desk. It seems to belong there; she wonders who planted the frame in her quarters to begin with, and decides that it doesn't really matter. A soft smile dances fleetingly across her features, pulling rare warmth into the steady gaze looking back at Kaidan's image, and she allows herself the fleeting moment because beneath the frigid resolve and the stern insistence on doing her duty (she's a Spectre again now, after all) the truth of it is that she does miss him.
Someday, she thinks, and gets back to work. They'll run into each other somewhere along the way, because it's inevitable, and she can't imagine that she'll have to wait long. But for now – for now, there are things to be done.
The screams are deafening.
Darkness presses in, and the sense of urgency that joins it is a serrated blade in the gloom. The Protheans are dying all around her, and their blood paints the dream with shadow, and she cries out but her voice is swallowed by the screaming. This – this dream, this vision, this memory not truly hers – is familiar and terrifyingly alien all at once, a dance she knows and an unexplored labyrinth, and as it always did before it feels altogether too much like assembling a puzzle in the dark.
The Protheans are dying, though. Synthetics bring death and destruction, and their legacy is devoured by the blackness of the void, and as she trembles in the shadow there is nothing she can do to stop it. Her thoughts are frayed and blurry, and she tries to breathe but finds no air, and she struggles in the vacuum and-
No. Not that. That isn't the dream. That's a memory, a real one, juxtaposed against those belonging to beings thousands of years before her time. The lines between the two are blurring, fading into shades of gray, ragged edges dulling until they are all but indistinguishable.
"The time of our return is coming," the nightmare hisses, and the flames lick at her consciousness and the world runs red with blood…
The ship is burning; the shadows are pressing in around them, and she has to do her duty. And he hesitates, but she barks orders through the smoke and the rubble, because he can't stay like this. "Kaidan, go. Now."
Memories blur with the nightmare again; she wakes with a gasp, and the dream is gone.
Her first thought is that he looks tired.
Horizon's blazing sun glints off of his armor, slants across the exhausted set of his features, and there is a smear of blood at his hairline and a slight hitch to his stride and a look of dazed disbelief etched deep into his weary visage. She catches his gaze and holds it evenly; his brows knit together, and the twist of confusion and uncertainty coloring his expression is one she's become well accustomed to since her return. He looks as tired and shell-shocked as she feels, just as weighed down by the responsibilities of the world, and – wordlessly – she takes a step forward and reaches for him.
He stumbles numbly into the embrace; armor is a sturdy barrier between them, but his arms come up around her, and for the span of a tired moment she presses her cheek to the shoulder plate of his hardsuit and breathes deeply. The smell of smoke lingers thickly in the air and the sky is red with their failure and the weight of duty is heavy over both of them. But this – this moment, this instant, this whispered reconciliation – is theirs, and they steal it furtively away from the steely grip of responsibility.
It doesn't last; it can't last. He's gone on in her wake for two years, rebuilding and finding his way and forging a path in a world tilted off its axis by her death. She's woken from what felt to her like a flickering moment to find a galaxy altered by time, not sure what to do now that she's back in it. Their common ground has been shattered and they don't know what to do with that, and they argue, and there simply isn't time.
They go their separate ways. "Take care of yourself, Shepard," he says, and it's a acidic accusation and a reluctant acceptance and a quiet plea all at once.
The sky is red with their failure, and Garrus's mandibles flick uncertainly, and the iron curtain of responsibility slams down hard around her once again.
She can do it without him, of course.
She's Commander Shepard, and she'll do her duty regardless of circumstance and convenience, just as she always has. There are people to be saved, and the beacon's warning burns hotly in her mind, and she has responsibilities to fulfill that surpass personal feelings. There is no time, no time for dwelling, no time for weighing her words and his against each other and calculating – because she's always calculating – how things could have been different.
And she understands his reasoning; he's cautious, he's always been cautious, and a part of her is glad that she doesn't have to pull him into the darkness with her. The blunt truth is that she herself doesn't trust the organization she's thrown her lot in with, and while she knows – because they've told her, because she can see it – that their partnership is necessary she cannot dismiss Kaidan's fears entirely. They've gone their separate ways for now, and she accepts that, because there are things to be done.
The ship still feels empty.
The Omega 4 relay waits for her.
Her quarters are dark and quiet, and the pale blue light from her empty fish tank washes softly over the fading network of scars lingering still across the line of her jaw. Her armor is secure, gleaming starkly black in the gloom, and her assault rifle is loaded and clipped to her back. She's ready, at last, with a fully-equipped ship, a team that surpasses any she's worked with in the past, a taste of raw adrenaline flooding her veins and a grip of frosty determination knotting beneath her ribs.
Humanity depends on her. The galaxy depends on her. The vision is there, and in it the world runs red with blood, and she will not let that happen again. Those memories – memories not hers, memories belonging to a race dead thousands of years before her time – are an ever-present reminder of what it is she has to do. Sovereign's voice hisses still in the back of her mind, ('the time of our return is coming') but it doesn't matter, not now. The cycle can be broken. The cycle will be broken, and she will see it done.
She strides through the shadow toward the doorway – five minutes, Joker had said, and oh, how different this is from the night leading up to Ilos – and she flexes her fingers and rolls her shoulders and takes a deep breath to steady her focus. With their lives teetering on the knife's edge of fate – or luck, or preparedness, it doesn't really matter – there is no time to delay, and absolutely no room for distraction.
She stops to snatch her helmet from her desk and pauses; Kaidan's picture flickers to life at her approach, and she freezes in place for a fraction of a second, her gaze trapped as a conflicted grimace twists the expression of cold command from her visage. Her helmet falls back to land with a quiet thud on the counter, and she expels a breath and shakes her head ruefully.
There's no time, but for a half moment that is irrelevant. She scoops up the frame and inclines her head slightly, and there is just the faintest ghost of a smile on her lips and just the slightest softening of the intense grimness in her gaze. Someday, he'd said. After the mission was complete – if it was ever complete, for her – maybe they would find their way, and maybe they would find their footing, and maybe (because stranger things had happened) the galaxy would give them peace enough to let it remain.
But for now…
The smile fades into a grim line, and the warmth in her countenance gives way to cold focus. She takes a deep breath, and she sets the frame back, and with her helmet snugly tucked against her hip she turns and strides from the room.
There are things to be done, after all.
The Collector base is a sea of shadow and gloom, darkness that weighs upon the grim infinity of space itself, and Shepard pauses for a moment in the entrance to survey her team.
Jacob and Miranda hoist their rifles, and Thane gazes into the darkness with calculating calm, and Jack's biotic corona flares around her like a blue flame. Legion watches impassively, his piece of N7 armor gleaming in the shadows, while Mordin mumbles something inaudible and clasps his hands behind his back. Samara is cool composure and Grunt is raw, unbridled energy, and Zaeed is intensity and grim determination. And Tali and Garrus look back at her with trusting stoicism, because they've done this before, and they can do it again.
And Kaidan isn't there, but as she closes her eyes and breathes deeply in the darkness she thinks, someday, maybe.
The vision burns hot in her mind, and she sets her jaw, and with one last breath – inhale, exhale – Commander Shepard strides onward into the shadow.
end
Disclaimer: Yup. Your author is 16, and thus owns absolutely nothing belonging to BioWare. If she did, Kaidan would have joined the crew, dang it. (She also isn't bitter about that.) (At all.)