Disclaimer: I do not own Mass Effect or any of its wonderful worlds or characters. Everything belongs to BioWare.
Author's Note: Trigger Warning: There are some rather disturbing events written down in this story. I mean no disrespect to anyone who may have endured similar tragedies, and I apologize to anyone who might be hurt. But this fic does contain graphic violence and mentions of rape. If this is a sensitive subject, or a trigger of any sort, please do not read this fic. Thank you.
Huerta Memorial Hospital
"Thank you, doctor. Have a lovely evening."
Council Spectre and Alliance Commander Raegan Shepard let her dark laughter follow the physician's hasty retreat. Instinct was a beautiful thing. Everything possessed some sense of foreboding, some whisper of inclination when they stood before something more powerful, something that could kill. Even all the mute animals on every world, in every star system, understood the need to run from a predator. They sensed the thirst for blood, the hunger for flesh, the teeth that gnashed and the tongue that sought to lap the marrow from their bones.
Raegan smiled as she returned to her seat. It would seem that even humans possessed smatterings of the instinct that once governed their existence. The gentle sort, the kinder sort, the people who made healing their profession...they trembled in the presence of one who craved death. They ran from the force of her energy, sensing what others did not and could not. That Raegan Shepard existed for one purpose, and one purpose alone.
To kill.
The commander relaxed in her chair and folded her arms, accustomed to the scent of iron and salt that assaulted her. Her own natural scent was the stench of blood. The few, the brave, the foolish who had commented on it had more often than not found themselves covered in their own blood and left in the shadows of an ignominious corner to lick their wounds...if they did not die from them first.
Raegan's hands itched and her fingers twitched and spasmed of their own volition. Others might have called it a nervous tic, a stress response, or a sign of exhaustion. Raegan herself did not know the meanings of those words. She knew her hands were always searching, always seeking, always destroying. Ever since she had regained consciousness on the streets of Earth, without memory, without knowledge of anything but her name, and that only gained from the ident card in the pocket of her ragged clothing, her hands had ached, tremored, and twitched.
They found solace in action, in ruthlessness, in death. In the company of the gang, Raegan's hands had been feared. Even without a weapon, they were lethal. No locked room held safety. No fortress remained impenetrable. No lover had been left unsatisfied...or un-scarred.
The light of those thoughts drew Raegan's eyes to the bed, where a once-lover lay. Ashley Williams had been torn apart on Mars by a Cerberus construct. Raegan had seen to the thing's destruction, but that did not seem to matter. The damage had been done. Ashley had been hurt. And now, even though there were myriad things that she could be doing, and that needed done, Raegan sat here, in this chair, in a place that defied her very nature.
Raegan Shepard did not seek healing. She did not care if she bled, if the wound became infected, if it festered and scarred. Raegan was the one who stuck her fingers in a bullet wound and twisted, ripping away the blood clots, seeing if she could lose enough blood to go cold, to feel weak, to learn what the nebulous term "human frailty" might feel like for her. But it never happened. Pain never brought her to her knees. Loss of blood never made her head spin or the room tilt. Nothing. Ever. Hurt.
Perhaps, she mused, that was the very reason she remained in this room, wasting productive hours watching over the injured Ashley Williams. Because the woman intrigued her. Because the woman fascinated her. Because Ashley had done something Raegan had never seen anyone else, save herself, ever do. She had endured the deaths of countless, and walked on.
"Keep moving." Raegan orders, not looking back, not needing to. She knows what it looks like. Death never looks different.
"But..." the young lieutenant protests and Raegan looks back, her green eyes on fire. The LT steps back...Raegan doesn't know his name. She never takes the time to get to know the names.
"He's dead, LT." Raegan cuts off the words she's heard too many times: words of protest, words filled with emotions the commander doesn't even comprehend. "Let's move out."
"At least let me grab his tags, commander." the LT says, and Raegan sighs.
"Make it quick." she orders, watching the lieutenant kneel down and remove the tags from the soldier's body. Frustration builds as she watches the man's hand gently unclasp the chain, then reach up and close his comrade's wide eyes.
"Get the fuck up." she says, seeing the heat of resistance flare in the lieutenant's expressive dark eyes. What he doesn't know is that it won't do him any good.
The same heat fired the eyes of men she killed. Men who were more powerful, men who were stronger, men who underestimated her abilities. The men who thought that seeing her friends die around her would weaken her in some way. It didn't. All it did was end their lives sooner.
"Aye aye, commander." the lieutenant replies, tucking the dead soldier's tags in his belt pouch for safe-keeping.
They move out, through the lush grasses of Eden Prime. Raegan watches for enemies, knowing that this world is too quiet, that it holds death in every shadowed crevice. Dark things have come to this verdant paradise, and Raegan's eyes light as she imagines finding them, seeing their life and light and exsanguinating it.
At last, the first volley of shots come, along with an armored soldier running from the enemy. Raegan lifts her weapon and fires at the drones, ignoring the feminine voice that shouts at them to take cover. She stands as the lieutenant and the soldier duck behind the rocks, drawing the fire of the drones, testing the limits of her shields, daring the shots to penetrate her armor and her flesh...but the enemies fall too soon.
The soldier rises and removes her helmet.
Raegan's eyes flare as the face is revealed. The marine is gorgeous, with soulful dark eyes that catch the commander off guard, but only for a moment.
"I'm Commander Shepard." Raegan introduces herself. "What the hell is going on here?"
"Gunnery Chief Ashley Williams, ma'am." the marine salutes. "And as for what's happening, that's a bit of a mystery to both of us. Geth outside of the veil. They hit us out of nowhere and wiped out my unit."
Raegan's interest piques. The information was given with a straight face, and no sign of grief. Shepard has seen lone survivors before. They tend to be shells of the men and women they once were, hopelessly broken, demolished by the supposed "horror" wrought on them. This woman shows none of those signs. Raegan can see it, and it tantalizes her.
Perhaps she is not alone in this galaxy after all. Perhaps there is another, a soldier, who can look death in the face and laugh. Who can face loss without sorrow. Who doesn't know how to hurt. A long known hunger ignites in Raegan. To know. To possess. To hold and squeeze and test until she sees whether or not what she holds will break.
"Damn drones knocked out one of my guys, Williams." Raegan says. "How 'bout you join up with us and see this thing through?"
"Sounds good to me, ma'am." Williams nods, and the helmet goes back on.
Raegan smiles, the first of the razor smiles that will ever be directed towards Ashley Williams, but certainly not the last.
A loud beeping broke the commander from her reverie and she looked to the heart monitor, her eyebrow quirking with nothing more than mild interest as the heartbeat flickered, fluttered, then evened again. Her hands were aching now and she rose from her seat and paced across the room, then walked to the bed that held the Lieutenant Commander. Her hands gripped the cool metal of the railing, but it did nothing to soothe the tension that knotted the tendons and muscles, nothing to soothe the itch beneath the skin.
Raegan looked to Ashley's bruised, battered face, recalling the flare of the dark eyes beneath the swelling and blood-blisters, the heat that had, once, managed to scorch her. It had happened on Horizon...when the conquest had at last come to an end. When Raegan had come back from the dead, stormed back into Ashley's life, and taken what she wanted. No...she had to be honest with herself. What she had needed.
She had dreamed after that night. Dreamed of the words that Ashley had said to her. Calling her a monster. Calling her a bitch. Wondering what she was.
Raegan had never questioned her identity before. It was something that had been torn away from her before it was realized. Something that had lain in the black of the memories she could not recall. No one had ever taught her that pain should hurt, that hearts could speak. She followed her mind; she obeyed her instinct. She survived. Even death had tried to claim her, and Raegan had beaten it.
"All the times you questioned me." Raegan spoke to the unconscious woman who had some...some hold on her that she detested and yet desired. "All the times you flung in my face what I had done..."
Raegan cradles her violin close, feeling the vibrations through the wood and into her neck as she draws the bow across the strings. Music floats through the deserted mess hall, the metal walls and floors heightening the shivering sounds with beautiful echoes. The commander loses herself in the ancient melody, a song of sorrow and loss and of whispering good-byes, but its meaning doesn't touch her. All she can feel is the bow in her hand, another weapon of the spider, intent on luring unsuspecting prey towards it.
Because beautiful things are beloved, and Raegan is not stupid. She knows she will never be considered beautiful. There are too many scars striped across her body for such a definition. There is a frigid light in her eyes that frightens those with lesser strength. Her smile holds no mirth, just a promise of what will come. Because Raegan smiles in the face of battle and bloodshed and destruction. She does not smile for mirth, for laughter, for happiness. Those things, like bullets in her skin, teach her nothing.
"Ashokan Farewell." Ashley leans against the doorway, muttering the title of the song that Raegan continues to play, drawing every exquisite note from the body of her instrument.
"One of my favorite pieces." the commander sets the instrument down and looks at Ashley.
"Fitting, at a time like this." the chief nods, moving closer into the light.
Raegan examines the pallor of Ashley's cheeks, the puffy, swollen, reddened skin of her eyelids, the dark circles beneath her eyes. She holds herself carefully, favoring her injured side. It does not surprise Raegan that Ashley is standing after taking a bullet on Virmire. The woman is made of sparkspit and steel. Williams is pure grit, pure strength, and Raegan is intent on finding the core of it, holding it like her violin, and drawing it out into the air, a beautiful melody to torture and to haunt.
"What do you mean?" Raegan asks, purposefully obtuse, looking for something other than poetic calm from her gunnery chief.
"Don't be stupid, Skipper." Ashley chastises her, knowing it is a breach of protocol, knowing her commanding officer won't care. "Any sane person would think you were playing for Kaidan. Because he's dead...because you cared about him."
"Not every dead soldier gets a song, Ash. Only the special ones." Shepard smiles, running her long, elegant, murderer's fingers across the curves of her violin, imagining those hands on the chief's body, perhaps a seduction under the pretense of needing comfort...though she needs no such thing.
Kaidan's death was necessary. It was not tragic. It was not anything to be mourned. Soldiers died in war. It was simple fact, and the rest of the damn crew needed to realize that. She would give them one night to get over themselves, and let them glare at her all they desired, but at the end of the day she couldn't care less. Had it been Raegan at the towers, she would have understood. She would have died.
"Permission to speak freely, ma'am." Ashley asks, and something in Shepard's gut tightens.
Yes. This is what she wants. The confrontation with this woman. To see what is inside of her mind and her heart, to dissect it thought by thought and word by word. To study her prety, then capture, then hold, then possess. Raegan knows, in the back of her mind, that many would think this cruel, but cruelty is always subjective. What others call cruelty, she names necessity.
"Granted." Shepard smiles, her heart beating faster.
"You are seriously fucked up in the head, Shepard." Ashley spits. "I've got people on this ship left and right asking how hard this hit you because you've been acting like a callous bitch. Most of them are giving you an allowance, saying that you're just bucking up and soldiering on, but after what you just said...I don' t think you're putting on a 'brave face' at all."
"No?" Raegan asks, leaning against the table, arching an eyebrow. "What do you think I'm doing, chief?"
"Nothing." Ashley answers. "Because you don't think anything needs to be done. Because you honestly don't give a shit that a good man died down on that planet. It's just attrition to you, an acceptable loss, and it hasn't touched you at all."
"And?" Shepard asks, beginning to peel away the skin around Ashley's personality, her heart, to expose what lay beneath. "Didn't you do the same thing on Eden Prime? You lost your entire unit and you pressed on like nothing happened. It was you or him today, and you're down here chewing me out instead of curled up into a ball crying your eyes out? What does that say about you chief? Aren't we one and the same?"
"Hell fucking no, Skipper." Ashley retorted. "There's a fundamental difference between you and me. When I kill someone, it sickens me. When I lose someone, it fucking hurts. When I close my eyes at night, when I sleep, I have nightmares. When you kill, it's the only time you show emotion...and you're thrilled. When you lose someone, it doesn't matter to you because you can't be touched. And when you dream, you're reliving good memories."
"You can't know that." Raegan hisses, but she knows she is lying. Every word out of Ashley's mouth is truth.
"I can and I do." Ashley states, emphatic. "And I hope to God that you can find some way to fix yourself, because from where I'm standing, you're a lost cause."
"Everyone in the uniform is a lost cause, Ashley." Shepard replies.
"Maybe so, but you're a special kind of hell all your own." the gunnery chief snaps. She takes a step forward and falters, her hand going to her side, where the bullet struck. She breathes deep, swallowing the pain, watching Raegan's expression and seeing that it does not change. "I thought that the rumors about the Butcher of Torfan were just a bunch of soldiers blowing things out of proportion. But after today, I believe every word. You fed every single soldier under your command into a grist mill just for the fuck of it."
"It got the job done." Shepard says, attempting to feel the imapct from Ashley's words, attempting to recall how she felt that day at Torfan...finding nothing. Because there was nothing for her to feel. She had done what was necessary at the time to achieve the desired results.
"What kind of rationalizing is that?" Ashley demands. "It got the job done? I joined the military because I love my people and I want us to be safe in this galaxy, Skipper. I joined for my father, my mother, and my little sisters. Just because I'm wearing a uniform doesn't mean I have a goddamn death wish! Just because we promise our lives doesn't mean we want to die! It doesn't mean we accept death! Do you fucking understand that? Do you even comprehend that back on Earth, Kaidan has a mom and dad who are going to fall the fuck apart when you inform them of their son's death?"
Raegan's eyes dim as Ashley pauses, and for once she decides to relent, to attempt to reveal a part of herself she has never given to anyone.
"I wouldn't know, Ash." she says. "I don't know what it is to have someone I care about...because I don't know what it is to care. No one is going to cry for me when I die...I can't picture crying for anyone else."
Ashley's expression softens; Raegan notices she looks pale. "I might cry for you, Skipper." she admits. "If I knew for sure there was a human part of you that died. Because from where I stand, you don't even know what being human means."
Raegan stands and her fiery green eyes lock with Ashley's dark. "Is that what you're looking for, chief?" she asks. "Some human part of me? Something that might be redeemed?"
"I'd like to think it's in there somewhere." Ashley says, pressing her hand to her side even harder. "I know you have to have a heart. You couldn't lead like you do if you didn't. You couldn't inspire people to go on suicide missions if you didn't. Hell, Tali and Liara are young, sweet, and naive, and both of them adore you for some reason. That speaks to me. It says that somewhere, beyond what everyone sees, beyond what you show the rest of the galaxy, there's a good side of you."
"There really isn't."
Ashley sways and Raegan's lips turn down at the corners. The chief is beginning to look markedly unwell, and it bothers Raegan. People fear the commander. People move away when she walks down the streets; they silence when she speaks, and it is not out of respect, but out of fear. Ashley has done none of these things. She has spoken her mind, without hesitation and without anxiety. There is a strength in that...a strength that makes little sense, because Ashley confessed to having the soldier's nightmares; she confessed to the weakness of grief.
"Are you all right, chief?" Shepard asks, startling herself, because she can never recall having asked that question of anyone.
Ashley moves her hand away from the bullet wound and presses it to her head. "Not feeling too hot actually." she admits. "Got one hell of a headache. Kinda dizzy."
She moves her hand and Raegan's heart begins to beat faster as she sees the smear of blood on Ashley's skin. The wound must have reopened, and it is too dark in the room to see how much blood Ashley might have lost. Raegan takes another step forward as Ashley pales further. The chief's knees buckle and she falls. Raegan catches her, holding her close, stunned by the intimacy of this moment, of feeling someone wounded in her arms...someone she does not desire to harm, but to help.
Raegan goes to her knees, supporting Ashley, whose breathing is harsh, coming in short bursts. Her brow is creased in pain, her dark eyes wide with confusion. Shepard searches those eyes, knowing that there should be fear there. Fear, because Raegan Shepard leaves the wounded on the battlefield. Fear, because Raegan does not know the meaning of compassion. Fear, because Raegan has never cried for the loss of a soldier or offered any sympathy for their injuries.
But in Ashley's eyes, there is something entirely different. Calm. Compassion. Confidence. Trust. And an emotion that Raegan knows nothing of. Hope.
"I've got you." Raegan whispers, wondering where the words come from, because she has never spoken them. "Just hang on."
The commander lifts the chief in her arms and begins carrying her through the ship, questioning everything. Questioning her own identity. Questioning if what Ashley seems to believe exists, actually does. If the Butcher of Torfan has a heart.
The med-bay doors open and Shepard presses the button to call Dr. Chakwas and her staff. She sets Ashley on the bio-bed, confused at her reluctance to let the woman out of her arms.
She looks into Ashley's eyes, and takes her hand. Her own hands no longer twitch, tremble, or seek something else when she laces her fingers through Ashley's.
"What do you think I am, chief?" she asks, wanting the honesty she knows she will receive.
Ashley grins, even though her face is wan, her strength rapidly fading. "You're a renegade, solid gone." the chief answers. "But you can come back. I'll help...if you want."
Ashley's eyes flutter closed and Raegan steps away as though she has been burned. Her eyes and expression harden. In that moment, she had felt a shock of vulnerability, and it sickened her. She does not need help. She does not need anything. The soldiers that do wind up dead.
The med-bay lights flicker on and Chakwas enters, a look of concern on her features.
"What is it, commander?" she asks, moving to Ashley and beginning a scan.
"I think her wound re-opened." Shepard answers. "Fix it. Last thing we need is another dead soldier. Everyone's still bawling over...what's his name."
"Alenko." Chakwas hisses. "Lieutenant Kaidan Alenko. Get out of my med-bay, Shepard. A peaceful atmosphere is required to heal. I do not need the Grim Reaper herself standing over my patients."
Raegan smiles, pleased with the return to normalcy. This, she can understand. This, she has been her entire life and military career. Heartless. Unmovable. Death itself.
The Butcher of Torfan looked away from Ashley Williams' bruised, battered face. She tried not to think about the reasons Ashley lay here, helpless, in this bed. She tried to convince herself that she had not failed, but she was losing her ability to lie to herself about such things.
Horizon had...changed things. Everything. They had fought, spitting words of anger and guilt. Ashley had been so hurt...and Raegan had taken advantage. She had used the heat and fire of anger to seduce the woman she had wanted since laying eyes on her at Eden Prime. And Ashley had taken her by storm. Raegan still shuddered as she remembered the harsh, sharp thrusts of her former chief's fingers inside of her. She bit her lip as she remembered Ashley's nails raking that most tender, intimate flesh.
She had feasted on anger, and come with all the fury of the gods beneath that wrathful touch. She had given Ashley the pretense of victory, and then she had laid claim. And that claim terrified her. Because her touch had been gentle. The words she had whispered in Ashley's ear had been soft murmurs of praise and admiration, not profanity laced, lewd proclamations that peppered the majority of her sexual encounters.
Something had snapped inside of her, and when she had finished and dressed, she had felt lost. Some part of her had been swallowed in Ashley's embrace, burned away by her kisses, scorched by her almost unwilling surrender. She had returned to the Normandy SR-2 a different woman. Everyone had taken notice.
Samara, the Justicar, had taken her aside, asking her what had changed. Raegan had been unable to explain, and the asari, in an attempt to help, had offered a meld. For some reason, Raegan had submitted, trusting the asari, who followed a harsh, strict, and brutal code, to enter into her mind and unravel the memories and the mysteries of what had happened on Horizon. What had snapped. What had been broken inside.
The meld had revealed more than simply that. Samara had found the damaged parts inside Raegan's mind, the memories she had lost when she woke up in that dirty, dingy alley, without an identity and with blood everywhere. Raegan had seen herself, a smiling, happy child...she had seen friends, a loving father and mother. She saw a young girl taking violin lessons, crying for the beauty of the music that she played.
Samara had restored the night that changed Raegan's life forever. When men and women invaded her family's sanctum. When they tied up her father and beat him savagely. When they forced her mother onto the bed and held her father's eyes open to watch as they violated her. When they had heard Raegan weeping and dragged her out from under the bed, kicking and screaming, clawing at them.
She had relearned her past...seen the inception of the woman that became the Butcher of Torfan. She had seen that young girl fight back, managing to grab a knife from one of the intruders. Hearing the gunshots and seeing her father's brain splatter on the walls. Feeling the knife pierce the flesh of one of the men, and savoring the sound of his pained cries because it was right that such a bastard should suffer.
Raegan had endured the meld, forcing herself to see, because she believed that she was strong...but it was a lie. She was not strong enough to face herself. Her nights were no longer dreamless. They were now haunted by the memory of ripping that knife upward, watching the man drop. They were haunted by the image of her musician's fingers grasping a gun and lifting it, shooting the villains who had taken her father's life and her mother's body and her own innocence.
Her ears rang now with her mother's mad wailing, with the memory of beautiful green eyes that looked into her daughter's face and split lips that begged to die. Raegan remembered knowing what mercy was. Knowing that night that survival did not matter. That death came to all. She dreamed now of lifting that gun one more time, to her mother's head, driven mad by the murder and the chaos, driven mad by the tears in her mother's eyes and the blood on her legs. She remembered pulling the trigger and ending all of that pain. And the last memory before the end...of sitting in the corner, staring at the barrel of the pistol, surrounded by the dead and the dying and realizing that life had lost all meaning. Her hands trembled, but her finger tightened. Thunder cracked and light blinded...and the world went dark.
Raegan had emerged from the meld, screaming, holding her head as she shivered violently from the memories regained. And Samara had shown her compassion. She had lifted the commander in her arms and taken Raegan to her quarters, lying beside her as she bled her soul clean, listening to the incoherent babbles of a broken woman whose mind had been shattered.
The next morning, Raegan had regained herself...herself that she knew. The cruel, brutal commander of the Normandy. What she had seen could not change her. It simply augmented her knowledge, gave purpose to the madness that defined her.
Raegan looked out of the windows of Huerta Memorial as the light outside grew brighter. She turned from the light and looked back at Ashley Williams. And she allowed herself to feel the terror that had stricken her when Dr. Eva had lifted the lieutenant commander from the ground, the terror in Raegan's heart when Eva had slammed Ashley into the shuttle as Shepard fought through the rubble to get to her. Raegan allowed herself the tears that pricked her eyes as she ran a finger over Ashley's bruised cheek.
"I haven't been good to you." Raegan whispered. "And I realize that now in a way I couldn't before. You've only ever been honest with me, Ash...and I can only hope that you don't hate me. You're the only one whose never hated me, at least not completely. I may never be a good woman. But I'll work at it. For you."
Raegan sat down and lifted the small book she had brought from the Normandy. It had been a gift, long ago, from Ashley Williams. She had given it to Raegan after they had brought down Saren, with that strange hope in her eyes and words that would haunt Raegan forever.
You're still fucked up in the head, Skipper. But here's proof that some fucked up people can do great things. You can make something good out of your life, Raegan. I believe that.
Raegan smiled and opened the book, finding a passage that she loved and reading aloud to her unconscious lieutenant commander...the woman who had shown her what hope looked like, who had shown her what love could look like...and that soldiers didn't exist to die. They existed to protect. It wasn't about taking bullets. It was about standing in front of those bullets for someone else, someone who might make the galaxy better. For Raegan, she knew that meant it was her duty to stand before all the weapons of the enemy, in front of the galaxy...to take all the wounds and injuries meant for them; for all were better than she.
"Stop this day and night with me, and you shall possess the origin of all poems; you shall possess the good of the earth and sun-(there are millions of suns left). You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books; you shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me: you shall listen to all sides, and filter them from yourself. I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of beginning and end; but I do not talk of the beginning or the end. There was never any more inception than there is now, nor any more youth or age than there is now; and there will never be any more perfection than there is now, nor anymore heaven or hell than there is now."
She rose from her seat and closed the book, leaving it on Ashley's bedside table, knowing the woman would recognize it when she woke. Taking advantage of Williams' unconsciousness, Raegan leaned down and pressed a kiss to her forehead.
"I'll save the world for you, Ash." she promised. "Even if you never forgive me, I'll save the world for you."