"I made a mistake!"
She shivered with the intensity of his words. They almost made her let him go.
"I made a mistake. Focused on big picture, big picture made of little pictures, too many variables. Can't hide behind statistics, can't ignore new data, my responsibility. Need to go, running out of time."
"Mordin, walk away."
"Can't do that, Shepard."
"I don't have a choice here."
"Walk away or I will fire."
"Not your decision, not your work, not your cure. Had to be me. Someone else might have gotten it wrong."
"No time to argue, cure dispersal imminent. Must counteract sabotage. Stop me if you must."
With hot eyes and a hesitant breath she squeezed the trigger.
It rained. It rained heavily, a stench of deceit and regret she could not get out of her clothes no matter how hard she tried. She gave her best smile to Eve. Eve who she called friend, sister, who deserved none of this.
Fear held on tightly to the very bones of her. Fingernails dug in and came away with only dust. She wanted to apologize, to scream. They thought she was a hero. She thought she was a hero when her face was numb with drink-her zombie hands shook, rattling the empty glass and she reached for the door, to run, always to run it was what she wanted, but she was Shaggy in Scooby-Doo and she never went anywhere-and the lies were a cascade lapped up by the media.
She wanted to confess, but the words got stuck in her throat. Liquid courage. Ha! Her laugh was more like a sob. She had forgotten how. They knew. They knew. They were comforting eyes. Garrus. It was a game of numbers. He would sigh and nod. She imagined he would pinch the bridge of his nose, if he had much to grab on to, as if to wave off a headache, but it would be the right choice. She would have made the right choice. That's what he would say, that's what they all would say, because they needed her to go on and not be bogged down with morality.
But she was a cowboy in a Western, her black hat had fallen, and this was the credit roll.
Her head was pushing and tempting to burst with the thought of the lifeless eyes of the krogan women and men she had promised when had held their children. There should be laughter, joy, what they had been denied for too long-life. The crying and twisting of babies, but there was nothing but silence. There would only be children born of tanks, streaming from artificial wombs. More Grunts. She could make nothing right now. There were no take backs. This was it. Wasn't it? The machines would be destroyed.
She was burned by her sins.