A/N: Good news! I had the sudden intense urge to replay ME2 last night and have been writing furiously ever since, so there should be more of this soon.
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"Two years?" Shepard can't hide her shock, can't stop her voice from breaking a little over the words. There isn't time for this. They're being attacked and every sense she has is screaming that the situation is FUBAR and they need to get the hell out of dodge. But this stranger is staring at her, awe and compassion in his eyes, and she can't move past what he said. Can't move past those two words.
Two years.
Two years of the universe spinning on without her. Two years of recovery and rebuilding on the Citadel. Two years of Alliance and Spectre missions. Two years of her crew's lives. Two years for Liara. Where did she go? What is she doing?
Does anyone know she's here, does anyone outside of these strangers know she's alive? Surely not, or they would be here, right? They wouldn't have let her wake up alone to find out that it's been two fucking years.
The stranger, Jacob, clearly doesn't know what to say and the interruption of laser fire from another security mech is enough to force her emotions down, training and experience taking over as she coldly takes down the mech with a headshot and overloads the system of the one behind it.
Two years. As they disable more mechs, run into a scientist she doesn't trust at all, and continue to make their way out of this hellhole of a station, it is a running chant in the back of her head. Two years, two years, two years. She almost laughs when she realizes she missed her thirtieth birthday. Is she younger than Garrus now? She used to give him so much shit about being six months older than him.
And then Jacob decides to drop another bomb on her.
"It's funded and controlled by Cerberus."
Suddenly all of her shock and horror and confusion is gone in a blinding flash of rage.
Cerberus. That name is the sound of soldiers, teammates, dying, the feel of the ground opening beneath her feet as a Thresher Maw lunges toward the sky. That name is cruel, inhuman experiments and mutilated corpses. That name is everything she hates and she's more sure than ever that none of her crew, her friends, know she's alive, because they would never have left her with these bastards.
"We are going to get out of this station and then we're going to have a long fucking talk about why I shouldn't kill you and this Illusive Man," she grits out between clenched teeth, then turns and shoots another damned mech because she doesn't trust herself to look at him or Wilson without pulling the trigger.
Fucking Cerberus. What the hell happened while she was gone?