Chapter 1: Changes

Joker stepped into the commander's quarters as quickly as his fragile body would take him, worry stamped across his features. It was very early, yes, but his superior, Commander Shepard, should have answered the com the third time around... The hatch slid open and it took a moment to recognize Shepard slumped at her desk, unmoving.

As always, he was struck by how beautiful she was, despite the scars. Her delicate black hair was shoulder length and wispy, which stood in contrast with her skin, pale from living in the confines of a starship for months on end. Soft blue patterns played across her skin from the lights of a wall-length fish tank, the room's only illumination.

She still wore her heavy combat armor, though it had been hours since she boarded the ship from their last mission. It was pretty banged up these days, paint ripped by sand-sized hyper-velocity bullets and the assortment of bladed weapons she'd met in the darker corners during their travels across the galaxy. As he stepped towards her, reaching for her shoulder, he noticed the bulky contraption wrapped around her skull as an expensive audio headset.

She started at his touch, already reaching for her pistol. Joker started just as badly when he realized she actually had it in her hand, instead of leaving it down in the armory as required by regulations. The M5 pistol was lined up with his face, laser sight dancing patterns on his forehead, before Shepard's bloodshot hazel eyes lit up in recognition. Slowly, so slowly, she lowered the weapon back down to its holster at her waist, where it folded in on itself.

Joker held his silence as Shepard sighed and slowly pulled off the headset. As soon as it was off her head the heavy pulsating beats assaulted his ears; it had to be way past the point the volume started to cause hearing loss. She hit the mute button built into the side of the headphones. The sudden silence was even worse.

"Sorry, Joker. What is it?"

It didn't look like he'd be getting more of an explanation than that. Yet his snarky side couldn't quit. "Jeez Shepard, what's with the music? You're killing your ears, you know."

She shrugged. "The music... it's just... I don't know." She gazed at his feet, unable to meet his eyes. "Sometimes when I listen to it turned way up I can lose myself in it. I could be anyone, anywhere. I can just be empty, feeling instead of thinking. No pressure."

He was pretty sure she wouldn't have said even that much to anyone else on the ship.

"Hmmmm. Well. Uh, you had me worried there, not answering your com like that."

Shepard raised an eyebrow and gave him a little shrug. "Sorry."

"Okay. Just saying."

After another long pause in which Shepard just stared at him, he turned and fled. As the elevator door closed on him he glanced back to see Shepard already lost back in the music, headphones shutting out the world. Her eyes were closed and she was nodding slowly, almost imperceptibly, to the beat he couldn't hear.

He didn't want to believe it, but it was too obvious to ignore any longer. Shepard was falling apart.

Six Months Earlier

Of all things it was the hands that bothered him. They were just so... different. Those hands, strong, scarred, and calloused, that had gripped the back of his pilot's couch, that had hauled him to the escape pod, that had launched the pod even as she was being sucked into the void—they were indelibly imprinted in his mind. Yet the hands before him now were smooth and unmarked. Devoid of history, of connection. Empty.

Jeff "Joker" Moreau, currently (and probably permanently) unassigned pilot extraordinaire, stood observing a massive tank. Endless wires and monitors trailed in every direction. The tank itself was filled with a pale blue fluid which cycled constantly, bubbling with added oxygen. Within the floated a naked woman whose privacy was only narrowly guarded by strips of opaque fabric. Commander Shepard, paragon of humanity, Savior of the Citadel, cast off of the Council, and ultimately another life cut off too soon, unable to fulfill her dreams.

Don't think of her that way Jeff. This bitterness business is starting to get to you.

A sudden movement in the tank drew Jeff's eye. Could it have been...

Her hand twitched again. He opened his mouth and turned-

"Just testing the nervous impulses while we rehydrate her, Jeff. Nothing to worry about."

The voice's owner, his guide and unofficial guard dog, stood back in the shadows cast by the bright medical monitors at her workstation.

"Don't call me that." He tried to cover up his irritation with humor. "To you, it's Grand Admiral, or Joker if you must. Ah, the life of a hero."

She waited in silence, refusing to take the bait.

Joker gave a low sigh. "Alright, Cerberus. I didn't think I'd ever see the day, but you've got a deal. Bring her back and I'm in."

Time went slowly for Joker as days slowly turned to weeks and months. Aside from his quick visit to the secret Cerberus space station (after they'd carefully ensured he couldn't figure out precisely where they'd gone) he'd had no contact with anyone even remotely resembling a Cerberus agent. He'd spent his time on the Citadel, the center of the galactic community and home of the multi-species Council which governed most of known space. All of this had come as quite a surprise to humanity a few generations back, and they were still in the process of playing catch-up.

At times like this, leaning against a bridge railing and looking out over one of the lakes of the prestigious Presidium deck of the Citadel, feeling the artificially generated breeze play across his face, it seemed like it might never have happened; that seeing Shepard, Cerberus, all of it was just another nightmare. But the credits kept coming in regularly. In turns it gave him a fevered sense of wild hope, only in the next moment to have the fact that he'd more or less signed up with a terrorist organization slam back into his mind. Who'd have imagined he'd end up here?

The breeze kept blowing, churning the lazy thoughts floating through his mind.

He wasn't sure how long he'd been standing there when the man approached him. His measure of time was limited to how many times he'd had to sit on a bench to rest his legs (three). He hadn't quite gotten the timing re-adjusted since the new (terrorist funded!) cybernetics had gone into his legs. The man, as painfully nondescript as one can be, sent alarm bells ringing. Nobody looked that normal.

Defense mechanisms he'd built over many years kicked into high gear, spewing passive-aggressive irony with a hard undercurrent in all directions. "Sorry, no autographs today buddy."

"No doubt," the man snorted in amusement. "You leave in twelve hours on the Gryphon, a shuttle at docking station ninety-four." With that he turned and nonchalantly walked away.

Joker turned back to look over the lake. Despite everything, the little ember of hope he'd been trying to quash for months had burst into a flame. Don't do this to yourself. Dead is dead. There's no coming back. Even if she did, imagine how much harder a zombie Shepard would push you. Probably make you do a suicide run or something, as if taking on rogue council secret agents and insane artificial intelligences bent on galactic extermination wasn't bad enough. Don't go, it's obviously a lie.

Even as he said it, he knew he'd be at Docking Station Ninety-Four, bag packed, and an hour early to boot. Shepard was the only one who could get him to be punctual. He shook his head with a sigh and wandered off towards his apartment.

It was crazy, thought Shepard, how quickly things changed. How quickly all her troubles were taken care of, taken away. One moment she was in her cabin aboard the Normandy, wrestling with her demons, and the next she was in combat armor down in engineering putting out fires and sending off the distress message. Another blink, a moment, and she was shoving Joker into the escape pod, even as the fire from that mystery ship tore through the Normandy, killing the artificial gravity. She'd known, then, that it was the end. A rapidly decaying close orbit, hostile fire, and no friendly ships within the system was bad. With no escape pod survival was impossible.

Death.

It was that knowledge, really, that she was about to put down her burden, that had given her the strength to reach out and launch Joker's escape pod. The last pod. Relief, and nobody to blame her for it. A way out.

Now, as she watched flaming wreckage stream down towards the planet all around her, she could breathe again. Relax. She looked with new-found wonder at the glory of the stars, something she hadn't thought about since the Skyllian Blitz. They glowed solidly, the burning glory of a thousand suns, totally unlike the faint, unsteady sparkle she'd seen growing up under Earth's smoggy skies. They were beautiful.

The sudden snap-hiss of her oxygen channel being severed didn't alarm her. She was already dead. Mostly it just annoyed her, robbing her of the serenity of her final moments looking up. Her body jerked of its own accord, vainly trying to hold in the air for another minute, another second of life. She tried to look up at the stars, but she couldn't find them, she couldn't...

And just like that, someone turned the lights back on. Her first sensation was a burning pain all over her body. Lines of liquid fire traced along her legs, chest, back, and face. Even her brain felt like it was choking on flames and smoke. Her first, instinctive reaction was to curl up, which she only half managed to suppress, clutching at her right side instead. A voice echoed somewhere beyond comprehension, but strong and persistent. An alarm blared its shrill cry and she could feel the vibrations of nearby explosions rippling through her, every movement an agony.

So this is hell.

"Shepard... armor in the... der attack..."

She was starting to make sense of the voice now, though it still felt like her ears were cranking the volume up and down haphazardly. And that meant she was probably still alive.

How am I not dead? What's going on? Where… where am I?

Her mind struggled to make sense of the massive overload of conflicting information. She had died. She knew it, remembered her last moments aboard the Normandy SR-1 and her crazed flight into the atmosphere of some unimportant, backwater planet. There was no out-of-nowhere ship to save her. And yet...

Even as her mind worked, gears grinding away, her body slipped into the autopilot mode spawned of many, many hours of training. If there was one thing she knew, it was combat. She shut down the pain, compartmentalized it away, and slid into the armor neatly laid out in the bedside locker. It fit her perfectly, every inch adjusted exactly to each quirk in her body, a process which normally took weeks. She suppressed a shudder at the thought of unknown hands measuring, adjusting.

Whoever had made the armor had taken the time to emblazon the N7 marker on, which identified her as a member of the elite marine Special Forces division. There was even a pistol, an M3 Predator by the markings along the short barrel. But there was something off about it...

What the- "There's no thermal clip!"

She took a closer look at it, confused. The weapon appeared to be a standard issue heavy pistol. The small mass-effect-generating core of element zero was in its place, ready to temporarily diminish the mass on the tiny grains of metal from the ammo block and accelerate them to hypervelocities, but the thermal clip which absorbed the resulting heat was missing altogether.

"Shepard get down, that door's going to explode!" cried the intercom voice.

Once again, she let the mystery slide in favor of immediate circumstances. She just managed to slip behind what had been her bed (tomb?) when the doors exploded inwards with a blast of superheated air. Even as the debris fell, she was out from cover and sliding forward, back in the N7 groove, seeking targets. A momentary pause at the body of a fallen human (a soldier?)with emblems she didn't recognize acquired her a thermal clip, which slotted neatly into her Predator. She took a moment to check—shot in the back. Great. A surprise attack.

She turned right down the next corridor past medical displays and expensive looking equipment, her only option as the base started to lock down and seal off passageways. Corridors and bullet-proof glass funneled her in a straight path that seemed far too predetermined for her liking. She crept silently on through laboratories, past research stations all in white and clean steel. Nearby she could hear the clanking of mechs, even the deep, rumbling buzz of a heavy mech's machine gun, and distant screams. Not something to face with only a pistol, particularly one she'd never fired before.

At last her luck ran out and three light mechs cut her off. Backwards led nowhere; the only way was through. A quick heave and a stainless-steel desk became a temporary barricade, scattering papers, pens, and knickknacks across the floor. Almost immediately the desk started to shudder under the impact of the mechs' combined fire and they started circling around. No time to waste.

Keeping as low as she could, Shepard peeked out the left side of her cover, lined up her M3 on the nearest mech, and opened fire. The pistol seemed to shoot faster than she remembered. She studied the thing even as her shots chipped away at the mechs armor and made it struggle to maintain its balance. They were bipedal, almost humanoid looking, though all of their limbs were quite thin, giving them a top-heavy appearance. The mech's head was dominated by a single sighting lens set dead center, which spun as it refocused on Shepard. It staggered as her rounds finally punctured its armor, blowing through its painted-on registration number and sending it tumbling to the ground.

Return fire focused on her from the other two mechs, clanging off the desk and sizzling against the shielding system built into her armor. She shoved the desk, rotating it to the left, ducked back down. After a few moments the faint hum and reassuring tingle of her shields returned.

Let's see if this still works.

Shepard reached deep inside herself to that little mental irregularity, that spark of power, that awareness of power and gravity. Humanity had never experienced anything like it until contact with the Citadel and its intergalactic community. Aliens right and left seemed to naturally reach out and manipulate reality in ways human science could hardly describe, much less emulate. Then the first accidental spill of imported Element Zero happened. Overnight humans started to exhibit uncontrolled "biotic" behavior, which the human-wide military Alliance was quick to take advantage of. Despite many failures and bouts of outright insanity, they had finally come up with a stable system of implanted amplifiers for these biotic soldiers. Shepard had had one, but she hadn't even thought to check...

The blue corona of power flickered faintly on her skin as she mentally condensed and focused the power into a mass-effect generating pull. With a grimace of effort, she stepped out from behind the remains of the desk and pulled on the closest of the mechs. The power drained away as quickly as it had come but served only to knock the closest mech off balance. The same pull that had previously lifted a whole squad of mechs in the air only tripped one! Irrational anger, the consummation of all the pain, confusion, and fear she felt burst instantaneously into life, and disregarding the danger, caution, and even self-preservation she strode straight out to the staggered mech. The last mech's sand-sized projectiles clanked and hissed off her shields and armor as she put the Predator to the closer Mech's head and pulled the trigger.

Just as it gave its last spluttering spark her shields gave out. To top it off, the thermal clip ejected itself without so much as a warning from her weapon and tumbled away. And then something happened that had never happened before.

Shepard lost control.

She'd been angry, enraged even, full of passion, but never, not even as civilians were slaughtered around her, had she ever given over control to the anger. It was not something soldiers did if they wanted to stay alive.

With a snarl of primal ferocity, she aimed all of her anger, hatred, all of herself at that last mech which stood calmly aiming to take the kill shot, too far out of reach. Instinctively, almost unintentionally, she pulled on her biotics harder than she ever had before, farther than anyone had done without losing their minds altogether. But instead of throwing it out of herself at the mech, she threw herself into the biotic storm which crackled across her skin with a wild, self-destructive abandon.

The result was something she had never seen before. Never even heard of before. The biotic corona gathered around her actually launched her at the mech. The impact was enormous, biotics rippling like lightning as they instantly transferred all of her momentum into the light mech, launching it backwards into the white walls and shattering it into spluttering, dying remnants.

Shepard staggered, her equilibrium thrown off by the abrupt deceleration. Her shoulder hit the wall, and gingerly she slid down to the floor as circuits and shattered metal rained down around her. An abrupt feeling of nausea tore through her stomach and she heaved, forcing whatever was down there up and out. She choked on the vomit, a pale white mess of goo.

What am I? What happened to me?

Silence was her only response.

With the end of the direct threat her adrenaline sputtered out, and she was unable to rise. The feeling of lying there, not moving, just doing nothing was so gloriously peaceful. And it was okay, okay, okay, because nobody was counting on her. She was dead. Nobody would die if she didn't move. She didn't think she'd ever stand again.

Her eyes closed.

Her head drooped.