Disclaimer - I'm not affiliated with BioWare, don't have any claim to the Mass Effect universe or its characters, and don't receive any compensation for writing this. Yadda, yadda, yadda.
A/N: This follows the Mosaic Project. I suggest reading the Prologue first, but it's designed to be a series of stand-alone vignettes so it isn't really necessary for continuity's sake. Shep is a Colonist, War Hero, Vanguard, and Paragon … not that any of this necessarily comes to play in this installment.
Ashley's breathing grew shallow, her fingers pressing tightly against the seeping wound in her head. She had no medical training, no indication of how bad things truly were. But the happy numbness edging through her made everything else irrelevant.
Time had no meaning anymore. She was unsure of how many long minutes had passed, or if they were hours, or if they were but seconds.
Voices, seemingly far away, reached her ears. They were strange, tinny, metallic – and she was sure only of the fact that they were not human.
"Ashley!"
It was her name. They knew her.
"She's here!" one called. It was male, though it was very far away.
"Come quickly!" another shouted, female this time. "Ashley, we're here!"
The energy was frenetic, excited.
She felt as if she was being lifted, and she opened her eyes a crack, bathing in the light that greeted her, and she reveled in the sensation of warmth flooding her body. A blackness descended upon her, like a curtain drawing upon a final act, plunging her into comfortable darkness.
"Ashley."
Someone was calling her again.
"Ashley."
The voice spoke again. It was nearer than the others had been, distinctly female and human, the syllables tinged with hints of an accent. She wanted to reply, but the words would not come.
"Ashley."
It was cold and commanding, demanding some sort of response. She stirred, trying to find her voice to give it a reply. She knew that voice.
"She's waking up," it spoke again, excitement evoking the accent further. Dr. Chakwas?
She tried to move, her mind frustratingly disconnected from her body. She felt a cool hand reach up to brush stray hairs from her forehead, to tuck errant strands loosed from her bun behind her ear.
"Can you hear me?"
Eyes still shut tightly, she willed her arm to move, somehow finding a small, gloved hand to clasp with her own.
Without seeing she knew where she was, the cold, chemical smell of the ship's sterile medical bay accosting her nose. The mission was over; she was safe; she was alive yet.
And still …
Something felt off, though she couldn't quite decide what it was at that moment.
There was a knot, a lump, a nagging feeling … but if were pressed to say what it was, she wouldn't be able to answer.
She was talking.
She could hear her own voice, shrieking, shaking with terror.
And another hand taking hers, larger and calloused with a rough palm, though it was a stranger's touch.
I'm upset.
Why am I upset?
The thin, firm mattresses on the cots in the Normandy's medical bay were built for functionality, though they provided Ashley a strange measure of comfort now. She sank into the industrial foam as it relented to tired limbs, the heat of her body activating a distinctly plastic scent. The standard bun she wore proved less-than-comfortable now as it jutted against the raised "pillow" of the cot, shoving forth hairpins deep into the base of her scalp. She squirmed, looking for an angle to provide some relief against the pins burrowing into the back of her head; another pair of hands held her head still.
Her eyes opened.
The world was filtered, faces distorted and blurred as if an artist's brush had covered everything around her in a thick smear. A face, closer than the others … narrow oblong streaks of blue, a fleshed crosshatch of wrinkles, a silver splotch of hair. It was Chakwas.
Her hands were gripped now forcefully at both sides as the woman crept closer, an instrument of some sort brandished in one hand.
"You really head your head, didn't you," the doctor mused with clinical amusement, an odd mixture of concern and professional courtesy thickening the accented voice.
A sudden and forceful application of the instrument made her blanch, her head turning as she squirmed away from the hands at her arms, forehead.
"Still! I need her to – hold her down!" Chakwas commanded. She was close, so close. Ashley felt the heat of her breath against her turned neck.
The world slowly regained its focus, but she had already found the source of the trouble: someone lay motionless on the cot next to her.
Shepard.
Her body slumped against the cot.
Ashley pulled her hands away from those who had been tasked to hold them and raised her elbows, her palms flat against the thin mattress of the medical bay bed. She pushed, trying to hoist herself into a sitting position, and failed, grunting and sweating with the effort. "What the hell happened?" she grunted, eyes still locked on Shepard, trying once again.
A pair of strong arms gripped her from behind, slipping under hers to lever her upright. "We were flanked by YMIR mechs and Shepard went down. You ran right into a pair of Vanguards with a nasty pull and throw combo as you were running towards him," Jacob offered, his arms still resting under hers as if he were afraid to release his captive. "You knocked your helmet off with the force of them slamming you into a wall. You're lucky you're not dead."
Ashley craned her neck to meet his eyes, wresting her torso away from his grasp. "How lucky am I?" she whispered. A pause and then she added coolly, "How'd we get back? You couldn't handle those mechs and Vanguards by yourself."
Jacob snorted, folding his newly-free arms across his chest. "Thanks for the confidence," he drawled, frowning lightly.
Miranda chuckled, her voice hoarse, her now-familiar icy blue stare fixed on Shepard's cot. "It's true," she snapped. "You couldn't." She shifted slightly, lowering her head and bracing herself against the thin mattress of the cot. "I took a second team in at the radio chatter."
The three were avoiding the obvious question; running a hand through her short-cropped silvery hair, Chakwas offered simply, "I had to put him under to speed along the healing. He should be fine in a few days."
Should be.
Ashley found her knuckles were bloodied and scraped, and she raised a hand to find the source of a throbbing pressure on the side of her head. Her hair was hardened with dried blood, straw-like and sticky under the probing of her fingertips; a bandage had been placed in the center, and gritting her teeth against the pain, she found the tell-tale raised barbs of simple sutures under the swath of cotton.
It was rudimentary medicine, and the state of her knuckles and bruises she now spotted, marking her arms like polkadots, revealed a greater truth: Shepard was worse off than anyone would dare let on.
"I want to take a shower."
The three surrounding her turned, their gazes long having drifted back to the motionless Commander's form.
"I want to take a shower," she repeated, tone even.
If the doctor or the two humans with her had expected a different reaction to the realization of his state, all three hid it well.
"You should be fine, just in need of some rest," Chakwas stated with a shrug. "I'll have EDI monitor your vitals, and I'll check in with you later … if I can. Can you make it upstairs on your own?"
"Elevator's not far," Ashley replied, her voice still thin and empty, distant and dark.
Chakwas nodded absently, her attention already diverted.
Miranda and Jacob never paused in their vigil to make acknowledgment of Ashley's departure.
All the dust the wind blew high
Appeared like god in the sunset sky,
But I was one of the children told
Some of the dust was really gold.
And so the day had come, as she had known it would.
Such days were inevitable.
A life, chosen by both – risks fully vetted by both, risks of days such as these dawning.
Fingertips traced across the soft cotton of the empty sheets next to her, lingering of the edges of a man-shaped rut – an arm, a leg, a muscled torso, a small, sweet-smelling oily splotch on a pillowcase left behind by the gel he stubbornly rubbed through his short hair.
Ashley rolled over into the void.
It smelled like him.
It felt empty.
The air was still and stagnant, though a restless wind whipped through her, stirring an uneasy and pervasive chill that clung to flesh and refused to be shivered away. She flopped onto her back, wincing as the pillowcase dragged against the gash on the side of her head. Covers were tugged up to cover her, as if the motion could provide respite against the created cold, and her stare moved skyward to linger on the rhythmic licking wisps of blue energy crashing against the domed skylight.
Her body craved movement, her hands itched to scrub and clean, to assemble and dissemble. There was simple comfort that could be found in routine: hands grabbing pieces of armor from their locker, fingers drawn across fasteners, snapping guards into place. But Ashley was without the benefit of that now, despite the temptation of movement. There was no reason to gear up; all she could do was wait, like the rest of them.
Without Shepard, time stood still. Without Shepard, she had …
She slammed a balled fist onto the bed, violently grabbing a fistful of sheets and tugging in frustration until she could hold the grip no longer.
Stop … just, stop!
Shepard would be fine. He had to be.
It was a mantra she had relied on so many times before, though she knew the lies under which it was constructed. He had not been fine before; he did not have to be fine now. He had died.
Teeth digging into bottom lip, breath forcefully moving through her nose in a rasp, air heavy in her lungs. Theirs was a world of artificial constructs: the recycled purified air still tasting slightly of chemicals; the man-made alloys poured into the walls that surrounded them; the armor she wore to shield her, physically and emotionally; and that separate peace, those days and moments shared between them despite the interference of dust and speckles of life – their bond precious, edged in gilt, amidst the dirt.
There were three options: 1) stay here and rest as the doctor had ordered; 2) protest that she was fine and put herself back on the duty roster; 3) go back to the med bay, to Shepard, and wait. The crew was expecting her to choose the third option; the crew did not know her well.
It would have to be the first option. It was better to be alone than to publicly appear a caged animal, wild with passion, pacing across the ship and beating against the bounds of the medical bay protesting for their combined release. Her worry was something she chose not to broadcast, though she knew it was shared – and those that knew her would sense it to see her. Had she returned to duty, everyone would want to know about Shepard's progresses, and she did not want think about that if she could avoid it.
But she could not avoid it …
Gilded tombs do worms enfold.
Had you been as wise as bold,
Young in limbs, in judgment old,
Your answer had not been inscroll'd:
Fare you well; your suit is cold.
It was a fundamental truth it did no good to ignore: theirs was the life of soldiers, and whatever they had allowed themselves to share was and would be painfully secondary to that. And each time he went ashore, each small look he cast back at her as they stepped through the airlock – it was always possible that it could be the last.
It was amplified by another truth: Despite, the impending threat of the Reapers, despite the worry and gloom she quietly allowed herself in small, solitary moments, she was happy – very happy – and it made her afraid.
Though she'd never needed a man to make her happy, she was happier for having him – and though she'd forged her own comfort and a semblance of peace and normalcy when she'd thought him gone from her, the possibility of being confronted with it again, of having to rebuild herself once more, pulled her in an unwilling drag back to those darkest of moments.
Dust always blowing about the town,
Except when sea-fog laid it down,
And I was one of the children told
Some of the blowing dust was gold.
Like a bone broken and re-knit, like a mound of scar tissue built up about an old wound, so had their bond grown stronger for the absence – unable to be coy, unable to deny what importance each held to the other, unable to hide behind the carefully constructed armor she wore, naked to him in ways foreign and oftentimes uncomfortable, but not unwelcome.
But a second fracture would not heal as cleanly – nor could it ever, in some cases, be completely healed again.
They had, by some strange alchemy, turned broken rules and secret nights into a semblance of a normal relationship, had transformed their bodies' guilt into golden pillow whispers, and had found in death's rebirth a new, more perfect life.
But, despite the pleasant respite of those moments, she waited for the tarnish to come. Good and bad, happy and sad – simple words brought to mind in expression of feeling too deep for eloquence. Opposites, antithesis, but things that often came in pairs. She had been happy once before; Shepard had died, and everything had changed. Recognizing that she was happy now exacerbated everything.
The river sleeps beneath the sky,
And clasps the shadows to its breast;
The crescent moon shines dim on high;
And in the lately radiant west
The gold is fading into gray.
True, pure gold did not tarnish; but theirs was a golden moment mixed with alloy – with war, with injury, with battle, with the impending doom of death. And still, she could not allow herself to enjoy those simple pleasures now – not in the shadow of what each day might bring.
Not in the shadow of days like this.
She carefully turned her head, burying her nose in the pillowcase. This was one thing she had never the luxury of before: something tenable, something to cling to, something more than memory and void and hollow.
And her worry gave way to a new grief: grief for her, grief for them, grief for the days spent lying in bed, clinging to a pillowcase, as if his head may have lain there for the last time already and she had not known to appreciate it.
And her grief gave way to tears.
And she cried: cried for her, cried for them, cried into the pillowcase.
She turned slightly at the feeling of pressure against the wound on her head, happy for the smell of Shepard still greeting her nose. A hand lifted, gently touching her head; and there were fingers there, and she knew them without needing to see them.
"Chakwas didn't do a very good job," he grunted. She shifted, noticing that Shepard was propped up by one elbow, large bandages dotting his arms and torso. How long had she slept?
"Head wounds can be serious," he continued, his voice assuming the even 'Commander's tone' she knew well. "You should see her to get these stitches out, get some real medical attention."
Ashley sighed, lifting a finger to carefully trace the exposed skin between his bandages. "The doctor was a little preoccupied with care of someone else, it seems."
Color rose into Shepard's cheeks as he nervously cleared his throat. "They were going to flank your cover," he replied to the question that had not been asked, the 'Commander' having left him. Shaking his head, he continued, "I thought I had worn both down enough ..."
"But you hadn't," Ashley retorted sharply, "and you almost got yourself killed."
"Better me than you."
She scowled, turning onto her side. "I could have changed positions."
He shrugged, wincing with his motion and moving a hand to gently rub a section of ribs left exposed through the bandages. "You would've run into the Vanguards," he stated simply, his eyes fixed on the domed ceiling. "But I guess you did that anyway."
Ashley paused, gently touching his shoulder. "At least we made it out okay," she offered.
And yet …
And yet she could not leave it at that.
And yet she could not ignore the sinking in her gut, nor the tears that had wet the pillow she laid on now.
"At least we made it out okay ... this time."
He frowned, carefully drawing circles around the bruises on her arms, lightly tracing the scrapes across her knuckles. "But there's always a next time, Ash."
"Well, we'll … we'll deal with that if it comes."
"And when it comes," he retorted, his voice low and heavy, "will there be a 'we' to deal with it anymore?"
Their eyes met for the first time that morning.
And they both knew that it had to be enough.
"If it comes," she echoed firmly.
The fight had left them both.
Now it was time to heal.
A line drawn in sand: blurred and erased with time, as waves lap away at edges; eroded by happiness and grief, by moments stolen; and by the untenable grip two people could cling to, and be forced from yet, at once.
Our two soules therefore, which are one,
Though I must goe, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to ayery thinnesse beate.
Works Referenced:
Frost, Peck of Gold
Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice (2.7.66-68)
Frost, Peck of Gold
Dunbar, Sunset
Donne, A Valediction: forbidding mourning