"Rhiannon Shepard."
"Yes."
The major said her name crisply, without hint of emotion, as he had the last time they'd done this dance, and the time before that. Gray walls, gray carpet. The room was the same, too: gray walls, gray carpet, no windows. Hard plastic seats for her questioners; none for her.
The uniformed batarian sitting with the Alliance team was new, and all four eyes were narrowed to dark, gleaming slits. They narrowed further at the sound of her name.
"Shepard," he growled. "I'd introduce myself, but we probably all look the same to you."
No, she thought, I've killed too many of you for you to look alike.
She said nothing.
One of the humans, a man wearing the insignia of Alliance Intelligence, shot a cool glance at the batarian. "Pertinent questions only, Respected Observer." He turned back to Shepard, and asked in a bored tone, "Why did you go to the Bahak system?"
She clasped her hands together behind her back in a parade rest, feet evenly spaced on the floor, gaze steadily over the intelligence operative's shoulder. The wrist cuffs clinked together when she shifted, buzzing a little as their electrical fields came into contact.
"To extract an Alliance researcher from a batarian prison on Aratoht."
The intel guys had heard this before, twice on the ride from the Normandy to… wherever 'here' was — and twice since.
"And you found the researcher— a Dr. Kenson?"
"Yes."
"What had she been researching?"
"A reaper artifact. She said she had evidence of imminent invasion."
"Reapers," the batarian sneered.
The intelligence man raised an eyebrow, then turned back to Shepard. "Where did you go when you left Aratoht?"
"Dr. Kenson's research station, on an asteroid in the same system. The doctor told me that she'd determined the time until the reapers arrived in Bahak, and use the system relay to access the rest of the network. I went to her station to examine her evidence. Her team had rigged the asteroid with eezo propulsion and guidance systems, with the intent to crash it into the relay before the reapers could use it."
The batarian looked up, his voice ice. "Did you know that destroying the relay would kill everyone in the system? Including 300,000 of my people living on Aratoht?"
"Dr. Kenson said it was a possibility." She kept her voice neutral. "Mass Relays are not my area of expertise."
"What did you find at the base?"
"The researchers had all spent a great deal of time in proximity to the artifact, Object Rho. They no longer wished to stop the Reapers — they'd turned off the engines without completing the burn. They attacked me, and eventually drugged me unconscious. I was out for fourty-eight point five hours, by my omnitool clock."
She didn't mention that she'd already been knocked flat on her ass by the visions screaming into her head from the artifact, vast fleets of ships bigger than anything the Alliance had ever fielded, the red and orange of fire, the screams of dying planets. Object Rho had indoctrinated the research team, but to her it had shouted 'doom.'
Military interogators didn't like to hear about visions.
The questions continued. "And when you woke up?"
"I escaped."
The batarian snorted. "Drugged? Unarmed? Hmph. Unlikely."
She'd already admitted to breaking someone out of a batarian high-security prison. Compared to that, an Alliance research station had been easy. "I'm an Alliance marine. Special forces. And Council Spectre." She kept her voice flat. "I escaped."
One of the humans nodded, and the batarian let it go.
"Escaped, and?"
"I killed them." She met their eyes levelly. "And I started the engines back up."
—
—
After all your years of service, the Alliance puts you right back where they found you. Jailed and starving.
It had been six days since the last round of questions, as near as she could tell with no natural light. Six days without any contact except for the silent guard bringing her meagre ration. Six days without the sky, or the stars. Her moods swung viciously with her low blood-sugar, each sweep lower than the last.
Being alone made it infinitely worse.
She'd never been good at being alone. She defined her home with people. She collected them, made them hers. Did they know how much they'd stripped from her when they took away her radio? She wanted sound, contact, people she knew. Most of all she wanted to hear Joker, even though he'd be angry, maybe especially because he'd be angry. She'd thought turning herself in was the right thing to do; he hadn't.
She wished she could tell him he'd been right, and see his smug expression when she did.
Does everyone imprisoned for suspected genocide get solitary? Most of them committed their crimes from behind a desk. A clean uniform, a nice office, a home to go to after you'd signed the orders consigning whole peoples to death. No mud on your hands, no blood on your hands. No sweat. No split-second decision making, will-I-won't-I, what can I do, only me, here, now. Genocide was a crime of forethought; of planning. They called the perpetrators 'architects,' and someone else did their labor. Not her. She'd done it all; everything except the planning. The plan had always been Hackett's, and it had been abandoned in the rush of a too rapidly changing situation.
The final call had been hers, and she'd made it without a second thought, only a curse when the evacuation alerts she'd tried to send had failed.
She'd thought she was going to die then. Alone. Everyone dies alone. Who had said that? She remembered calling for the Normandy, sure it could never arrive in time, but wanting Joker's voice on her radio, a connection to push away the solitude. Wishing she could go out fighting, with her blood running high, instead of waiting. Waiting, watching, while the asteroid she rode hurtled towards a mass relay to set off an explosion that would doom an entire star system.
Waiting was the most deadly thing she'd ever done.
She remembered thinking at least this time it won't be cold.
She'd been wrong, of course. Joker was there, as he always had been, risking himself and the ship to whisk her away to safety beyond the relay.
Safety three hundred thousand batarians would never reach.
One inhabited planet was a small price to pay to hold back the reapers.
—
She paced in her cell.
Three meters.
Turn the corner.
Two meters.
Corner. Three. Corner. Two. Three. Two.
It made the small space feel even more cramped, but it helped her keep her mind off her stomach, twisting with hunger pangs. Gave her the illusion of control.
She'd spent an hour on stretches; another on calisthenics, bare feet battered by the cement floor. Now there was nothing to do but pace, and think. Bare feet on the cold floor, the prisoner's jumpsuit rustling as she moved.
She had to shorten her stride on the short side of the cell.
She was still pacing when the guards came for her. New ones, heavily armed. She almost laughed at the lengths they'd gone to prepare: six guards in body-armor, with stun guns and truncheons, to stand up to unamped, unarmed her. She thought about telling them not to worry, that she didn't have any asteroids handy, but that was too macabre a joke even for her, so she accepted her manacles and followed in silence.
She couldn't even stretch her legs properly before they lead her into another cell, this one decorated, incongruously, with a barber's chair.
She sat, watching the manacles affix themselves to the chair's arms at a gesture from the warden. Scissors snicked through her hair, heavy dark locks falling to the ground, leaving her feeling oddly light. There was no pattern to the cuts; just quick efficiency.
She flicked her eyes sideways and saw the barber reach for a razor.
That was too much.
Back where they found you.
Her life was rewinding, spinning backwards, undoing everything she'd achieved. Now they'd take her hair, and she really would be back at the start; shaven, starving, alone. Powerless in a cell. No ship, no crew, no friends. No way to fight. No say in her future.
No chance to enlist for a fresh start, this time.
She pulled with all her will at her biotics, head pounding as she tried to pull power without an amp or physical gesture.
There was a tiny flicker of blue.
The razor flew out of the man's hand and embedded itself in the wall.
She sank against the chair, spent, and the orderly picked up another razor from the table and started to shave.
—
The next day, they showed up with a med tech, a batarian observer, and a biotics expert. The guards made her kneel while they slid the inhibitor into the implant at the base of her skull.
It felt like fingers crawling through her brain, leaving numbness where they touched.
—
Pull it together.
The air was cool on her shaven head, and she clasped her hands behind her back to keep herself from touching the skin there, or prodding at the smooth surface of the biotic inhibitor nestled against the base of her skull.
Ignore it.
The problem was, there wasn't much else todo.
This isn't forever. It doesn't change me.
She grasped at the scraps of herself.
She was Rhi Shepard, a marine, and a damn good one. One-time commander of the Normandy, in both its incarnations.
And both of mine. Heh.
Wrex and Tali's friend. Nessie's almost-sister. Jeff Moreau's lover.
You're not the scared kid on the street anymore.
Keep it together, marine.
The cell felt the same, though.
You trained for this.
No.
I trained for being captured by the enemy.
We never trained for being captured by our friends.
—
When Geltz showed up outside her cell, she almost thought he was another vision from her past. The first familiar face she'd seen in days — weeks? It was hard to believe he was real, not a remembered figment from when she was sixteen, but gray was creeping into his thick black hair, and new lines crawling over olive skin.
When she approached the plas-glas she could look down on him, but she'd always been able to do that.
Her gut roiled with mixed emotion; relief at a familiar face, anyfamiliar face, mixed with the bile of betrayal.
She'd tried to contact him, back when she was trying to put her life back together. It had been a hard message to write, but she'd tried, reaching out through the dark to the man who'd pulled her off the street, who'd always had faith in her.
He'd never responded.
Another part of the Alliance, eager to help her when she was useful and quick to ignore her.
Why are you here now?
"Shepard."
"Geltz."
"Madre de dios, but it took me ages to talk my way down here." He looked sorrowful; there were new lines around his eyes. "And I'm sorry I didn't reply to your message, those months ago. Things were... tricky, at the time. I couldn't be seen to have any contact with Cerberus."
She hadn't expected an apology. She wasn't readyfor an apology.
"Oh, sure. Had to keep me at arm's length because of Cerberus." She spat the word. "Terrorists. Racists. Scum of the earth. But the Allianceare the ones sent me to commit genocide."
He stepped close to the glass. "Keep your mouth shut, Shepard! Don't say things like that!"
"Why fucking bother?" She turned away. "We both know how it has to end. Letting me go free would require admitting that I've been right about the reaper threat for years. Admitting that would mean admitting that some very important people were wrong." Her hands shook with rage and exhaustion. She was cold, too, shivering, the air chill against her bare scalp. She hadn't realized she was so cold.
"It would be easier if it didn't mean admitting that Cerberus was right about something, too."
"Is that really so damn hard? Stopped clocks and all that bullshit. At least the Illusive Man had the sense never to put me in the position that Hackettdid." The name was a curse. She'd respected Hackett. She'd agreed to his favor so blithely; she'd been pleased to work for someone she could trust, instead of the Cerberus bastard. Someone I thoughtI could trust.
She tried to remind herself that Hackett hadn't lied. He was just wrong. What's the difference, when the fire starts?
"Rhiannon, please. Complementing the Illusive Man isn't going to win you any points, either!"
"Complimenthim?" She stuck her fingers through the holes in the plasglass, pulling herself close to glare into his eyes, and hissed, "If I wasn't in here, the Illusive Man would be dead."
"Shepard." His voice was a shocked whisper. "What the hell's gotten into you?"
Her stomach was cramped with hunger, and her hands shook with the desire to hit something. Trapped and alone. "If the Alliance wanted their good little toy soldier, maybe they shouldn't have broken it." It came out as an almost manic sing-song. "This is why we can't have nice things."
Her old mentor was staring at her as if she were a stranger.
She stepped back from the glass, growling.
His gaze followed her, eyes narrowed, then dropped to the place where she'd neatly wadded up the morning's ration wrapper in the plastic cup.
"What are they feeding you?"
"1500 calories a day." Standard intake for a female desk jockey; starvation rations for a tall, heavily-muscled biotic. She leaned back against the wall, suddenly feeling light-headed.
"Jesus Christ." Geltz looked angry, and not at her. "Jesus fucking Christ." He scrubbed a hand through his hair. "I'll see what I can do, Shepard. I have to figure out who signed off on that." And beat some sense into them, his tone implied.
Some of the tension eased out of her shoulders. Maybe there were still friends here. Of course she could trust Geltz. Couldn't she?
He used to let me hit him, as hard as I could, just because I was angry and confused and hormonal and he knew I needed something to hit.
Her memory supplied that feeling too easily; an out-of-control body, an abruptly changed life, the desire for a target. She'd already been taller than him, even half-starved as she was, but it hadn't mattered. Geltz was the Alliance ranking hand-to-hand expert, and when he decided he'd had enough he put her on the ground — and then taught her how to block it, and how to counter. He was ridiculously over-qualified to be giving one-on-one instruction to a street brat who wasn't even properly enlisted yet, but she hadn't been aware of the honor at the time.
He'd been the one to bring her in. He'd tackled her in a hospital, dragged her kicking and clawing to a recruitment office, seen her implanted. He'd kept track of her through her deployments, during officer's candidacy school, taken her to dinner when she learned she'd been tapped for Special Forces. He'd been the one to recommend her to Anderson, and eventually her berth on the Normandy.
He'd been thrilled when she made N7. He'd only gone to 5.
Geltz was the closest to family she'd ever had. She owed him an effort.
He was still staring at her, quiet.
She took a deep breath. "What," she tried, "What's going on? Out there?"
He jerked his head back towards the guard shadowing him. "It was all I could do to talk my way in here. I'll give you more detail later if I can, but for now — you're a political grenade with the pin pulled. No one can decide if they want responsibility for you or want to throw it to someone else. Everything is complicated beyond sense by your vanishing act three years ago. Anderson's arguing for you, and he carries a lot of weight, but the brass are divided, and trying not to let the batarians or the Council realize it." He shook his head. "You made one hell of a mess, kid."
"Figured as much." She didn't ask about Jeff, or the ship. Better if no one knew what she thought was important. "And I didn't 'vanish'."
He shot her a level look that meant she'd done something stupid and was about to reap the consequences. It had usually ended with her ass on the floor.
"I got blown out of a spaceship," she said meekly. "There's a difference."
"And showed up working for the wrong team."
"Only when I agreed with them. I usedCerberus." And they used me.She still didn't like to talk about it, but she owed him. She swallowed."It's… hard to figure out quite what your options are, when, when you wake up missing two years, Alejandro."
Another deep breath.
"I don't know that I did everything right, but I tried. Did the work that needed doing. Sent back intel on Cerberus whenever I could. Stole their ship when it was all over."
He just watched her. Maybe he was as confused as she was, inside.
She grinned weakly. "Think you and Anderson can get me dubbed a retroactive double agent?"
That startled a snort out of him.
She bit back the laughter that threatened to bubble out, utterly inane given the circumstances. Of course the Alliance couldn't make such an absurd claim. If they had enough foresight to plant a spy by killing her, letting her corpse fall into the hands of a pseudo-terrorist group, and waiting for said pseudo-terrorist group to bring her back to life so that she could work for them, well... an organization with that kind of vision wouldn't be playing a losing game against galactic chaos.
The guard, who had been waiting at a discreet distance, stepped up to Geltz' shoulder. "Time's up, sir."
Geltz nodded. "Hang in there, Rhiannon. Don't dig yourself any deeper."
She watched him go until he passed beyond the security wall, leaving her alone once more.
Author's Note
Hi all!
To readers of A Star to Steer Her By: I'm glad you stuck around while I took my long break!
To those who haven't read it: I think Sunset and Evening Star will stand on its own, but if anything strikes you as odd about Joker and Rhi's relationship, or my characterizations, or the rare and confusing OC that crops up, it was probably explained in the previous fic. (Or I just screwed up - I do reserve the right to blunder, on occasion.)
To everyone: due to the pressing nature of real life, I have no idea whether I'll be able to see this through to where I envision it ending, which is after the events of ME3. A Star To Steer Her By took slightly under two years to complete, and when I started I posted a chapter a week - a schedule I know I can't manage at the moment. That said, I'm committed to at *least* getting the commander back to her ship (and her pilot). I'll re-evaluate the project at that point.
Lastly, I am always happy to have errors pointed out to me. I tend to long chapters, and despite my best efforts some typos do slip by.