BROKEN DREAMS
By Tree Wyrm, Admin1 to Facebook fanpage: Mass Effect Female Shepard
Short Story - FemShep/Traynor
Story Rating: Should be MA for coverage of issues relating to abortion.
AUTHOR NOTE:
This story was inspired by recent personal experience, and by the following artwork whose artist I would like to credit:
"The Broken One" - By fishbone76 – used with permission - Original: art/The-broken-one-462709182
This story has also been posted to Facebook by the fanpage Mass Effect Female Shepard, for which I am first Admin, along with the fanart forementioned, which was used with permission of the artist.
"Sam... Oh Sam I think it's killing me! Get it out! Get it out..!"
...Those words still haunt me. It was a few days ago. I remember the weakness in my bones, the pain - the constant pain. I remember the tears as the acid welled up from my stomach and I was forced to vomit it out - no matter what meds they tried to give me. I remember breathing it. I cough once again now - just a small, persistent reminder triggered by the humidity and heat of the shower as it pours down on me.
There had been nothing my implants couldn't compensate for - all the medication they tried to give me, to save my body and the baby. Except it couldn't compensate for the thing I wanted most... that was the reason I was in that state to begin with. Something had gone horribly wrong. I remember doctors talking about finding ways to remedy... but I was on the strongest meds they had and they were not solving the problems.
"Sam... Oh Sam I think it's killing me! Get it out! Get it out!"
...The words just echo, over and over again in my skull. Sam had seen it. She'd been there the whole time... Watching our dream turn to acid and blood and pain as the fear in her eyes grew and I saw it my own, reflected back whenever I had the energy to look in her eyes. The foetus was triggering my own body to self-destruct. She knew it. I knew it. Even when the doctors refused to acknowledge it and pushed me right to the brink trying to encourage me just to "see it through" and "Things might improve by week ten..." – a whole four weeks away. I remember... being grateful the bleeding had stopped as the starvation kicked in and I violently brought up even the meagre ten grains of rice Sam had managed to get me to eat... with a sip of water.
I remember thinking the words... "I'm going to die like this." as I relive that moment now, lying as I am on the tiles of the shower cubicle.
But it was done. All over with now. The doctors had finally listened - Miranda having come in from the other side of the galaxy to drive home the point. I remember her tears, she cried... Cried and said how sorry she was - that it wasn't my fault, that it was probably just a side effect of the Lazarus project, that she understood how I felt. She herself having discovered she was unable to have children, I believed knew at least some of the emotional turmoil I was in now.
Now it is done, and I am left... hollow.
"Shhh..." Sam's here. I can feel her arms around me. I notice that she's got her clothes on and she's getting wet and move to say something but instead... I just... break. Tears streaming down my face are only matched by the water washing them away. I hear her voice:
"It's not your fault... OK? It's not your fault. We were thinking of adoption anyway weren't we? It's OK babe, we'll get through this together."
"But I wanted to give you a baby Sam." I manage between sobs, "I wanted to see what a kid the mix of us two would be like. Your brains," I snuffle a laugh, "My brawn..." turning to sobs again: "She would have been beautiful..."
Sam grips my shoulders and turns me, turning my face to hers to make me look up into her eyes – "Listen to me: I nearly lost you once. I was sure I had. Do you know what that felt like?! If I'd have known us trying for a baby would have done this to you, I *never* would have wanted to try! More than anything... anything in this galaxy..." Her face contorted in a way I'd only seen once before: in the hospital when they wheeled me out after surgery... "I'm just glad you're alive. Do you understand? I'm just grateful... so very grateful... You're still here."
"You don't resent me? Not even a little bit?" I ask her, still surprised every time she came out with that. "But I begged you... *begged* you to kill *our* baby..." I frown and shake my head in the shame of it. "God damn it I was a coward!" I yell. I didn't mean to yell at her.
"What, because you feared death?! Give me a break Shep! Get over yourself!" She yells back.
"I can face down a horde of Reapers, get spaced and not fear death then the moment I've someone else's life inside me I turned into a coward! That's the truth of it!" I scream. I can't help it. "I hate this. I hate how I can be so strong... then this one, single point of "normality" that everyone else seems to have, I turn out to be a pathetic, selfish –"
"Stop it." Sam squeezes me hard enough to hurt. "Stop it!" She shakes me. "I know what you're doing – stop it! You think that if you're so 'spectacular', if you're such a 'hero', then how can you possibly falter and fear for your life on something so expected, so 'normal'? Well it wasn't a normal pregnancy – for starters! And second of all..." She takes my hand and holds it gently now, "People... have different strengths and weaknesses. Maybe you were scared, maybe you think that's a weakness... but the strengths you have, I think, are infinitely more important because they make you... 'you'. They made you able to be someone amazing, who saved the galaxy, me and everyone and everything else in it."
I scoffed. Sam scowled. "And they're what I fell in love with. So you need to respect that. You need to respect yourself, else you don't respect the fact that I love you."
My eyes water again, but I hold to her, clutching at her water-soaked sleeve. I take a deep breath, and feel the discomfort of my body rearranging itself around the emptiness of bowels gone too long unfilled, and the void where the padding for my womb had been, as I let it go in a long, deep, sigh.
"I just think..." I say, quietly, calmly now... "Sometimes..." – another sigh – "I would trade all of that... just to be able to do this one, normal thing." – another sigh – "Even... If it meant the Reapers might ultimately have won." - That hurt to say, it hurt to admit, even to myself.
Sam sighs, long and hard. I feel her stroke the wet hair plastered to my skull: "I know." Another stroke. "I know sweetheart, I know. And that's OK, too."