Dance Partner

Every woman adores a fascist

The brute brute heart of a brute like you.

-Sylvia Plath

There are a few dreams that I can remember. This one is definitely one of them.

I do my best to forget about Horizon. What else can I say about it? I got dumped, yes, but my world isn't going to end just because of it. These days I try to keep myself busy, and that is always easy. However, if I had been paying more attention to some things, I wouldn't have guessed who slipped into my room to redecorate it.

I got an email from the Illusive Man the other day, telling me to head up to my room. Of course, I had to find more things for me to do just so I didn't have to head up until last night when I was truly dead tired.

When I came up, all the lights were dimmed. Candles carefully placed on every side table gave off a seductive scent. Red rose petals on the floor created a path leading to my bed where a glowing replica of that Prothean beacon I first found on Eden Prime. It seemed to call to me with a familiar voice that I know. I touched it and everything around me changed in a flash.

Soon, I found myself wearing a red dress that was too revealing for my tastes. The neckline was too deep and the skirt was cut too short. I couldn't exactly tell where I was except that I was on a mountain ridge overlooking a massive metropolis. Its golden lights were radiant in the warm summer night.

"Beautiful isn't it?" said an eerily familiar voice. The Illusive Man was also gazing at the city before us holding a cigarette with two fingers.

I kept my cool. I didn't like being kidnapped, mind-controlled or both, but wherever were I needed him to see that I wasn't afraid of him. "Where exactly are we?" I asked.

"The future," he answered exhaling a bit of gray air.

"Why did you bring me here?"

"I needed you to see that not everything we sacrifice is for nothing."

I shrugged. "Well, ''Man still must err, while he doth strive.'"

"Exactly." He turned to me, his snake-like eyes glowing in the darkness. "And I thought you might need a friend, especially now that you know that most of your old friends have abandoned you."

"I have plenty more, thanks."

"But they do not understand you like I do."

"What makes you think that you understand me more than anyone else?"

"You and I have a lot more in common than you think: we both fight for the future of humanity, and we have both seen what the Reapers can do if we don't stop them."

"What have you seen?"

"Death. Destruction. Genocide." I stared at his glowing eyes. For a minute, I felt like I saw flashes like those that I saw in that Prothean beacon long ago. Visions that still haunt my own dreams.

I shook it off. "I dunno. I won't bank too much on the things that we have in common. For one thing, I don't torture children to make them powerful biotics. I don't place others' lives in danger just to get intel. I don't smoke, and I don't impose my dreams on others."

"But you do what is necessary. You left one your crew in Virmire because it was necessary."

Leave Ash out of this. "Sometimes we make choices because they are the only choices that are left to us. If I could have saved them both, I would have done so."

"So would I," he replied. As I looked, the unnatural blue of his snake-like eyes glowed sympathetically, but I don't think he was thinking of Ashley or Kaidan.

"And I don't wear weird contacts."

He smiled. "What makes you think that these are contacts?"

I must have shuddered a bit, but I dared not show it, especially now that this dream didn't give me a rifle or a pistol in my hands. I could only glare at him defiantly. "Because they look unnatural."

"Both of us are," he asserted, catching a loose lock from my temple and tucking it back in place. His touch was cold. "And you look unnaturally beautiful in that dress."

"Save the flattery for when you actually piss me off. As for the dress, I personally would have preferred something long, black and less revealing."

Almost instantly, my red hooker dress into a long black turtleneck gown. I realized that I was wearing diamond earrings and a necklace made of the same material. Like a varren in a collar, I felt its weight on my neck. My eyebrow must have raised itself a bit. I wasn't sure of what he was trying to pull. Perhaps sensing my uncertainty, he said, "You always have a choice, Shepard."

"Really?" I scoffed. "Why am I in your dream then?"

"Choice of words, Shepard. I would rather think of this as a meeting of minds. Just like the Protheans many years ago, I have developed a beacon for the human mind. You want this exchange as much as I do. You love freedom, and power as much as I do."

A snap of his fingers made the city and the mountain we were standing on dissolve before my eyes. In the next minute, we were standing in a grand ballroom, with floor made of glass. There was an orchestra on the other side of the room playing Danse Macabre. "Dance?" he asked, extending a hand to me.

"I can't."

"Of course you can. This is our dream after all."

I remained perfectly still. "I am not your personal puppet made to dance for your amusement; I dance to my own music."

He took a step towards me, and then another. When I realized that he was dangerously close, I took a step backwards, and then another until I realized that my steps were in tune to the music. "Sometimes, we are forced to dance to someone else's music."

"If I'm going to dance to this music, at least I'm going to try leading it." He was about to take another step towards me, when I took a well-timed step towards him forcing him to move backward. Both of us were still in tune with the music. I was able to take several steps forward, as I moved towards him for the next one, he took that opportunity to grab my wrist and turn me around, reversing our positions. His right arm pulled me close; his left hand pulled my other right arm so we were in some kind of ballroom position. I was forced to follow him.

"You never were a good dancer, because you never learned to follow anyone's steps."

I could take no more of it. I decided to become more docile. I moved my body closer to his, leaning in for a kiss, hoping for his strong grip to loosen. It did. I yanked myself away.

Instantly, the ballroom faded, and I was back in my room, tucked into my bed.

Today, I threw the beacon out of the airlock and received an email. It said, "Thank you for the dance."

Next time, I won't dance.

A/N: This is originally one fragment that I wrote for "Rehab Tales," a companion piece for "Eulogy: A Love Story." I really wanted my Shep's side of the story because without it, I would risk reducing her into a manic pixie dream girl in Kaidan's POV. However, my problem with "Rehab Tales," is that most of the fragments make her look unstable which is a problem. Most of those fragments are lost now though, because of a hard drive crash last year. I am thinking of revamping it and focusing less on the PTSD episodes, and more on her relationships with the characters around her. Might take some time though. Or I might just publish the rest of the more-or-less complete fragments as oneshots like this or multi-chapter episodes. Aida is definitely a paragon Shepard, but I want to trace the darkness in this particular paragon Shepard with this.

This fragment (one of those that I managed to save) is one of those that show her Pygmalion-like relationship with TIM, who appears mostly like a dark father figure and almost lover figure. I'm welcome to ideas on how I might develop stories like this with Aida and TIM, or just Aida in general.