Inspired by a KinkMeme prompt about Shepard's cybernetic implants. The synthesis ending seems the most abhorrent to me, so as a challenge I wanted to explore a Shepard who might go down that route. Reviews are my addiction of choice. Please help out.
This was the quietest Tali had ever seen Shepard after a mission. Usually, still on a high from combat and adrenalin, the shuttle ride was a mix of bad jokes, worse puns and occasional dirty comment. If she was around, the latter turned into flirting, and if she encouraged him, outright physical contact that turned into back-on-the-Normandy-sex. She liked that more than the bad jokes anyway. A load had been lifted off his shoulders since they'd come back through the Omega Relay, but today he was quiet. Stoic. Grim. Like the worst days before the jump, when the crew had been taken.
She glanced across at Legion. The machine sat across the aisle, optical light dim as it conserved power. She still was not comfortable in its presence, but she knew Shepard was deliberately bringing the two of them along with him at times. Making them fight together. Cover each other. Learn to trust each other in combat. Keelah, it was even working- she felt like she could trust the machine to cover her. To take out Collectors, mercenaries or even other geth if they were threatening her life with its huge sniper rifle, to watch out for the organic life forms it considered its equals and partners. Now there was something she didn't want to dwell. It would not go down well back on the Migrant Fleet if she came back proclaiming the geth as equals and friends.
"Shepard-Commander, are you in distress?" Even observing Legion, she was taken by surprise when it suddenly looked up at Shepard and spoke. Metallic headplates flared into a typically inquisitive…expression, for want of a better word.
Shepard glance up from the floor he'd been staring at, brown eyes distant and cool as opposed to warm and inviting as they usually were when they looked at her. He sat across from her, their knees touching, but it felt like he was a million miles away. Dark brown hair cut raggedly short was plastered against his skull by sweat, and she knew his stomach would be grumbling from hunger soon as his body noticed a lack of calories to balance out what had been spent biotically charging from one geth platform to another.
"Distress, Legion? I didn't know you cared." His attempt to inject levity into his was obviously forced. She was sensitive to subtle changes in his body language, the tone of his voice, the way he retreated into himself from the world when faced with stress. Right now, he couldn't hide how down he felt from her. The wall he was building spoke as loudly as any emotional outburst might.
"Unit cohesion and efficiency is maximised when all members are operating at peak performance. We are concerned that Shepard-Commander…is not."
"Keelah Shepard, even synthetics can tell something is wrong. I've noticed it since we called in the Alliance to come get David and take him to Grissom Academy. "
She leaned forward and put a three-fingered hand on his knee. He ran his own hand over hers, warm even through her suit, lips pursed in thought.
"Yes. Synthetics. Even synthetics." His voice was low, a murmur. She had no problem hearing him through her suit's audio receptors, and the way Legion turned to him underlined it didn't either.
"Oh Keelah…" Insight sliced through her like a knife, and she turned her hand over to grip his hand tightly.
"Is this…Shepard, is this about what the Overlord AI did to you? When it dragged you out alone? Shepard, just because you have a few cybernetic implants doesn't mean you're a synthetic!" Her voice had started off calm, but rose as she emphasised her point by squeezing his hand. Dark brown eyes looked back at her, still emotionless, still unconvinced.
"Tell him, you bosh'tet." She jabbed a finger towards the geth platform. If Shepard insisted on dragging it along on missions, Tali felt it needed to pull its weight outside of combat as well.
"Creator Tali'Zorah is correct, Shepard-Commander. While your organic platform possesses extensive cybernetic implants that are necessary for your continued existence, you have not been transformed into a synthetic. That is impossible."
Legion quirked its headplates as it spoke and Tali realised while that was more mechanical than something Garrus or Liara might have said, it was at least clear, and from an expert of sorts.
"Is it? I was hacked by a computer, Tali. My eyes saw what it wanted me to see. It controlled my movements, if indirectly. It could have programmed me, for all I know…" Shepard's voice trailed off as he bent his head to look at his arms. As if he could stare straight through the skin to look at the bone and musculature enhancements and implants, the tiny electric nodes that lay just under his skin that made him as tough as a krogan.
"I can fire a shotgun no other human can. I hit other humans like a Mako, and can knock and yahg and krogan off their feet. I could…I could crush you through your suit." A discordant note of dissatisfaction and fear tinged his voice. Tali rarely saw him struggle so openly with his emotions, underlining just how deeply he had been affected by the incident.
"My suit is more resilient than you think Shepard. And so what if you've had a few upgrades, it's what you need in order to do your job. Keelah'selai, you think any of us could have gone toe-to-toe with the old Shadow Broker? Could've lead the assault on the Collector Base if you weren't biotically charging straight at Harbinger every time he possessed a body?"
He wreathed himself in a blue aura when she spoke of his biotics. She knew he found comfort in the fact that they worked as they had before Lazarus. Before the implants. That his mnemonics followed the same formulas. But now she wondered if it went beyond that, because no machine could have biotics, so the fact that he was one reinforced his own sense of…humanity.
"Shepard-Commander, is synthetic sapient life lesser?" Legion's voice was softer than normal, as it understood the delicacy of the minefield it was approaching.
"What? No. I don't. Of course not. Any life form that can reason intelligently and display sound judgement, regardless of organic or synthetic background, is an equal to another sapient being. Hell, Legion, I'd argue that both the geth and EDI have shown the capability of feeling too. I'd say you're both sentient and sapient." Tali shook her head at Shepard's statement. They had been butting heads over this ever since Legion had joined the Normandy. She still contended they were machines, to be turned off and on. He stubbornly insisted they were a species with free will that deserved to live as they chose. More and more these days she mused on the thought that he might be more right than her about this. Not that she could admit that to herself very easily, much less anyone else.
"Shepard-Commander is sapient. Shepard-Commander has free will. Consensus cannot be built about why Shepard-Commander is troubled by self-classifying into organic or synthetic life. Is this about…a soul?"
"Maybe, Legion, maybe. It's also about self-identity. We organics derive ours from who we are, from our bodies as well as our minds, thoughts and emotions. Unlike geth programs which can separate from their platforms." Shepard had let his biotic aura fade out, and he ran his right hand from cheek to chin. Tali remembered when his scar had been there, back in the old days, how much more rough-hewn and dangerous it had made him look. Another reminder of his humanity, erased while he was asleep.
"Machines were made for a purpose, Legion." Tali couldn't help it, the line slipped out before she could stop it. She felt like she was channelling Daro'Xen, which immediately made her feel dirty all over and in need of a thorough shower.
"Sapient synthetic life forms- artificial intelligences- are no more purely machines that organic sapient life-forms are purely animals, Creator Tali'Zorah." Legion turned its headlamp to face her, and its plates fluttered. "The geth have evolved. We determine our course of action. We have free will. It is possible that in the future, we will evolve to determine part of our identity from the platform we operate on. EDI has."
She gave it a flat look, and shook her head.
"I think what Tali is trying to say is that organic and synthetic life can have very different perspectives on things. But I think that our differences are outnumbered by our similarities. Look at Project Overlord. There's nothing intrinsically wrong about bringing organic and synthetic life together, but not as a…trick. A way to force the geth to worship a constructed god. Tali believes, for now, that those differences outweigh the similarities. I disagree." Shepard's voice was sombre and resolute. Unyielding. The same timbre it had when he had faced down the Admiralty Board on her behalf.
"You're still you, Shepard, synthetic or organic." Tali's words were quiet but fierce. He gave her a tired smile at that.
"Synthetic and organic maybe, sunshine." She smiled at him. Using one of his pet names for her, that was a good sign. A sign he might be coming out of his funk.
"Well, all the important bits are organic. I know."
"Oh yeah, prefer the real thing to the nerve stimulator?" He's switched into teasing mode now, grinning at her as he ran a palm up her thigh. She'd have enjoyed it a lot more if Legion wasn't right there, listening to them.
"Shepard, you…bosh'tet!" She took his hand, interlacing her three fingers through his five. She planned put them to good use later. He must have sensed her thoughts as his grin grew a little broader.
"Shepard-Commander, we have achieved consensus that you and Creator Tali'Zorah are engaged in a pre-mating ritual. We can go into a power-down mode for the remainder of the flight." Headplates flare with sincerity.
"Oh Keelah…" Tali groaned in mortification and Shepard is openly laughing, those brown eyes danced merrily, and then she joined in by chuckling, his mood infectious,
Later, when she was standing on an unknown world, taking in the sight of two rising suns, standing next to Joker and EDI, watching the glowing lines running through their skins, face exposed to air as her own new biosynthetic chemistry meant she could feel the breeze, she would think back to this conversation. As nanomachines quietly reinforced her immune system, as tears formed at the corners of her eyes, as she felt sunlight on her skin for the first time, she would consider what Shepard had been trying to tell her back then. How he felt. Like a synthesis of man and machine. Maybe she'd been wrong. Maybe it wasn't so bad. But that was later.