Author's note: Welcome to Sol Invictus, my Mass Effect saga. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I'm enjoying writing it. Feel free to let me know in reviews or messages! Thanks so much to my wonderful beta-reader, clafount, for all of the help and support!
Medical Bay, SSV Normandy
0300 Zulu (1 hour before Invictus Protocol)
13 October 2186
Luna (orbit), Terra, Sol
Even EDI's voice sounds slightly exhausted as it crackles into the medbay. "Commander, Admiral Hackett is hailing with a message, priority alpha zero," the AI intones. "Specialist Traynor is patching him through to the comm room as we speak."
Lieutenant Commander Ashley Williams hesitates for just a moment before she remembers that she's the ranking officer of the Normandy, since Commander Shepard was last seen ashore in London, trying to make the last push to the Citadel. She was last seen getting vaporized by Harbinger's beam, the LC berates herself; Williams has come to the medbay to relay this fact to Shepard's latest-her last-ground team. T'Soni's unconscious, which is a blessing, but Vakarian's eyes are surprisingly sharp, given the painkillers Chakwas has undoubtedly administered.
"You'd better go," the turian prompts her, displaying his hard-earned familiarity with Alliance codewords. "Sounds important."
Williams' lips part, and for an instant she thanks God for the excuse to delay the soul-crushing news; then she feels her eyes burning with shame. "Right," she replies with a crisp nod, her too-long hair spilling over her shoulder, the regulation bun undone in the fighting groundside. Then the LC turns heel, marching mechanically back to the elevator, her heart beating more quickly with every precious second that bleeds away between her and the war room.
The CIC isn't any easier to be in than it was two minutes before; Traynor is frantic, throwing herself into her work. Williams can't blame her, really...the specialist was the first to hear about Shepard, after all. Williams can't even imagine what the other woman's feeling right now. Bullshit, chief, she hears Alenko chiding her, and she double-times it through the security checkpoint to the war room, too fast for Westmoreland and Campbell to give her any shit.
Hackett's holo is already waiting for her in the back room. "Good of you to join me, Williams," he quips, but there's no fire behind it. His face, artificial as it is, tells the story that Williams has known since Traynor told her about Shepard: they're losing.
"You wanted to see me, admiral?" Williams prompts, after giving and receiving an automatic salute. Her voice doesn't sound like her own anymore.
Hackett nods heavily, but he still takes a weighted breath. "I need you to return to London, lieutenant commander," he begins. "We've received reports on the ground that Commander Shepard is alive, and that Harbinger is unresponsive. Major Coates and Admiral Anderson have boarded the Citadel, and the Reapers seem to have lost all coordination. Our dreadnaughts have begun concentrating fire on Sovereign-class targets."
Williams isn't sure she understands; the disconnect between Hackett's manner and the message he's conveying makes her wonder if Traynor's playing havoc with the feeds, somehow. "I don't follow, admiral," she admits. "You're saying Shepard's alive, and that the Reapers are being pushed back? That Anderson's going to dock the Crucible?" Is that hope she hears echoing around the small comm room?
"I'm saying that Shepard is alive," Hackett confirms. "And that you need to get your ass down there and evacuate her and any other principals you can. Inform her that she's received a field promotion to the rank of captain, and then you get your ass to the Sol relay ASAP. That's an order, Williams."
Williams isn't any closer to sorting out the man's comments about the Citadel, but she's been a marine too long to do anything other than offer another salute and an "Aye, aye, sir."
"I've initiated the Invictus protocol," Hackett amends. "You have one hour, lieutenant commander. Get it done and get the hell out of here." He raises his hand to his brow and swallows hard, his breath catching. "Hackett...out."
The name of the operation is meaningless to Williams, except as one of her dad's poems, but as the feed cuts out, she can't help but shudder. She'd quoted one of the stanzas to Shepard, recently, and the commander had pointed out that it was about not giving in to fate. "EDI," she barks, already running through the war room, hope mingling with fear. "Patch me through to Joker."
For once, the pilot doesn't have any wises to crack. "Gotta sitrep, LC?"
"Reingage stealth drive and take us back to the hot zone where we picked up the ground team," Williams barks, as she brushes through the security checkpoint once more, going back into the CIC. "She's alive." That last she announces loudly enough that the whole CIC hears; Williams wouldn't be surprised if Joker could have heard her. "Double time, flyboy!" Ohgodohgodohgooood; for an instant, she's back on Titan, all vertigo and nerves as the floor shifts under her still-marching feet. Only now there's no Gunny Ellison to lay into her ass for goldbricking, and there's no sense of wonder that made taking the verbal beating worthwhile; the fact that the Normandy must have jumped into one hell of a bank to get over the inertial dampeners is lost on the LC as she stumbles up to the bridge. They're entering Earth's atmosphere by the time she reaches the bridge. "We've got fifty-nine minutes to pick Shepard up and get out of system," she tells the pilot, much more quietly now.
Joker doesn't quite choke, too busy bringing the ship into atmosphere, but he still shakes his head. "EDI, how far-"
The AI's mobile platform cuts him off. "We will need to attain an average velocity of 5.6 times lightspeed in order to reach the Charon Relay if we leave within the next ten minutes. The drive core has enough spare capacity for 3.5 hours of travel at that speed."
The pilot's shoulders sag in relief. "We're two minutes out," he tells Williams. "I'm gonna set us down a hundred meters from the beam; if you can get in and out in about five minutes, we should be able to make it, Ash."
She's running toward the elevator again before Joker's finished talking, her heart beating a tattoo against the inside of her chest. It takes over a minute to reach the shuttle bay, which feels like a goddamned eternity, but the cargo door's still closed when Williams makes it out of the elevator.
"Talk to me, LC," Vega calls from his bunk, still wearing his armour and nursing his Mattock assault rifle. "We headin' out of system?"
Williams unracks her own Vindicator and grabs a belt of thermal clips, in case the pickup is even dirtier than she's expecting. "Not yet," she says. "Get ready to hop groundside-we're picking Shepard up. Thirty seconds to land." The lieutenant looks surprised but not blown away by the news-he doesn't know that Shepard should be dead. Again.
Cortez already has his M-8 in hand. "Ready to provide suppressive fire, ma'am," he informs her. He still looks a little shaken from the shuttle crash and extraction from a couple of hours ago, but Williams won't turn his help away.
Vega joins her as the ramp lowers onto the hell at the heart of London. Williams doesn't stop to think about the swarm of Husks covering the ground from the Normandy all the way to the Citadel transport beam; she doesn't stop to think about how the beam doesn't look active anymore; she doesn't stop to think about Harbinger, frozen in place, its yellow eyes still glowing pure hate over the battlefield; she doesn't stop to think that her sisters and mother were on the Citadel when the Reapers took control of it. Instead the LC dives out of the Normandy with Vega at her side, and they proceed to cut a swathe through the ravening synthetic mob.
Their direction is uncertain at first, but in a handful of seconds, Williams notices a familiar silhouette against the mangled grey concrete and rebar, off in the distance. "Looks like Wrex! And he's not alone!"
"Looks like they set up a perimeter," Vega observes, and he doesn't need her order to make straight for the island of serenity amidst the sea of carnage.
Urdnot Wrex charges out of his line of krogan shock troops to meet them halfway, intercepting a Brute that looks like it was trying to head the humans off. The krogan lunges inside the Brute's reach and puts an incendiary-modded spike right through the bastard's forehead; it screams and flails, but Williams and Vega finish it off without too much trouble.
Williams blinks as Wrex turns to face her. "That's Shepard's gun," she yells at him, accusingly.
Wrex tilts his head from left to right in the krogan equivalent of a shrug, hefting a scratched-up Graal spike-thrower. "It's a good gun," he declares. "She almost killed me with it not five minutes ago, then she passed out when the rest of the cavalry arrived. I'm keepin' it warm for her."
The LC's on the verge of questioning the krogan further when another krogan, one she knows by second-hand reports more than first-hand experience, steps forward. He's holding what looks like a burnt corpse in his arms, hardly recognisable as human, armour still smoking lightly. "Chief," he barks, and Williams blinks again, but then she realises that he's addressing Wrex. "This our way out?"
"It's yours, Grunt," the elder krogan confirms, and then he nods to the rest of his men. "We still got a few hundred Reaper troops left to kill, pup."
Something in Hackett's orders catches in Williams' mind. "You're coming too, Wrex," she informs him, even as she switches out a thermal clip and lays more fire into the Husks around them. "Hackett told me to snag all the big shots I could, and right now, it looks like you're it, big guy."
From her left, a line of Husks glows biotic blue before a detonation shreds it apart, sending cybernetic limbs and heads flying in every direction. Two mismatched figures fill the gap, both shimmering with dark energy; one alien and familiar, the other human and obscure, but both looking starved for vengeance. "I have not survived fifty thousand years only to die short of victory," Javik proclaims, and the much smaller woman beside him only screams before she sends more pulses of energy rippling out into their enemies. "I suggest we return to the Normandy," the prothean amends, after triggering another biotic detonation.
Williams knows she's running out of time, and she has to take it on faith that Grunt's carrying a living, breathing Shepard, rather than a corpse. "Let's move out," she commands, and she can hardly believe it when her former crewmate with his stolen gun takes off beside her. Wrex, Javik, and the human biotic make evac easier than infil, and they reach the shuttle bay with about thirty seconds left on EDI's estimated window. "All bodies present and accounted for," she tells the ship. "Close the hatch and bug out, Joker!"
"Aye, aye, ma'am," comes the reply over the intercom.
One last look over her shoulder shows London falling away as the shuttle bay door lifts up, and by the time she's escorted Grunt to the med bay, Williams prays they've already hit FTL.
"What on Earth…" Doctor Chakwas exclaims, when the big krogan bursts through the door. "Grunt...is that-Shepard?!"
In her two tours with the doctor, Williams has never heard her let out such a high-pitched squeal of terror and distress, and a bucket of ice floods the LC's gut. She sees that T'Soni's still out cold, and Vakarian has joined the asari in oblivion, which is a small blessing in the midst of this chaos. "Gimme some good news, Doc," Williams begs, as the doctor helps to guide Shepard's charred frame-please, God, don't let it be a corpse-onto one of the bay's unoccupied beds.
"I'll see what I can do," Chakwas vows, but her tone's gone from frightened to distant, the kind Williams imagines she adopts when she's about to say I've got some bad news…
But then the doctor gasps. "There's a pulse," she declares, and then glares at Grunt. "What are you waiting for, you great buffoon? Get her out of that armour! Now!" Even as she talks, Chawkas activates her omni-tool; where soldiers have various weapons at the ready, the Alliance has also developed medical applications with the newest 'tools, and the doctor's forearm disappears beneath an enormous orange scalpel that helps her cut through the ruin that Shepard's armour's gotten turned into.
Here, under the warm lights of the med bay, it's not at all obvious that the commander's still alive. As her chest piece is pulled away, Williams sees that there's hardly a square inch of normally pecan-brown flesh that isn't glowing an angry orange from Cerberus cybernetic implants and synthetic fibers. The woman's hair has been burnt away and her left arm is twisted at an odd angle, right from the shoulder. Chakwas runs more scans and mutters medical jargon to herself, running through the Greek alphabet with increasingly-dire adjectives. Williams shares a skeptical look with the krogan; they're both worse than useless now, and they know it, but the doc hasn't kicked them out yet.
"If you're just going to stand around," Chakwas barks, "you'd might as well make yourselves useful. Ashley, fetch me a saline drip from the cupboard behind you, and then look for a syringe of carfentanyl. There should be some in the secure locker beneath the cupboard."
The LC snaps into action, too many years of training helping her to follow orders; no matter the rank, in the med bay, the doc's always in charge. The saline she can find easy, and in a second it's hooked up to an IV and dripping into Shepard's marginally-less-charred right arm. The syringe is a bit trickier to locate; the first time, she picks up a vial of something called korazephan, and the doc nearly bites her head off. As soon as Williams turns back toward the locker, however, a cry of surprise sounds from behind her, immediately followed by a scuffling noise. The LC spins around to see Shepard doing her best to sit up, both her hands locked in a death grip with Grunt's-Chakwas has backed away, her own hands at her throat.
"Battlemaster," the krogan growls, strain evident in his voice. "You need to lie down!"
Williams steps closer as the doc skirts around, mumbling to herself about sedatives instead of painkillers. The LC pushes down on Shepard's rippling shoulders, but her weight is a drop in the bucket compared to a krogan's, so the commander-captain, now, Williams supposes-hardly seems to notice. Shepard doesn't even look at Williams; her irises burn as red as blood, not a single hint of green peeking through the Cerberus tech, and she stares through Grunt, like he isn't even there. "You're on the Normandy, Commander," Williams barks, trying to get the woman's attention. "You're safe!"
Those fiery eyes shift to Williams, but there's no more comprehension in them than there was a minute ago; there isn't even the hostile disdain the woman showed her on Eden Prime, nor the cool distance that lasted from Virmire until after Sovereign's destruction. It's the stare of a cold-blooded murderer who doesn't even need to know her victim's names before she snuffs them out.
Somehow, between the two of them, Williams and Grunt keep Shepard immobile long enough for Chakwas to inject something into the struggling woman's IV line. The LC doesn't make the mistake of relaxing, waiting for the commander's eyes to cloud over...only they never do, and it seems to get harder to hold her down, instead of easier. "Think we're gonna need a little more, doc," she observes, gritting her teeth.
Shepard says nothing; even her breathing is quieter than anyone else's in the room, even the knocked-out patients'. Another dose of the sedative has no more effect than the first, and Chakwas airs concerns about a third being enough to kill an elcor. A hand lands heavily on Williams' shoulder, and if she weren't so distracted by keeping her commanding officer from rising off of the table and likely killing them all, the LC would probably have put a couple of rounds into the offending party. As it stands, Williams nearly loses her grip on Shepard when she glances up to find T'Soni, straining to keep her weight off of a shattered shin. "You sure you wanna see this, doc?" Williams asks, but the asari has no more attention to spare her than Shepard seems to.
T'Soni's free hand caresses over Shepard's scarred cheek. "Kelsa," the asari breathes, as rough as the flesh underneath her fingertips.
Those two syllables, Shepard's first name, cause a jolt to cross the commander's face, and the woman finally blinks. A gravel-laced grunt comes from her throat that might, once, have been Liara. Then those lava-like eyes roll back in Shepard's head and she goes limp so suddenly that Williams and Grunt nearly butt heads-or, at least, Williams' head nearly smacks into Grunt's shoulder-and the LC has to scramble to catch T'Soni before the asari falls and breaks her leg even worse.
"Thank you," the asari manages, her face twisting in pain as Williams helps her hobble onto the nearest bed...not the one T'Soni's just crawled out of, the LC notes, but she keeps the observation to herself. The asari fights to keep herself in a sitting position. "Kelsa should probably be restrained," T'Soni suggests, and her cringe might not be entirely out of physical agony. "Before she regains consciousness again."
"I concur," Doctor Chakwas chimes in, and it's only a matter of a few buttons pressed on the bed's interface before Shepard is nearly mummified beneath carbide straps strong enough to keep a blood-raging krogan at bay. "Now the both of you should leave," the doc sighs, glancing to Williams and Grunt. "I believe I can handle it from here."
The LC nods and gestures for the krogan to precede her out of the med bay. Once the doors have hissed closed behind her, Williams stumbles to an empty sleeper pod, and tells EDI to wake her once they've jumped out of the Sol system.
Medical Bay, SSV Normandy
0420 Zulu (20 minutes after Invictus Protocol)
13 October 2186
Omega (docked), Sahrabarik
Boarding ships she's not in command of isn't normally Aria T'Loak's thing, but even the undisputed ruler of Omega can make exceptions when she's asked politely by two shotgun-wielding krogan and a human with enough biotics that her own shotgun might as well just be for show. Especially since she knows that they wouldn't have come to her if there were any other option available. The infirmary has three patients and one loiterer; Aria's never met the doctor or the spare, but she recognises both of the aliens. Liara's face isn't quite as guileless as it was the last time the squidling was on Omega, three years before, but the young asari still has a long way to go before she hits the Matron stage. "Tell me why I'm here in ten words or less, or I go back to Afterlife," the crime lord scoffs, with hardly a glance to the unconscious human tied down to her table.
"Kelsa has suppressive amnesia and I'm too weak to help," Liara retorts, almost immediately, looking defiant even as she lays in her own bed. "You owe-"
"I know exactly what I owe her," Aria cuts in, grimacing. The undisputed ruler of Omega isn't in the habit of owing anybody any favours, either, but unusual circumstances have a habit of unfolding in Shepard's wake. The crime lord reconsiders the well-bound body; if she were huddled in the slums, she'd likely be considered too far gone even to bother with a bullet, but the table's life support monitors show surprisingly robust vitals. "I thought you were all on Earth," she observes, moving into the space between Liara's bed and Shepard's.
The younger human's attention turns from the unconscious human, her expression as disgustingly devoted as a tame varren's. "We were," she confirms, her voice trembling with emotion. "But we were ordered away. There have been no communications from the system for nearly half an hour; it's impossible to know if it is radio silence, or…"
Aria's already bored, even by the idea that the Reapers have beaten the little armada that the galaxy's cobbled together to throw at them. "And no matter what happens, you have to make sure your saviour is ready to dance like a trained pyjak when the comms come back online." She rolls her eyes. "I take it by your wrinkling brow-ridge that you have a personal stake in Shepard's recovery?" The crime lord can only snort at the human's earnest nod.
"As do I," Liara ventures. "As well as everyone else in the galaxy, if we have any hope of breaking the cycles."
Aria crosses her arms, tilting her head in Shepard's direction. "You've already attempted to recover her memories with a simple meld," she observes. "Otherwise you wouldn't have come to me. So what did you find?"
The squidling's answer is a moment in coming. "Kelsa is there," she proclaims. "Trapped beneath a fog; during the meld she's lucid, in the depths of her mind, and she remains so for a few seconds after I pull back...but it never lasts." Liara shudders, sharing a frightened look with the talkative human. "And then she loses herself and tries to rise from the bed, likely to attack, out of instinct rather than desire."
The crime lord snorts. "You tried to meld more than once?" She shakes her head, not bothering to hide her derision. "No wonder you've exhausted yourself. Do you really not know how to recover suppressed memories?" Liara's cheeks lavender, and she indicates her ignorance without saying anything. "Children," Aria sighs. "I swear, they shouldn't let anyone under 250 off of Thessia."
The human woman swells with indignation. "Are you serious?" She demands, pointing a shaking finger at the elder asari. "Don't you care that Kelsa's mind has been turned inside out?"
Aria arches a brow at the girl's bravado. "Normally I wouldn't give a shit," she boasts, freely. "The only reason I'm here is because Shepard did me the biggest favour I've ever needed." The asari turns back to the supine human, who appears to be sleeping peacefully. "What you're asking me to do isn't easy," she admits, hating herself for her own hesitation. "And Shepard might not be grateful, even if it works."
"But you can do it," Liara insists, her tone just beneath a question. "She will be grateful, too...she does not want to die. She told me as much during the second meld."
The crime lord shrugs. "You'd better keep the tattooed woman away from her, then," she advises them. "I believe her exact words were 'You bring that bitch back so I can kill her myself.'"
"Jack will come around," the other asari sighs. "And if not...there's always Javik's preferred solution to insubordination."
Aria isn't curious enough to ask who in the blue fuck Javik is supposed to be, nor how it deals with rebellious underlings. "Have you bonded with Shepard?" The woman's hesitation is answer enough. "It might mean the difference between a couple of minutes and a couple of hours," the elder asari says.
Another moment passes before Liara finally gives her reply. "Yes," she sighs. "Quite recently, in fact."
"What?!" The human sounds as betrayed as Aria might could have predicted, if she cared about either of their feelings. "You both promised!"
Liara's lips part to begin explaining this evident breach of trust, but Aria steps in. "What's done is done," she points out. "You two will have plenty of time to fight it out later, but right now I need to know how much time you're willing to spend recovering Shepard's memories." It isn't a question, but Aria's eyes don't waver from Liara.
The asari looks confused. "I...thought you just said it could take only a few minutes," she ventures.
"Out here," the crime lord affirms, "if I can use your bond as an anchor. But to get Shepard's memories back, we have to take her through them again, one by one. That means that we have to experience them. I can do it by myself, but it'll take me a lot longer to run through Shepard's life than if we work together." The admission pains her, but Aria's used to pain.
Liara still doesn't seem to understand. "You're saying that we have to show Kelsa her whole life?"
Aria chuckles, darkly. "I'm saying that you're going to close your eyes, and when you open them again, you'll be at the beginning of Shepard's first memory, looking out through her eyes. You won't remember anything about yourself...from your perspective, you'll be Shepard," she informs the woman. "And you'll have to live every second of her life, up to the moment that she lost her memories. Every secret, every thought, every single heartbeat." Aria's lips curl into a sneer. "And I'll be right there with you, living it myself, though we won't be aware of each other at all." She glances at the human woman, who's gone from incredulous to apprehensive. "When I left Afterlife, I didn't think it'd take me forty years to get back to it."
"Thirty years," Liara corrects her. "And I've never heard of whatever procedure you're talking about," she adds, somewhat reproachfully.
"We've established that," Aria retorts, before looking back over her shoulder. "You both should leave the room. If all goes well, only five minutes or so should pass out here, but if you interrupt the process at all, the best-case scenario is that the squidling and I will have to start again." The younger human hesitates. "You don't want to know what the worst-case scenario is, little pyjak. Now move."
The woman bites her lip, giving Liara an uncertain look. "We'll be fine, Samantha," the asari assures her, which seems to shake the girl from her stasis. The human doctor, who's been perfectly quiet during Aria's visit so far, loiters only long enough to adjust the turian's sedatives to make sure he doesn't wake up during the procedure.
A moment later, the two asari are the only conscious creatures in the room, unless Aria wants to count the synthetic she heard talking over the comms on her way in. The crime lord takes a steadying breath, laying the butt of her right palm against Shepard's forehead and extending her left hand. "Take it and get ready to embrace eternity," Aria sneers, and she dives into Shepard's mind before she can regret agreeing to debase herself so far for the woman.