A/N: If you don't want Citadel DLC spoiled for you, go away now! CloneShep needed some story, I think. So I gave her some.
Second Self
The Batarian had not seen many humans brave enough to approach his store. The wards were the wards, after all, even in the midst of reconstruction. The reaper war and its conclusion had brought with it a new wave of camaraderie between species, but that only went so far.
The human female sent a chill through Kor's spine. She seemed so familiar, but the disfiguring gash down the side of her face drove away all recognizable traits. The scar started in her hairline, parting the dark brown hair and ran down over the eyebrow, obliterating a good half of it. The left eye had obviously been reconstructed, even though the green iris seemed flawlessly matched to its untouched counterpart. Underneath, the gash widened, consuming most of the cheek with stretched scar tissue. It moved down to her lip and tugged at the corner, keeping the mouth turned out in a slight frown.
When the human caught his stare, the frown turned into a snarl. Kor blinked and shrugged. "Is there something I can do for you?" he asked.
The human nodded. "You sell merc equipment?" she asked, her voice rough for a female. Kor tried not to stare at the scar tissue on the left side of her throat. It was hard not to stare in general, however. The woman was tall with a filled out figure from years of fighting. She looked lean, ragged, and dangerous.
"I do," he said, gesturing to the display items.
The human pulled up her omnitool. "I have a list." She opened the file and sent it to the batarians omnitool. He looked it over.
"Sure, I can get this stuff to you. It's all standard supplies, but with all this-" he gestured to the congested ward outside his small shop. Workers hauled equipment around the clock to get everything back in working order. "It may take a couple weeks."
"I have time," said the human. She sent another file. "You have my contact information. Let me know when everything is in order."
The batarian nodded and glanced down at the new information. He squinted at the funny syllables, trying to decide how to pronounce them closest to human standards. "It won't be a problem, miss…"
"Jane," she said. "And thank you."
A team of Elkoss Financial employees had dragged her to the med center after she crash landed on their meeting table. The fall from the Normandy had pitched her sideways into a window of one of the taller ward buildings. While her armor had saved most of her body from being cut to ribbons by the glass, her uncovered face had received the distinguishing gash as a result. When Jane looked in the mirror and saw it for the first time, she had actually smiled. It was the first step in becoming something more than her legacy. It was a difference, and that held a small bit of comfort in it.
And yet she had never felt more exposed during her recovery. When she finally could talk again, a nurse asked for her name. She stated in a raspy voice, "Shepard." She did not notice until three days later that the nurse had recorded it as "Shepherd."
That was the second difference, and that was the exposing one.
It took her weeks to leave the med center. After, she spent days wandering the citadel, murmuring the old voice-activation codes every time she found a terminal, even pressing her hand print up to a few of the DNA scanners. None of them recognized her.
So she settled into a routine of drinking. She left her cramped temporary shelter for the bars and loaded up on shots, muttering, "I'm Commander Shepard, and this is my favorite drink on the citadel," before swallowing each one.
But she was not Commander Shepard. She was Jane Shepherd, refugee of the war with a severe case of amnesia, or so the doctors knew. She was Jane Shepherd, combat-trained tactical genius, and without any life experiences to cling to. All she knew was Maya Brooks, and Maya had always been clear about setting her agenda for them to follow. Without Maya, she had no drive, no want. She did not know what to want for, even. But over time she grew to understand she had someone to blame for that. She had been near-lifeless tissue before Maya had come along, and then she had only been a tool for the woman's own schemes. She had been shaped from the very beginning as nothing but an instrument, never a person.
Jane Shepherd had been given a name, though. She no longer was Commander Shepard's copy. She was her own person, and as her own she could pursue her interests. Over the weeks of sullenly drinking at the bars, she decided she had one interest left in the world.
She really wanted to see the bitch Maya Brooks dead.
If Maya had betrayed her, things would be different. The woman was cunning, deceitful, cutthroat. Betrayal would have suited her nature.
Jane took a swallow from her drink and shuddered. She didn't remember what the bartender had said it was. Setting the glass back down, she thought of the look of complete shame on Maya's beautiful face. If Maya had betrayed her for the good of their mission, she might have been proud. But no. The woman had simply been too scared to come save her. She had stood by and watched Shepard's comrades haul her overly-sympathetic ass back on the ship, and then the Commander had turned to her and offered her a life.
In a sense, Commander Shepard had done her a favor in that moment. She had shown Jane that she was not truly alive, just some sick toy for Maya to manipulate. Jane chose her own life when she let go of that ship. Whatever Shepard offered her, it would not have been her own, just more use, more orders, alliance prison. No life at all.
When Jane let go of the Normandy, she had made the first choice for herself. She chose to die.
And when that did not pan out, she chose to take revenge, instead. This goal had required much patience, however. With the reaper war and its aftermath, things were slow to get started.
Jane was startled from her thoughts when someone approached her. The barstool next to her scraped aside as a young woman pulled it back and sat down. She gestured to the bartender, but the man was busy talking with a couple at the other end. She leaned over and waved, still not getting his attention. Jane, however, found it impossible to ignore the smooth, pale skin of the young woman.
Her rather revealing dress accentuated the curves of her figure, not just her hips, but also the graceful line of her shoulders and up to a slender neck. The woman had a lovely face, too. It was familiar for some reason, perfectly shaped with dark hair that hung in it a little when she leaned forward. Her full lips formed silent words of frustration as she failed to get the man's attention. Jane blinked and looked away, not wanting to be caught staring.
She raised a hand and barked out, "hey!" The bartender turned with a look of surprise. Jane gestured to the woman next to her and he excused himself from the couple.
"Thank you," said the woman.
Jane took another drink from her glass. "No problem." She had to resist the urge to flee while the woman ordered her drink. Her subtle accent sounded strangely familiar as well. If she could only finish her drink, maybe she could think up a way to leave the bar without looking so panicked. Something about the woman made her feel odd.
But after the bartender left, the woman turned her attention back to Jane, now sporting a fruity drink with a small, decorative umbrella sticking out of it. "I'm sorry if this sounds weird, but have we met before?" she asked.
Jane glanced back over at her, making sure her scarred side showed in the light. The woman did not even react. "I don't think so," she said. "You seem like a memorable kind of person."
The woman laughed. "So I've been told." After waiting for a few moments, she spoke up again, "And I wasn't trying out an awkward pick-up line or anything –" her tone would have said otherwise, Jane thought – "but for a moment I thought you were someone else…"
Jane finished the last of her drink. "It's all right," she said, pushing her glass aside. "It happens to the best of us." Without saying goodbye, she stood from the bar and walked away. She needed fresh air, or at least a better synthetic atmosphere than this bar had.
Outside the bar, her head began to clear a little. The alcohol still buzzed in her system, but she managed to call up a transit and make it back to the small, one-room accommodation the citadel had set aside for her. It was identical to the millions of other one-room cubicles people dwelled in. It was supposed to function as a temporary place of residence while she found work. The war had left too many jobs and not enough people to perform them, and while Jane did force herself into the occasional odd job, she preferred the simplistic living. It was not like she had plans to stay on the citadel, anyways.
But when she got home that night, something urged her to stumble over to her vidscreen and slump into a chair rather than onto her mattress. The display popped up and, after several corrections, she managed to type "commander shepard" into the extranet search.
Headlines about a wedding and images of Shepard and Liara holding one another flooded the screen. It did not cause too much of a twinge in Jane when she saw the happy woman. Before her fall, she used to get so angry at the sight of that cocky smile. Now, it only filled her with a small measure of envy, envy for the memories and experiences that made Shepard so incredible.
So she refined the search: "commander shepard and friends." The image results contained hundreds of group photographs from the recent bonding ceremony of the galaxy's new celebrity couple. Jane began looking through the pictures, trying to see if she recognized a face.
If someone mistook her for Commander Shepard, they usually had a small breakdown until she corrected them, or they would keep a safe distance away and stare in awe. Jane suspected the woman from the bar had to be familiar with Shepard – if they were even acquaintances, that is. For all Jane knew, the woman could have had her confused with someone else.
It did not take long to satisfy her curiosity. One of the first group photographs featured a woman standing next to Commander Shepard, her long, ebony hair swept back in a way that suggested age and elegance. Her face matched the woman she had seen at the bar, but her posture, her attitude was completely different. The caption read, "Commander Shepard and Miranda Lawson plan to restore London within the next three years…"
Jane adapted the search once more to include only Miranda. After scanning through several shots of her working with the Alliance Navy – and even more of her standing with the Normandy Crew – she found the face she had been looking for.
Standing next to one another, the two women looked identical. They were the same height, had the same hair color, the same eyes, even the same facial structure. The image information listed them as, "Miranda Lawson and her younger sister, Oriana Lawson."
The woman at the bar had to have been Oriana. The most obvious difference between the two was her hair style, but it went beyond that. This Miranda woman held herself a little too arrogantly. Oriana had a very relaxed posture. She seemed unconcerned with her surroundings, and her smile was genuine enough. Miranda, however, had a look of cool indifference.
What troubled Jane about the image, however, was the fact that it listed Oriana as the younger sister by several years, but the two were nearly perfect copies of one another. Jane tried to remember all the dirt Maya had dug up on Miranda. During their plotting, she had not paid much attention to the details or names. She let her accomplice do all that. Now, Jane found herself desperately wishing she had paid more attention.
"What the hell am I doing?" she asked the empty apartment.
It was stupid to spend this much time thinking about the woman. She had been curious if the girl knew Commander Shepard, that was all. Now that her curiosity was satisfied, she could close the extranet search and know to avoid the woman in the future. Still, Jane could not banish the tight feeling in her abdomen as she lay down on her worn mattress for the night. Not even during the course of their short-lived fling had Maya made her feel this.
Jane closed her eyes and thought of Maya, instead. She thought of the merc equipment she had ordered and she thought of her plans to end her. Still, she could not completely will away the memory of Oriana sitting next to her at the bar.