The door slid open and suddenly, Shepard was there.
Ashley lay there on the hospital bed, her scars slowly healing, her body trying to work itself off on the pain killers she was taking. She had been in this miserable hospital bed for weeks now, listening to the doctors and nurses drone at her about her condition and how they wanted to keep her here as long as possible in order to "keep an eye on her vitals" in case there was any internal bleeding they had missed.
It was all bull shit to her. She felt fine aside from some bruises that ached slightly when her muscles clenched. She had been in live combat zones with worse injuries. She knew very well that their scans detected no further trauma in her head or anywhere else. It was standard medical procedure to keep her until she was completely healed. She understood why, but she didn't have to like it.
The one thing she did like about being here was the time she got to spend alone with Shepard. There had been so little time to talk on Mars, and during the times they had, she berated him about his ties to Cerberus. He of course took it with a grain of salt and answered calmly to her insults, guilting her into dropping the subject. She had, of course, realizing that she shouldn't have been so difficult while on a mission. The next time they addressed it, she was here in the hospital, laying on this same bed, right before he had to leave for some war summit.
Things were better after that visit. Things were simpler. Cerberus was a distant memory according to Shepard. Their relationship, she happily remembered, was not. Now he had come to her again. She didn't care in the slightest as to why. He was here, smiling at her the way he always had. That was all that mattered.
This was her Shepard. The one who waited for her... and the one she had failed. Her guilt had become overwhelming since Mars and it grew every time he came to visit. She was even beginning to get nightmares - new ones - where she would become a monster and Shepard would just let her devour him, the only words leaving his mouth being a gentle, "I need you, Ash." They were worse then the dreams where Shepard would turn into a Reaper or a Collector or a Cerberus agent. In fact she preferred those nightmares to the ones dealing with her own issues.
But she wouldn't let him know any of it, not yet anyway. She would smile back at him as he walked to her side, grabbing a chair from the wall to sit in. She would forget all the dreams about him and about herself, she would forget the awful lack of faith she had decided to place in him on Horizon. She would take in every word he said now because she had no idea when or if she would see him again. After he walked out of her door again, he would leave to do what he was always meant to do: fight the Reapers, no matter what that meant. She would make the most of the time she had with him, guilt be damned.
"Hey Ash," he said, smiling at her healing scars. "You look a lot better."
"Are you trying to say I looked ugly before, Skipper?" she smiled in return.
"Not at all," he chuckled. "Come on LC, you know I'm no good at compliments. Don't make fun."
She laughed, not regretting the pain that came from her side. "What else am I going to do in this prison?"
"I know a good manufacturer of license plates if you're really interested in your work options," he smiled.
"I'll stick with contemplating Spectre status for now. At least until my good looks return to your acceptable deviations," she joked.
She loved him like this. She liked hearing him banter with her and laugh with her. She liked to see him being himself, not the regimented and courageous icon everybody else saw. There was so much more to him then just the face of the great Commander Shepard, and she knew how much more better then anyone else.
At least she hoped she did.
He reached out and cradled the side of her face with his hand. It was so unexpected she had to hold in a gasp. She forgot how good it felt when he touched her. He ran his thumb over one of the stitched cuts on her cheek.
"I would've thought you knew how I felt about your looks."
She held his hand were it was on her face, not letting him go. Her eyes softly closed, reveling in the warmth of his hand and the sensation of his skin on hers. It was the first time he had even touched her since their brief and bittersweet hug on Horizon. This small contact was so much less and still so much better.
"I miss you Ash."
She opened her eyes and looked at him. He stared right back at her, sincerity and longing in his eyes.
The Look.
"Damnit Shepard."
He smiled. "What?"
"You know what. That look."
"What look?" he asked, trying not to laugh. "I don't even know what you're talking about."
"Oh no?" she teased, taking his hand away from her face and holding in her lap. "You mean you don't remember that night after we left the Citadel?" She smiled at the memories she knew he would be thinking of.
"You might have to be more specific then that," he replied. "If I recall, there were many nights you and I spent together after the Citadel, Lieutenant Commander."
His mouth was curved up in a ridiculous crooked smile that she couldn't help but laugh at. This is why he was here. He always made her feel better, even if she didn't always notice it.
"Oh you know..." she said with a coy grin. "That night we spent on the Normandy... all alone... pretty much everywhere?"
He answered just as devilishly, "You'll have to be more specific then that, Lieutenant Commander Williams. If I recall, there were many times you and I were alone on the Normandy... in various places."
As he spoke his voice had gotten lower and quieter. She couldn't help but blush as he leaned in closer to her. They both quietly laughed at the red in her cheeks, pressing their heads together affectionately. He raised the hand he held to his lips and kissed it. She loved the gesture.
"But to answer your question," he continued, leaning back in his seat, "yes, I remember the night you mean," he said with a soft smile. "I remember all of our nights together."
"You remember what I told you?" she asked.
Shepard nodded. "You said that you would do anything if I kept looking at you like that. What did you call it? It was something ridiculous."
"No, please don't say it - "
"My 'look of love' was it?"
She covered her eyes in embarrassment. "God Shepard, you didn't have to repeat it," she laughed. "It was terrible the first time I said it."
Shepard started to laugh. "Hey, your words, not mine," he said, trying to fend off her blows as she started to punch him.
"My drunken words, you ass," she laughed.
Finally, he caught one of her fists and took her hand again, calming her down. She sighed in resignation with a small smile on her face.
This was almost too good to be true. Shepard was sitting in front of her with that old smile he always wore whenever they were alone. He was laughing with her, flirting with her, even holding her hand. It was like they had been together for years, a couple in their prime and very much in love. In his case, that wasn't far from the truth. Even after all she had said to him, he was here visiting her with that smile. She, however, had been without him for so long. And when she finally had seen him again, instead of letting herself be with him, she held on to the fear that he wasn't the same. She convinced herself that somehow he had been corrupted and that this "new" Shepard wasn't the same. And yet as he squeezed her hand lovingly and smiled at the memories they both had just relived, she knew that this was the real deal.
And she had rejected him.
She needed him to know how bad she felt, how guilty. This was Shepard, the man she loved, the one person she could say anything to, and all she could think was how she abandoned him when he needed her. The thought of just being with him again, even for a little while, was all that was keeping her going, and she wasn't going to let the negativity she was carrying dampen any of that time. Damn her pride. It was time to be honest.
"Do you remember what else I said that night?" she asked, averting her eyes from his.
He waited a minute before answering. He new where this was going. "Yes," he said softly squeezing her hand. "You… told me you would follow me anywhere."
"What else?"
"Ash - "
"Please Shepard," she said, finally looking back to him. The pain was clear in her eyes.
"Ash, you don't need to beat yourself up over this," he said moving closer to her. "It's over, you don't need to be sorry about it anymore. Fresh start, remember?"
"I told you I would always believe in you." She let go of his hand. "I lied. I left you. I didn't trust you."
"Ashley that's enough - "
"The thing that really gets me," she continued, cutting him off, "is that I still feel like I would do it again." He leaned away from her, averting his eyes to hide the wound she had dealt. "So much is different. I… I loved the Shepard I followed to Ilos, the one who saved everyone he could, even if they didn't deserve it. I didn't know what to think when you came back. I was... happier then I ever remember being in my life. You were alive! I had mourned you for two years and yet there you were." She took a minute to wipe an annoying tear from her face. "All I wanted was to see you, to hear from you, to hear your voice… and then Cerberus was came into the picture. I was scared, Shepard. I was terrified that if you really weren't yourself, that if I fell for some cloned Cerberus puppet, I would be heart broken... and you would still be dead. I didn't want to face that, I didn't want to get hurt, so I… hurt you first."
He was quiet for a few agonizing moments. She turned away from him and stared out the window to the Presidium. More silent tears fell as her throat and chest clenched trying to hold in the sobs. She shouldn't have said anything, she thought. She let him know everything. She was acting stupid.
"I don't care."
She paused. "What?"
Shepard reached for her and turned her face towards him again. "I don't care about that Ashley," he said, his eyes soft and understanding. "I know you. I know the way you are, how you think. I know the only way you'll ever trust me again is if I prove it to you in the things I do. I know you're slow to trust. You always were," he chuckled. He wiped away a few of her tears before she could do it herself. "I know the way you feel about the Shepard you knew two years ago and you can be damn sure that I'll happily spend what's ever left of my life proving to you that he never really died, that he's sitting right here, by your bed, holding your face and wiping your tears away."
She held his hand to her cheek again, not letting it move away. "I'm sorry Shepard," she whispered.
"Don't be. It doesn't matter to me."
"It doesn't matter?" She couldn't believe what he was saying. How could he not care how she felt?
"Ash, after you left on Horizon, I was upset and angry and I thought for a while that I would just leave the chapter involving you behind me and move on," he said, taking her other hand. "But after I thought about it... I realized that without you, there isn't even a story. If I hadn't stepped in to save you from the beacon on Eden Prime, I never would've gotten the visions, we never would've stopped Saren. Without you I know I couldn't have done half of the things I did when we were after him, and without the thought of seeing you again to keep me going after I was brought back, I never would've made it as far as Horizon."
"Shepard, we know that's bull shit, you could've done all that without me - "
"And once I realized everything you had given me," he said talking over her, "- a reason to keep going, to keep fighting - there was no way I was going to give it up. I thought only of being with you before we hit the Collectors. I must've stared at the stupid picture of you on my desk a hundred times before we got to the base. I kept thinking of what you might say if you had been there with me, what you might do. I thought about what things would be like if I should survive and you were in my life again. I knew just imagining it would never be enough. I fought that day, survived through everything that day, hoping - hell, praying - that no matter what, I could see you again, just to see your face. If that meant you would yell at me everyday you saw me or you would love me the way you had before Cerberus, I didn't care." She shut her eyes, hoping he didn't see the emotion there.
"I don't care if you doubt me, i don't care if you leave me, I don't care if you never want to see me again. You're never getting rid of me, Williams. We had something real and I will do anything to get it back. I will fight, everyday of my life if I have to, to prove to you that no matter what happens, or what you say or do, you are the only one for me Ash."
Out of everything she had ever heard Shepard say, nothing had ever really made her speechless. She had seen him convince a biotic cult leader to turn himself in, seen him calm down an angry and armed Krogan warlord, and even turn an indoctrinated Spectre against the little voices in his own head, but none of that had ever surprised her. It was just Shepard doing what he did best. His artistry and eloquence with words was one of the first things she found attractive about him.
This however had caught her off guard. It was the passion in his voice, something she had never heard in combination with any of the powerfully charismatic speeches he had made in the past. This was more than just a confession. He was trying to do more then convince her of his feelings. He was trying to convince her that his feelings had never changed - that he had never changed. She had heard that passion only once before come from his lips. It was the most prominent memory she had of him.
The night before he died, with the same intense passion, he had told her that he loved her.
When she mustered the strength to look at him again, pushing back the powerful imagery of that memory, she immediately wished she had been weak. His eyes were still sincere, but there was another thing there, something she had seen everyday she had ever spent with him, but it was something she always took for granted.
It was simply Shepard.
It was everything he was. It was the light that drew everyone he met to him, the spark that made his enemies flee for their lives. In those eyes, to almost everyone, there was unlimited compassion. If you were his friend, there was complete, unabashed love. It was the gaze of unbridled determination, of unshakable resolve. It was the spell that broke even Saren, the indoctrinated Saren, down to his core. It was him, everything that he was. All of his emotions and convictions and desires and responsibilities. No walls, no filters keeping people out. He was open, he always had been. He never hid anything, he never had a reason to. He was accepting and unquestioning. He was brilliant.
The look in his eyes, the one that she had always seen but never understood, the look that she herself couldn't even find strength to return to him, was his very soul. He was giving her his being, his heart.
She believed everything he had said now, and even though she wanted to look away, ashamed that she couldn't give him the same honesty, she was fixated. This was her Shepard. She was positive now. She might doubt him, but she would never leave him.
Never again.
"So, no, it doesn't matter how you feel in terms of who I am or who you think I am," he continued, unaware of his hold on her. "I'm in this for the long run. Well, at least as long as we have." He reached for her face again and brushed the hair from her eyes before taking it. "I'm prepared to deal with your doubt, your stubbornness, blunt comments, anything you can throw at me. You are, have been, and probably always will be the biggest challenge I'll ever face, but damn, are you worth it."
He smiled at her, genuinely, like everything else about him. She didn't say anything. She was positive she wouldn't be able to if she tried. She simply smiled back at him and took his hand from her face and held it. She knew he wouldn't mind her silence. He did know her after all.
After about ten minutes she finally mustered up a sentence. "How long will you stay?"
"I'm here until tomorrow," he said. "We're heading for Tuchanka."
"The Krogan homeworld?"
"Yeah," he chuckled uncomfortably. "The Turian Primarch needs me to help out a squad that crashed landed there, but ultimately we're sort of… trying to cure the Genophage."
She blinked her eyes a few times and opened her mouth to say something, but stopped short. "You know what," she said instead, "I don't even want to know. Will this help us beat the Reapers?"
"Yes."
"Then I don't care." Shepard laughed and she smiled back. It faded however, when she thought of him fighting without her. "Just… come back okay?"
"I don't know," he said, leaning away with a playful smile. "I won't have you there to drag my ass away from the suicidal stuff. I'm gonna need a lot of motivation to stay alive."
She laughed. "Are you saying that my peak condition figure isn't enough to get you back to the Citadel again?"
Instead of laughing with her, she saw his eyes roam down her body with a pleased smile on his face. "Actually, that would be more than enough."
She smirked, grabbing his chin and turning him to look at her face again. "Then you should come back soon," she said in a low voice that made his smile widen. "I'll make it worth your while."
"You can count on it."
. . .
She couldn't remember when they actually stopped talking. They spent most of the day and night together, just catching up on the things they both had missed. Eventually, they fell asleep, Shepard leaning over in his chair and resting his head on his arms on the side of her bed. She wasn't even sure if he had had anything to eat the entire time he had been on the Citadel. He had stayed with her all day. When she woke up, Shepard was still there, sleeping by her side, apparently unasked to leave by anyone. She didn't complain at all.
She watched him sleep, more peaceful then she could ever remember seeing him. Despite his calm, the bags under his eyes had not faded with the night. There were a few bandaged wounds and dark impact bruises on his arms from battles. He looked exhausted, even while he just lay there. He was sleeping so deeply she even got out bed without waking him.
She bent down and kissed his head before walking to the bathroom. Despite all of her joking, she really was worried about him, even more so now, knowing that she couldn't go with him.
When she came back into the room, he was awake in the chair, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.
"Sorry I slept in," he yawned.
She walked over to the bed and sat on the edge of it in front of him. "It's fine skipper," she said. "I just woke up too."
He stretched his arms above his head, then took her hand like it was second nature. "Joker's probably going to call me back to the Normandy any minute," he sighed. "I wish I could stay."
"Come on, Commander," she smiled. "We both know you're dying to get back to the fight."
"More like dying to finish it," he laughed lightly. His smile faded when he looked back at her. "If I can't stay, then I wish you could come with me," he said with longing.
"So do I."
They gazed at each other for a long time. They didn't say anything at all, only sat holding hands, memorizing everything about that moment. If she had thought their encounter on Horizon had been bittersweet, she had only been fooling herself in comparison to this.
"Damn it, I hate this," she muttered, more to herself then to him.
"I know you do." He squeezed her hand and stood. "Just get better soon... and come back to me."
"As long as you want me, I'll be there."
He slowly moved his free hand up her neck until she could feel his fingers tangled in her hair.
"There should be no doubt that I want you, Ash," he said, inching his face closer to hers.
Despite the warmth from his palm that began to radiate through her, a pleasurable chill ran down her spine. It had been far too long since she felt this way. She damned her own self-righteousness for denying her this after Horizon.
"Shepard…" she whispered parting her lips for the kiss he was leaning in to give her.
"Shepard!" yelled a voice from his comm, shattering the moment.
"Why does this always seem to happen to us?" she asked with a frustrated smile, leaning away from him.
Shepard laughed under his breath. "Sorry Ash." He kissed her forehead then hit the blinking interface on his omni-tool. "Come on Wrex, can't you be a little more respectful of my personal life?"
"Sorry Shepard, but the thought of you getting laid while I still can't is just something my poor little ego can't handle," Wrex's booming voice echoed over the comm. "Joker says the old bird is refueled and ready to go. Get your ass up here so I can go home."
"I'll be right there," Shepard laughed. He shut his tool down and looked at her. She was smiling after hearing Wrex's voice again.
"A shame I can't go," she said. "I would've loved to out-fight that old Krogan."
"I'll probably be back before we make our stand on Tuchanka," he said, dragging his chair back to its place against the wall. "I'm sure Mordin will want to stock up on supplies before we make the last push and I'd like to keep Wrex in as much of a prolonged state of anticipation as I can." He walked back to were she sat on the bed. "I'll be careful. And I'll save plenty for you."
"You certainly know how to make a promise to a girl," she smiled. He leaned in and kissed her cheek. She laughed at the silliness of it and asked, "What was that?"
"The pre-game show. I'll save the real performance for later," he smiled.
When she smiled back at him, he turned and headed for the door. Before he was all the way out, she called out to him.
"Shepard?" He turned to her. "Kick some ass."
"I always do."