AUTHOR'S NOTE: I'd like to point out that user Nixanne mentioned the song "Violet Hill" by Coldplay in a review of my other story, "Never Doubted You" and therefore kind of caused this story. The lyrics are from said song. A short, introspective piece from the perspective of a Shepard who survived the Destruction ending of ME3.
It had been a very long time since she smoked.
It was a bad habit that had clung to her in her younger years, even after she climbed out of the pits of the slums and put on an Alliance uniform. For many years, it had been the hound that followed her out of the underworld and refused to be shaken.
Yet, after all the years she had gone without it, she found herself with a pack in hand and an antique zippo lighter in the other. It was a novelty item they had started making, back when the Alliance was first formed. The Alliance symbol on the front was rubbed clean of it's plated gold from the many hands it had been passed through.
Shepard found herself rubbing her thumb over the symbol, absently.
The weather was sunny and cool when she stepped out onto the deck, the light from the sun filtered heavily by the shade of the forest around her. There weren't many isolated places like these left on Earth. Most were either conservations, private land managed by environmentally conscious organizations and individuals, or reclusive billionaires. When the time had come for her to settle her spirit and sow her roots, Shepard had sought out and bought a section of woodlands for her home, at great expense.
She didn't want for anything. Garrus had been right when he said they could live comfortably off the royalties from the vids.
It had been a long time since she had worn a uniform. Her appearance hadn't changed much in 50 years. "Being resurrected from the dead will do wonderful things for your figure," she liked to joke. She worried sometimes that people took her seriously.
Though doctors across the galaxy had told her she was as healthy as she had been in her 30's, Shepard had chosen to retire. It wasn't a choice she made with physical decay in mind, but rather, a decay of the spirit.
Shepard was tired.
Generations ago, human beings were lucky if they lived past their 80's, and even that was double the life expectancy of the earliest civilizations. Now, the race, as a whole, was well on their way to doubling it again.
She often wondered if they were really meant to live so long.
She doubted there was few people in the galaxy who could claim to have lived a life as full as hers. There were many nights when she laid awake and struggled to remember it all. Sometimes it felt like her life was too large for her head. Was that heaviness of her soul the thing that seemed to bear down on people, bending them in her direction or out of her path?
She stared out at the trees beyond, slumped in one of the chairs they left out in the summer months. Her body was relatively warm, despite the bitter chill. It was the upper Northeast of the America's, and winter was coming. She had pulled on her N7 hoodie and a pair of fingerless gloves for good measure before stepping outside.
Now, she marveled at the easy way she lit her cigarette around the extra bulk that protected her fingers. Old habits, she supposed.
The smoke bothered her less than she had thought it would, after so many years. Her life had never been devoid of fire and ashes. A little tobacco smoke wasn't likely to make her eyes water.
The forest was more yellow than green as the fall progressed, and she noticed their little vegetable garden was also beginning to wilt. It was their first experiment in keeping something alive. She found herself worrying they may fail. It made her doubt that she had any talents other than her talent for death.
She would have to remember to bring the little pots inside, before the snow began to fall. She hadn't experienced a decent New England winter in many years. They had only moved in to their newly built home in May, and off-world winters just weren't the same.
Subtly, the snowfall turned to ashes in her mind.
Was a long and dark December
From the rooftops I remember
There was snow
White snow
Clearly I remember
From the windows they were watching
While we froze down below
It wasn't quite winter, but she felt the scene before her, out of context, would look much the same. Except the white powder that clung to every surface was not snow, and none of the structures were whole. Everything was broken and the powdered ashes of the dead were drifting all around them.
Shepard held her rifle a little tighter.
The makos roared beside them, crushing debris under their wheels as they navigated the rubble at a ponderous pace. It was the final push.
They hadn't left the safe zone yet. As the barrier loomed ahead of them, she took a final look at humanity's last stand.
Faceless soldiers surged around her. Her team stood resolutely at her back. The collected dead littered the side roads, covered in whatever they could find to hide their faces from the tragedies of the living. She knew that out there, in the wilderness of the open battlefield, hundreds more would be waiting. Some of them in brutal pieces, most of them unrecognizable and blackened.
Above them, in the buildings sturdy enough to stand, refugees and marines lined the windows. She glanced upwards as they watched the procession march past. The faces in the windows were expressionless. There was no cheering, no militaristic bravado. Their desperation rendered them silent.
In the quiet, the only sound was destruction.
When the future's architectured
By a carnival of idiots on show
You'd better lie low
If you love me
Won't you let me know?
Garrus's good bye rang in her mind. In that moment, he was everything she loved and cared for, solidified into one living being. Though fear had always been a foreign and infrequent visitor in her heart, she had felt it then.
She feared she would never see him again.
If half an hour was all she got in the afterlife, she prayed with every fiber of her being that she would spend every second of it with him.
As the symphony of gunfire began, she replayed her last moments with the turian over and over again. The gentleness in his eyes as he embraced her. Pop, Pop. The pressure of his plates against her lips. Pop, Pop. The heavy smell of his skin and the sting of good-bye. Pop, pop, pop.
"Forgive the insubordination but your boyfriend has an order for you: come back alive."
Shepard didn't disobey an order.
Pop, pop, pop-
Was a long and dark December
When the banks became cathedrals
And a fox became God
Priests clutched onto bibles
Hollowed out to fit their rifles
And the cross was held aloft
They all had the same thing to say: it was a miracle she survived.
They had found her amongst the rubble, broken but breathing. She felt for certain that there was more of her that was synthetic than organic, now. An irony that she never missed an opportunity to dwell on.
Her lower left leg was entirely cybernetic, her liver was a portion smaller, and both of her kidney's were new. Not to mention the myriad of small cybernetic implants that Cerberus had installed to resurrect her. The doctors told her that thousands of people had stepped forward to offer themselves as potential donors. They only needed one kidney to keep her alive. The other had been given time to grow in a lab, from her own DNA.
She had met the young woman who had been found as a suitable match. She was just a girl. Someone who had survived.
Shepard thanked her profusely for her life. The girl thanked Shepard for hers.
On the nights when life seemed only to drag onward, she felt ungrateful for wishing that it had all ended in that final blaze of glory. It would have been a good way to die. But her tenacity had persisted, and death rejected her a second time.
Now, she could only sit in the sun while the trailing smoke of her first cigarette in 61 years reminded her of the burning flesh of the dead.
In the aftermath of the war, Shepard had found herself unable to rest peacefully.
Her hospital bed had quickly become a prison. She bullied her way through three star-struck physicians before a hard tempered man named Dr. Reynolds was given her case. Unlike his predecessors, he didn't fall for Shepard's bravado and managed to force her through the rest of her treatment.
Shepard resented him for it, at first. At the time, the Normandy was still missing, along with her entire crew. She desperately wanted to escape the hospital and launch a rescue mission. Dr. Reynolds often warned that in her condition, her rescue mission would quickly become a suicide mission.
She always countered that she had already survived one before.
"Third time's a charm," he would say.
He was still a respected friend. Though he had long since retired, Shepard often bothered him for his medical expertise. He was the only one she trusted: Dr. Chawkwas had passed on several years before.
They returned while she was still hacking her way through the red tape that kept her from getting her rank and title back from the Alliance. As soon as the Normandy had reappeared into the Sol System, Admiral Hackett had contacted Shepard personally. With his help, she was waiting for them at the dock.
Shepard smiled unexpectedly, remembering.
There would never be a better moment in her life than seeing them all come off that ship alive.
Bury me in honor
When I'm dead and hit the ground
A love back home it unfolds
If you love me
Won't you let me know?
Most people expected her to settle down, after that. But, once she proved she was still capable of carrying a gun, she was reinstated as an Alliance Commander and Captain of the Normandy. Her Spectre status was returned to her as soon as the Council received word that she was a alive. Most of her crew chose to stay aboard, while a few retired or returned to their respective native nations.
Shepard found herself running from one end of the Galaxy to the other, but she no longer knew what from. An itch had settled in her soul and there was no thunder of gunfire loud enough to drown it out.
For many years, she did errands for the various powers-that-be. She shipped precious cargo. She guarded dignitaries and desperately needed supplies. She made speeches and appeared at public gatherings. She toasted the fallen a hundred-thousand times until every sip of Champagne began to taste like blood.
Her trigger-finger twitched for a worthy enemy. Her head throbbed with the silence of peace. Her muscles ached with relaxation.
Eventually, the galaxy returned to a more natural rhythm. The relays were rebuilt and the various home worlds of the sentient species were recovering. Peace and cooperation between all nations became boring. The galaxy rolled over, and it's criminal underbelly re-surfaced.
Shepard savored the sound of gunfire.
She fought until the fight got old. There were no more Batarian slavers to battle. The Krogan were mostly occupied with the re-structuring of their civilization. Whatever mercs she faced, Shepard often found them to be young, inexperienced and unchallenging.
By the time the fire in her soul went cold, Garrus and Ashley were the only original crew members left on her ship. Her friendship with each of them had extended so deeply, they did not need words to know she was done. She was absently wiping the blood of a teenage, Blue Sun wannabe from her boot when Garrus put his hand on her shoulder.
Looking at his face, she suddenly realized how old they were.
"I don't want to do this anymore."
"I know."
I don't want to be a soldier
Who the captain of some sinking ship
Would stow, far below
So if you love me
Why'd you let me go?
It said something about the depth of her thoughts that she didn't notice the turian as he stepped out onto the deck with her. As a species, they weren't really known for their stealth. She didn't realize he was there until he was leaning over her and plucking the cigarette from her loose fingers.
"What is this?" he said, bewildered.
She shrugged, dropping her eyes in shame. She hadn't intended for him to catch her doing it.
Garrus brought the cigarette to his nose. He bared his teeth in disgust at the smell, making her smile a little.
"Are you actually inhaling this?"
She shrugged again and nodded slightly.
He seemed to really see her, then, and his expression softened. He handed the cigarette back to her but she didn't take another puff. She chose instead to put it out in the potted plant beside her. The comfort of nicotine suddenly seemed obsolete.
He sat down beside her, idly taking her hand in his. It was a gesture they had repeated for many years now, but in the light of retrospect, she realized how strange it might have seemed to her back then. It wasn't only that he was an alien from another planet lightyears away. Shepard had grown up so fiercely alone. All of her life lessons had taught her to love nothing, trust no one and never stop moving.
And here she was, sitting idly in the sunshine with another's palm pressed against her own.
"The other's are looking for you," he said gently.
"They're here already?" She asked, surprised.
He turned toward her, a knowing smile in his eyes.
"Shepard, you've been out here for three hours."
She glanced down at the pot beside her and realized there was a myriad of cigarette butts cluttering the soil. She hadn't even noticed. Her throat began to feel sore, just thinking about it.
"I feel like such an ass," she said, but made no motion to get up and return inside.
He squeezed her hand reassuringly.
"Please, you know I'm always covering your ass. You have nothing to worry about," he replied. There was tinge of humor in his voice that made her suspicious.
"What did you tell them?"
"That you got lost in the woods."
She pulled her hand free to whack him playfully on the shoulder. He made a poor attempt to avoid her, laughing.
"Enough people in the galaxy think that I've gone senile without you spreading rumors," she grumbled fondly.
"Well, choosing to live like a hermit in the woods doesn't help your image, Shepard," he chuckled.
"How else am I going to avoid all the people who keep asking me for favors?"
"I thought you enjoyed solving other people's problems?"
His mandibles flared in a wide grin as she tried, and failed, to smack him again.
"I suppose we should head inside," she said reluctantly. The weather was nice, and she dreaded the niceties and platitudes that would be exchanged in the near future.
He shrugged.
"There's no hurry. Leilya and Joker are in a heated debate. It should keep them busy for a while. Javik and Liara are betting. I was surprised that Javik chose to bet against his daughter, but he claims the 'challenge will make her stronger.'"
"Wait," she said, holding up her other hand, "Joker is in a debate with an asari 5 year old?"
"They're surprisingly smart at that age."
"This, I have to see," she said, standing immediately.
Garrus laughed and allowed her to pull him up with her. Before she could start toward the door, he tugged on her hand and drew her to him. She turned easily into his embrace. Her palm came to rest on his chest and she smiled up at him.
"Yes?"
"Before we go in there and see all those people..."
He leaned toward her and she met him willingly, pressing her lips fiercely against his. He kissed her deeply, their tongues intermingling for a moment, before releasing her. She gasped for breath, smiling.
"Nice pep talk," she whispered, their foreheads pressed together.
"It's what I do," he murmured in reply.
Hand in hand, he led her toward the door. He had to hold back the streamers that hung off the banner above the entryway. She glanced up at the hand-drawn letters, smiling.
Normandy Reunion (don't make me remember how long it's been)
She had written in the parentheses because trying to count the years had made her heart heavy. Later, they would all gather on the porch, drinks in hand and joke about her bad memory. Someone would tell stories, and Garrus would make fun of her when she got the details wrong. They would cook on the grill, and the smell of burning meat would not remind her of the dead.
But that was later.
For now, she turned, remembering to bring the plants in before it snowed.
I took my love down to violet hill
There we sat in snow
All that time she was silent still
So if you love me
Won't you let me know?
If you love me,
Won't you let me know?