Shattered Mask

A/N: This is intended to be a short fic to help me get out of the writing rut I've worked myself into, since I have writer's block on almost everything I'm writing (published and unpublished). It's terrible, so let's hope this story helps me find my muse again. :) This is a somewhat dark fic with plenty of angst, but (since I can't help it, lol) there will be romance with an OC of mine. Thanks in advance for reads, etc! :D

The weight – that's all she can think of. The crushing, overwhelming, consuming weight. It's in her, on her, everywhere. She can't get away from it. The weight is trying to suffocate her – the weight her mind has made is trying to destroy her. And she notices that it's working, as she brings a familiar weight to bear in her hand and raises the almost comforting weight to her temple. The cool of the barrel is different than the weight. It's not suffocating, rather soothing in the minute relief it offers from the confines of the weight lording over her thoughts and feelings. And what thoughts and feelings she has. The surge of emotion as she thinks on those weighty thoughts causes heavy, fat tears to caress her cheeks in evidence of the weight toying with her mind. Her thoughts. Why can't she get away from them? Why do they weigh on her so?

All those batarians turned to little more than dust because of her. She had no choice, or so she keeps telling herself. But those lives weigh heavily on her. So many innocents dead at her hands. By her very hands. Hadn't she had to kill enough innocents in her life? Haven't enough lives been sacrificed in her life's stead? Even after death has taken her once, her life was regained to take more. Torfan was the first. She had no choice then too. Be a good little soldier and do what you're told, her father would tell her. And at the very cusp of her promising military career she was a good little soldier and listened to that sociopathic xenophobic commander and slaughtered every living being not of her team in her view. The good little soldier couldn't scrub the stains of sticky, vile blood off of her hands or her mind. The good little soldier cried then. The good little soldier held her pistol while she wanted to blow her brains from her skull then too. The good little soldier couldn't do it then. The weight wasn't overbearing yet.

The weight is now.

All it will take is a little click – a small little push and the weight won't bother her any more. The weight won't make her hurt. The weight won't make her cry. The weight won't smother, pummel, and devourer her. She'd be free – weightless as Maia should be. The deaths at her hands won't be her problem any more, they'll be someone else's. Maia would cease to exist. And that's what she wants.

But she can't pull the trigger. Not by her own will, but by something else – another weight surrounding her body and stilling her muscles. She can't see beyond the hot tears blanketing her eyes and cheeks, nor can she hear over the thrum of the oppressing weight, but she knows she is no longer alone in her quarters. She feels one's presence as they slip the cool, comforting pistol from her stiff fingers, and she recognizes one's oddly alien-shaped hand as they press on her neck and glide an icy needle into the forgiving flesh. Her vision clears momentarily before darkness replaces the weight, and she thinks she recognizes the silhouettes of her XO and the former STG agent.

She needs to go away – that's all she's concerned with now. They – EDI, Mordin, and Miranda – might have stopped her when she had wanted nothing more to escape the weight and return to the dead, but they can't stop her from giving up. And that's what's she's doing. She might have told them it's because of duty, responsibility, and being a good soldier that she's giving herself up to the Alliance – but it's not. If she can't release herself, free herself, then let the Alliance, Hegemony, or whoever wants her head on a platter have it. She doesn't want it anymore. Let the wolves take her piece by bloody piece. She won't stop them.

She makes her way to the cargo bay a mere shell of what she may have once pretended to be. The great Commander Shepard is anything but. She has never been as fantastical as everyone makes her out to be. She is no idol worthy of admiration. Death has marked her and stained her very soul, and she cannot escape or ignore it's weight. She cannot save lives, it seems, only take. It's a fool's errand to try and save those she's better suited to kill – it hasn't worked for her so far. Everyone seems hell bent on their own destruction with her hands as the driving force. The Reapers will only speed their certain demise. Let them believe it to be folly – she will not have the weight of that knowledge bear on her anymore. She has given up – the great Commander Shepard will be no more. She will let oblivion take her as oblivion has.

She avoids the too observant avian gaze of her best friend with a toss of her head and a shrug of her shoulders, as if those simple movements would physically stopper the bitterness and bit of understanding from seeping into his blue eyes. She can't bear to look at the clarity she sees there. If she does, she might just stop herself.

She's lucky with Tali – it's easy to dismiss the quarian's body language, as her expression is hidden beneath that opaque glass. The others all react as they're prone to react – as she expects nothing less from their collectively unique personalities. She falters again – this time at Grunt.

She has treated the krogan as nothing less than her star pupil, and perhaps even a little bit like the little brother she lost on Mindoir all those years ago. The large, yet young, krogan stands directly in her path to the galaxy map where the waiting hologram of Hackett is to accept her words of surrender.

"Surrender is dishonorable," he says in that gravely voice with an undercurrent of certainty that only the young are truly capable of having.

Shepard smiles a false smile and puts a light hand on the krogan's large bicep. "There was no honor in what I did, Grunt... Sometimes you have to atone for your actions." Her bible-thumping mother would've been proud of her words.

The krogan is less convinced and snorts in disagreement, "They'll have your head."

Maia Shepard purses her lips for a moment, and after a little deliberation says, "Maybe." She rather hopes they do though. If suicide is wrong, then surrender must be right. "You'll keep an eye on Wrex for me, won't you?" The krogan's long, thin lips pinch slightly and he nods his head once. "Thanks." The only thing she wants, in what she's sure are her final moments, is to know all her friends will be safe in her absence. If the Reapers can't be stopped, if her actions and legacy aren't enough to hold them back, then at least she knows that her jumbled group of allies are strong enough to survive. The galaxy's populace might seek destruction, but there will be survivors amongst them – friends of hers that can bear the weight. It gives her a small bit of comfort to have this knowledge as she steps onto the pedestal before the Admiral and declares her ultimate surrender.

She's being watched – she's certain of this, and it's not by the L.T. standing outside her door either. She knows this, because when she's meditating like Samara showed her, her biotics envelope her body and reach into the space beyond her to support her physically and stretch her awareness. When she's like this, she feels the other right beyond the outer walls of her extravagant jail cell watching her as she lightly probes their own biotic aura with her own. The tendrils of eezo-born energies lightly graze one another in an almost invisible sense that Shepard associates with the feeling of 'embracing eternity' at an asari's hand. She knows the biotic that's watching her must feel this, and yet they don't approach her any of the times that she invades their own space with her biotics while mediating. This doesn't trouble her – she secretly hopes they're an assassin waiting for a chance to catch her unawares.

But if she's not sharing short conversations with the L.T. or Anderson or the Admirals, she's meditating. And not to calm herself and resolve her broken mind and weighty thoughts, but to ensure she has control before her end. She doesn't want this attempt to be as botched as the last – she'll handle her displays of emotion better. People may not want her head if they know she wants them to have it.

After two weeks of watching her, the likely assassin approaches her. She's surprised to see they're turian. Why would the Primarch want her dead? It doesn't matter, she'll welcome it either way. She can't live with what she's done, and she doesn't want to see the results of her failed attempts at delaying the inevitable.

She doesn't bother to stand from the floor and uncross her legs, but she lets her biotic aura slowly die out. She meets the brilliantly golden gaze of the black-armored turian before her steadily with her own cool blue gaze, and inclines her head slightly in defeat. "You're here to kill me," she's certain of it – there's no question inflected in her tone.

She hears a curious clicking sound from the turian and looks up abruptly when she realizes it to be a snicker. Why in heaven's name would he find that funny? What a strange assassin. Perhaps he's more masochistic than she first gave him credit for.

The silver-plated turian crosses his arms in front of his chest and leans back on one leg. "No," he says simply in a voice laced with deep subvocalizations.

"What?" she blurts. Is he going to capture her and deliver her to whoever hired him to kill her then?

"No," he repeats. "I'm just here to watch, but you probably figured that out yourself." His eyes quickly dart over her poorly clothed and disheveled form, "Though I'm disappointed to find my fellow Spectre in such a state."

Spectre? Her brow furrows harshly, "The Council's keeping tabs on me."

He flicks one mandible before answering, "You can't blame them. They'll want to keep a close look at the situation between the humans and batarians. If the Alliance lets the batarians have their way, the Council will have something to say about it. They're already negotiating reparations. They don't need you pyjaks mucking up things more than you already have."

She stands then and faces him with a scowl on her face she doesn't even bother trying to control. "Who are you?" She demands.

Instead of answering directly, he hums before he says, "I believe we had the same mentor once."

"Nihlus," she knows instantly who he's speaking of. "You still haven't said who you are," she huffs.

"What if I don't?" He smirks, and for some reason its infinitely worse than any smart ass smirk Joker has ever given her. Maybe he can tell she's in no mood for gentle teasing, because his plated face sobers quickly, "Linnaeus Marin."

She draws a startling blank on the name, and she had been reading up on the Council's reports religiously during their trek to stop the Collectors. Surely she must have at least read the name once? He seems to realize her thoughts, and he smiles cockily. When his face plates pull into that broad turian-smile, she notices that he's barefaced. Never trust a barefaced turian, Garrus had once told her. And perhaps it's wrong, but she's hard pressed not to take his advice to heart. She didn't have such a good experience with the last barefaced turian biotic Spectre she met.

"Get. Out," she growls, and perhaps it was just a tad too loud, because she hears the L.T. bang once, heavily on her room's door and ask,

"Everything okay in there Shepard?"

The turian Spectre graces her with another flash of his long, sharp teeth, and turns back the way he came, "You have the nicest jailers." And just before he slips out of her room, he says, "Until next time Shepard." She wishes he had just killed her and spared her the pain of making his acquaintance.

The next time she feels his biotic aura during her meditations, she willfully ignores it. She falters when he sits next to her on her cold room's floor. She swears she can hear him smiling. Is that even possible? Her biotics die out – she had never been as in-tune with them as an asari, or even some of the human biotics she's met. She slowly opens her eyes, and looks to her right to glare at her unwelcome jail-house guest. A relative stranger that's at least as deadly as she, and considered untrustworthy by his people. Does he get some sort of pleasure from pestering her when she's more than content to wallow in her fatalism? Perhaps he'll still kill her after toying with her a bit?

"Don't look at me like that," he admonishes her with a sharp click of his mandibles. "Not when I brought you a gift." He takes her smaller hand and forcefully unfurls it to place a small, metallic piece of tech in her palm.

She looks at her outstretched hand slightly dumbfounded when she sees what he's placed there, "A communicator."

"Biometrically coded to yourself," he says with a slight tilt of his head, "And only accessible to my personal frequency. Don't even bother trying to rig it to comm someone else – I made sure you couldn't."

Sure her tech skills are far from remarkable, but he didn't have to try and rile her. Her eyes snap harshly up to his again. "Why?" she demands.

His expression softens a bit, "I thought you could use someone else to talk to who wasn't a doctor or one of your military." He looks away, "I had heard rumors of you, Shepard. Hell, I even pinged Vakarian and asked him personally." He knows Garrus? "There were... discrepancies. And I decided it wouldn't be a bad idea to talk to you."

Why? Pity? Amusement? She doesn't want to partake in either. She hands him back the tech, "But I don't want to talk to you."

He stands, and as she watches him place the comm unit on her nightstand and then leaves without a word.

She tells herself the reason she hides the comm in the band of her sports bra before the L.T. brings her lunch, is because she doesn't want to be found with tech she's not supposed to have, but when she slips it on her ear that night laying on top of her sheets in the darkened room, the reasons aren't the same. She's lonely, and she comes to the realization she doesn't want to die alone – again. She desperately misses her friends and companions, and perhaps these past few weeks of meditation have included some introspection. And maybe a small part of her craves for hope beneath the oppressing weight of her decisions.

He could be lying to her, she knows. He could very well not be this 'Linnaeus Marin', and actually be an assassin who finds some perverse pleasure in playing with her like this, but maybe not. Maybe he's really a Spectre like she, and knows all too well the weight of the decisions they make.

"Linnaeus," she whispers into the dark.

The comm crackles softly before she hears his distinctive voice filter in to her ear, "Yes, Shepard?"

"Maia," she whispers and closes her eyes. "No one has used my name since boot camp." She almost pleads him to use her name, but before her rampant emotions can take hold of her again, she hears his distinctive voice reply,

"Maia then." It's quiet for several moments, before he speaks again, "You can ask me anything, and I'll try to answer."

She wonders if there was sarcasm in that statement, but takes his offer and asks any way. "Why'd the Council send you?"

"Why did they send a turian to the homeworld of a species they have had a less than amicable history with?" There was more than enough sarcasm there. "Or why did they send me to a world where I can't eat a Spirits-damned thing?"

"Are you-"

She doesn't even finish her question before he interrupts her with, "I brought more than enough rations with me, Maia, don't worry."

"I wasn't," she snaps and scolds herself. She doesn't want him to regret his gift now. "Sorry," she apologies softly.

"You mentioned Garrus this morning," she continues after a moment. "Do you know him?"

She hears him trill over the comm, "Not all turians know each other."

She growls and starts to regret ever being foolish enough to seek some sort of companionship from this turian, when he interrupts her quickly darkening thoughts, "Vakarian is on Palaven." It catches her attention. "At least his ping bounced off of the homesystem's main buoy."

"He went home," she closes her eyes. "Good." At least he didn't go to Omega again, she thinks to herself. She pauses a bit again before she speaks, "You didn't exactly answer my first question."

"My specs were apparently well suited for this mission," he sighs. "But the Alliance knows I'm on-planet. Maybe the Council thinks by my being here it'll deter them from 'making any rash decisions'," he says mockingly.

"Because threatening a bunch of humans with a single turian is a good idea," she snorts. The Council hardly makes smart decisions. She completely looses the filter on her mouth when she blurts, "You're not half bad, Linnaeus."

She hears his distinctive alien laugh, "I guess I should take that as a compliment?"

"You should," she smiles to herself despite her dizzying thoughts and emotions. "Now how did you break into Alliance HQ and into my room?"

She's getting attached, she notices some weeks later, and this time attachment seems like a very bad thing. She's removed herself from everything and everyone else she's been attached to like this in preparation for a death she should have been able to keep, but befriending and coming to rely and trust this barefaced turian seems like a very, very bad idea. Attachment is just another obstacle standing in her way from claiming a freeing, oblivious death. And she wants this death and the lack of weighty thoughts so very bad.

"I almost killed myself," she whispers to him one night after having thought about little else all day. "Twice. Once after Torfan, and once after... well after," she can't even utter the place's name. The place where she single-handedly killed tens of thousands of innocents. It's nothing compared to Torfan.

His end of the comm is silent, and she hates herself for revealing such damning secrets to this turian she's become so attached with in such a short time. He could use this, he could use this information and hurt the people she's leaving behind. "And you died once, if the rumors are true," he says in a monotone. "Did you kill yourself then?"

"No," she whispers and is startled to find tears welling in the corners of her closed eyes. "No, I didn't."

She hears a rustling on his end of the line and he says with an indistinguishable undercurrent to his voice, "If you ever want me to get you out of there – just tell me. Spectres don't answer to anyone but the Council, you know this."

She's not sure if the last part was in regards to herself, or him, but the tears are now falling down her cheeks and staining her pillow with their salty tracks. "Thanks," her voice cracks, and she thinks that maybe in this short time he's grown attached to her too, if he's willing to spring her from deep within Alliance HQ at such high risk.

Some time later she finds herself looking forward to speaking with Linnaeus more, and less towards her death. The attachment is working in stopping her own inevitable end. She hesitates in embracing that path as fully as she'd done before, and starts to wonder why. Why? Why does this attachment to this turian make her hesitate so? She's known many people longer and knows them better than she does him, yet when she thinks of offering her life in place of the ones she's taken, she thinks of his silvery-plated face and stops from uttering such an idea when an Admiral brings it to the table during one of their meetings. She's wanted nothing but that for months now, and now she stops because of him.

It pisses her off enough that she tells him just what he's doing to her in an angry, whispered rant over their shared comm that very night.

"I can't do it – I can't even say it, and it's all your fault!"

"You're mad at me for keeping you from killing yourself in what you think is a perfectly reasonable way, just because you've developed an attachment? Do you even hear yourself?"

"Yes," she hisses. "And it's all your damned fault."

"Well maybe you don't want to die," he snaps and there's a static-like subtone to his voice as it deepens in register, "I don't see why I would keep you from doing anything – it's not like I'm Vakarian."

"This has nothing to do with Garrus." She doesn't even know why he brought him up. "It's because of you, Linnaeus, and God – I don't know why."

He doesn't say anything for a long moment, and all she can hear over the comm is the crackle of his subvocalizations. "I should ping Vakarian," he mumbles half to himself.

"Why? Why would you talk to Garrus about this?" she asks exasperatedly.

"Because his mate wants to kill herself, and isn't because she has feelings for me," he growls, and when she's stunned into silence, he huffs, "This is ridiculous – I should go."

"Wait!" She says just a little too loud, and continues softer, "Wait – please. Linnaeus, Garrus and I aren't... we're not mates. We're friends."

There's a slight whine to his voice when he says, "Spirits – what? I thought..."

She can't believe the conversation she's having after what she had confessed, "Friends. Just friends." She sighs and rubs wearily on her brow, "I can't... I... I can't talk any more Linnaeus," and she clicks off her comm. She was so certain of her death, so very certain, and now she can't see her own end – and not because of weakness, or someone physically preventing her from doing so, but because she has feelings for someone she only basically knows through nightly conversations? Maia bites back a manic laugh and rolls onto her stomach fully expecting a sleepless night. Nothing makes sense any more.

Three days – Shepard hadn't spoken to Linnaeus in three days, and as she and Anderson are being shot at by batarian husks, she hopes that he left in those three days, and isn't here on Earth as the Reapers scorch the planet. No one would listen to her, and she tried to warn them even as she wished her own death – what remained of her conscious wouldn't allow anything else. She didn't expect them to listen, but she had hoped.

She leaves Anderson behind, when it should be herself left to sacrifice for her people's homeworld, and not a man who's so much more capable of defending people than she is. She hopes he doesn't die as she walks beside L.T. Vega and her reacquainted, yet tentative friend Ashley, and wishes that it was herself in Anderson's place and he here on the Normandy. As distracted as she is coming to terms with the role she's been now thrust in to, she almost misses the movement in the shadows of the closing lift. She stops dead in her tracks when she spies a person with startling golden eyes holding her claymore. Her face pinches and her hands twitch as she struggles with the flooding feelings of relief and the awareness of her decorum in front of her subordinates. She's still a good little soldier after all this time.

She walks up to Linnaeus, bloody, sweating, and battered with a cocky smile on her face as she asks teasingly, "Do you know how to use that?" and she realizes she can't help emulating him when they first met and even crosses her arms in front of her chest subconsciously. He found her, when she had thought he had left. The relief she feels is palpable.

He raises one brow-plate and banters back, "I'm more fond of compact firearms myself." He looks briefly away from her to the small, personal-sized turian-made spacecraft sitting in the Normandy's hangar, and then back to Shepard. A seriousness overtakes him when he asks, "Do you want me to stay Maia? The Reapers..."

The sudden reality of leaving Earth behind and the Reaper invasion floors her, and any happiness she felt at being reunited with Linnaeus flees in an instant. She's Commander Shepard with an impossible task set before her, again, and she knows she's far from great. And Linnaeus knows what she really is too. He knows she'll break down, and she'll believe she can't do the impossible, and that she should be dead, but he'll accept her – and she realizes that's all he's done since she met him. She'd been afraid of rejection or disappointment from all of her other friends, especially since she was the commanding officer, and that prevented her from forming an attachment like she has with him. Those late-night conversations in her most harrowing moments when she was nothing more than a vulnerable, desperate woman trying to do what she thought best, helped her more than she could ever properly imagine. Her position in command never lent her to do anything like that before – being at the top is a lonely place, and one Linnaeus is familiar with.

"I'd appreciate it – I could use the gun," she continues a bit quieter, and taps her comm, "And the ear." The weight of her decisions and the things she's done doesn't bother her so much when he's near to speak with. He nods solemnly and taps his own comm with one of his taloned fingers, she knows she's not alone.