Author's Note: I wrote this while listening to "Time" from the Inception film soundtrack. If you want, you can try reading this with that in the background, or at least imagining it in your head for mood.
He was going to wake up any day now. Each morning she'd tell that to herself. Any day now, while she sat and talked to him like she did every visit, confided in his unmoving body her deepest fears and spoke to his unknowing mind her wildest dreams - any day now his eyes would flutter open while she was in the middle of a sentence and she wouldn't even notice until he had sat upright and kissed her on her scalp tattoo-strip like he always used to. Shit, that was sappy.
Each night, she thought of what they would do, where they would go. Fish and chips first. You said we would get "real" fish and chips one day, not "the shit they make on the Citadel, Jack, we're getting the real artery-cloggin' deal" - walk right into some small shop in Brighton and order two battered haddock, mushy peas on the side. You were going to grow a massive fuckin' beard and let your hair get long so people wouldn't recognize you when we went out on the Pier and along the beach, and I'd yell at some poor guy for staring at the tats that went down the front of my shirt. Then you made a joke about it maybe being a woman and I didn't get it and you had to tell me all about Brighton and how crazy and awesome it was - "like you," you said. And then we sat there and laughed and loved and existed together.
Each weekend, she'd go to see him in the hospital. She'd confide her fears and whisper her dreams in his ear as he lay there, unmoving, that fucking heartbeat monitor beeping so slowly and constantly it hurt. And each afternoon she would be hustled out of the room by doctors and nurses and caretakers so they could bathe him and feed him and clean his shit. But it was okay. Because the next time she visited, he was going to wake up. Any day now.
He'd beaten the Reapers to hell. He'd died once already, for Chrissake. He'd kick this coma's ass. He'd smack the shit out of it, pull himself up in in his hospital bed and ask for a beer in that quiet, too-goddamn sincere voice of his.
Any day now.
Any
day
now
9:34 AM.
Jack would never forget that simple set of numbers.
She'd never forget that Saturday morning, when a stranger's knuckles rapped a short sharp knock on her apartment door. They hadn't buzzed when they had entered the building, and the unexpected noise nearly sprung the mug of coffee from her hands.
She was still jumpy, and the empty space next to her each night only made it worse.
Swearing loudly and with an enthusiasm that could make a krogan blush, Jack placed the coffee down on the kitchenette counter and massaged her aching forehead. Why is always a choice between booze or sleep these days?
Jack sighed, and threw the closest dishtowel she could find over the spill before turning and marching towards the knocking.
"Whoever that is, I've got a hangover shitting all over the inside of my head and a really important thing to get to that you do not want to make me late for, so I'll tell you one time - go. The fuck -"
She pulled open the door.
"Away….?"
Two unfamiliar men stood in front of her, backs ramrod-straight in a way that had over the past year become oh so familiar, holding their hats in their hands before them, blue Alliance dress uniforms immaculately pressed.
No.
One of them stepped forward. "You are Miss Jacqueline Harris-Nought?"
No no no.
And her mouth, suddenly dry, managed to rasp "Yes."
And the marine was speaking as if from across the hall, across the city, on the other side of the planet…
"The Alliance regrets to inform you that at 0700 this morning Lieutenant Commander John Shepard passed away due to the injuries he received fighting -"
No.
WHAM.
The marines stared at the plain white paint on the door which had just slammed shut violently in front of them, sending a tremor through the building.
Then there was silence, broken only by the muted noise of movement in the apartment. One marine nodded to the other. Now they would just wait, give her a few minutes to collect herself, and then -
The door was nearly torn off its hinges as Jack flung it open and rammed through the first marine before narrowly dodging the second, her boots drumming on the carpet to the beat of her heart and a faded black sweater fluttering behind her, thin arms half-way into the red and white striped sleeves.
No.
Her trembling fingers took four tries to get the keys into her motorcycle's ignition, and her hands, which grew more numb by the second, dropped her helmet as she pulled it off the handles. It hit the ground with an echoing clatter and rolled in a sad, lopsided circle as a single red taillight glowed brightly in the visor before growing smaller and smaller and smaller.
No.
No.
No.
She tore along the street, nearly hitting a couple kids playing soccer with a tattered ball. A woman leaned out of her window and shouted something at her, but she couldn't hear it over the dull, wet thumping of her heart, like someone punching meat to a rhythm.
thudthud
thudthud
thudthud
The light was red.
Shepard's blood was red.
The truck missed her by inches. She could count the rusty orange scratches running along the white metal.
Orange scratches on white painted metal
Orange scars on pale white skin
And all around was grey concrete, broken and brought low by tragedy
His blood was red
Red like life
Pale like death
No.
The cars ahead of her were slowing down
Slowing down
Slow
Slower
Stop
Don't stop can't stop keep going
A twist of the wrist and she's flying forward
Paintwork and property are nothing
Scratch scrape snap shatter as she shrieks past vehicles like a banshee
A gap
Take it
It's close
So close
Two cars soclosetogethershecan'tevenbreathe
she can't breathe
She can't breathe. She's weak now, crying now, like a fucking pussy, she tells herself - there are tears running down her face and she tries to inhale with great shuddering gasps and suddenly he's there with her, and his hands gently touch her face. She tenses and recoils on instinct and he starts to remove his hands, because he's afraid he might have scared her, but she grabs them and stops them and squeezes them so tightly she's afraid they might break.
What would be worse? The thought runs through her head, unbidden. If they break, or if they never come back?
But they do come back.
Large, rough, scarred, gentle hands belonging to a large, rough, scarred, gentle soul return and slowly embrace her, asking. They do not pull, they do not take, they simply request. And small, rough, scarred, tattooed hands rise slowly, hesitantly, and return the embrace in affirmation.
Yes.
The hospital doors were manned by security staff. It's because he was here.
No.
Is here.
They saw the bike speeding towards them.
Is it stopping?
One of them shouted out to her.
No, it isn't.
It hit the curb, bounced, and she half-jumped, half-fell from the seat as the guards dove out of the way. Her boots impacted the concrete slabs, sounding their great drumbeat, as she stumbled and ran into the doors and forced them open.
nononono
nononono
nononono
nonononoNO
There was silence. The room was near empty, but for a small army of military personnel and doctors flanking a silent shell lying in a medical gurney, draped in white cloth.
They looked up at her, startled, shocked.
They're going to torture him
Put wires in him
Twist him into monster
Like Cerberus did to me
But to him
NO.
But even as she surged forward she could feel the clammy fingers of the guards grasping at her wrist and pulling back. She lashed out blinding and the air crackled with ozone.
A crunch.
A muffled, nasal scream.
Another pair of hands retrained her, but she couldn't tell who through her tears. But they were dead for trying to stop her. She was going to save him.
And a third pair, hard and bony, with half the fingers and twice the strength.
"Jack!"
A buzzing, familiar voice.
"Jack, stop."
She froze and went limp. Her legs were suddenly very weak. The crew quickly wheeled the gurney over deserts of tiling and canyons of grout through a set of double doors, the wheels squeaking like the wind of a thousand years. The doors swung once...
swung twice
swung
swung
swing
swing
closed
gone.
No.
"Jack…"
With great effort, Jack willed her legs to turn her away from the doors and towards that voice.
"He's gone, isn't he, Garrus?"
The turian looked her in the eyes, and she looked back. And she knew.
"Yes, Jack. He's gone."
And suddenly her arms wrapped around his weird turian torso and hugged him fiercely, furiously, with the pain and agony of someone who had lost something they couldn't quantify because it meant so much to them. And he lowered his hands onto her shoulders and held her back, and together they shared their collective grief, the grief of those who have lost their closest companion.
A thousand pairs of boots crunched in time on patchwork concrete as the bagpipes wailed their mournful dirge, and a thousand ships floated in orbit above the heavy, grey clouds, sentinels of those fallen. No invitations had been issued - this was bigger than any one family, any one government, any single species. To exclude any who wished to pay their respects would have been to toss aside everything he had worked towards, had stood for.
Throngs of people, human and otherwise, stood to the sides, heads bowed as the casket passed slowly by, heralded by a vanguard of pipers and surrounded by the surviving members of the Alliance N7 program. Black helmets obscured faces hardened and scarred by battle and loss, and dark gauntlets clutched battered rifles with the palpable tension of those for whom the war never really ends.
The procession made its way along the street; the silence of the crowd was unearthly. No words or prayers were uttered, no sobs escaped tight lips, just the distant rumble of thunder. This was beyond words.
And, far ahead, gathered together by an open grave, they stood. Those few, those who had gathered with him when he had called them, had followed him when his mission seemed hopeless, and had comforted him when he himself had needed hope but did not know how to ask for it.
The news cameras panned over them slowly - several humans, one in unadorned armor emblazoned only with a small symbol of the Galactic council, stony-faced and unmoving; another in Alliance dress uniform, whose broad shoulders slumped even as he fought to keep them up; a raven-haired women in a dark suit, hands clasped before her as if she was not sure what she should do; there was a quarian bearing admiral's stripes, helmeted face half-buried in the chest of a turian who stood there with his arms around her but with his eyes focused like a razor's blade on the approaching coffin; and an asari maiden, covering her mouth with her hands in an effort to stem her grief.
And, near the end of the row, half hidden behind the armored hump of a massive, scarred krogan, was a stick-thin young women wearing boots that seemed almost comically large and an expression of utter, utter defeat. Her right hand hung limply by her sides, tattooed fingers numb and vaguely tingley. Her left clutched a faded bundle of black and red and white, held it so tightly her scarred knuckles were white.
The cameras moved quickly past her, choosing instead to focus on an asari justicar to the left of the krogan, and the woman was glad of it. The fewer recordings of her here there were, the easier it would be to forget.
But she couldn't forget. She could never forget. This was a pain that Jack could not dull, could not drown with drink and tattoos and poetry. There was no way to fight it. And so, for the first time in her 25 years of life, Jack gave up.
The coffin was nearing the grave now. The humans saluted it as it passed, the quarian turned away as the turian's gaze hardened like ice, and the asari let out a muffled sob. Jack felt her teeth grit as the ebony wood of the casket gleamed dully.
A single drop of water fell from the heavens and landed with the softest of touches upon the lid.
She had to do it. She couldn't do it. She had to. Do it. Do it, you pussy. He would have.
The rain pattered down like so many tears.
And before the coffin could finish passing, she stepped forwards past the krogan, towards the black box, and placed her bundle on its lid - an old hooded sweatshirt, patched and faded, with a tattered logo visible on the front: N7.
And then they passed, those elite commandos who called Shepard their brother, who wore the same armor he had donned so many times in the past. Only a slight tilt of their helmeted heads told her she'd registered to them at all.
The casket descended into the earth, supported by ropes whose twisted fibers were darkened by the rain. An alliance chaplain stepped forward and read off the rites. Jack couldn't hear the words, just the roaring of blood in her ears and the torrent that hammered the scars on her scalp and neck.
The admiral was talking now - Admiral Hackett, she recalled somewhere in the back of her mind. Shepard had showed her his old dog tags once and said that Hackett had recovered them for him. No mention of the Admiral's military victories or SpecTRE recommendation - just the dogs tags. That was Shepard - always putting value in the smallest actions. He said that those were the ones that showed you who people were. So what did that say about her?
There was silence. Jack looked up, and realised that the admiral had stepped down from the podium, and was looking at her, waiting, offering.
Her heart skipped a beat. The wooden stand, rainwater running down its polished sides, seemed so far away, and she felt her legs tremble as she began to walk.
All eyes focused on her. She'd written something, a stupid, stupid poem, because Shepard had always liked her poems. A slender, trembling hand reached into her pocket and pulled out the small slip. Thin fingers unfolded the sodden paper.
Jack stared at it, at the mess of ink and pulp she held, now soaked through and unreadable, stared at it in a vain hope that maybe, just maybe, this was all a bad dream and she would wake up soaked in sweat as her alarm clock escaped the nightmare-induced biotics and plummeted with a crash to the floor, and Shepard would roll over and hold her and say nothing because he never had to because he was still there, hadn't left in the night, hadn't fucking died.
And the rain pattered down and she didn't wake up, because she was already awake.
And Jack looked out at the crowd, the thousands of people gathered in silence to pay their respects, and could just barely hear as her sobs, amplified by the microphone, echoed across the stars.