Written for the Mass Effect 2014 Flash Big Bang. Thanks to theherocomplex and probablylostrightnow for reading and commenting on the draft.
Traditionally, there was no afterward for a suicide mission.
Shepard had never accepted that label for their fight against the Collectors. In the aftermath, as her battered ship and her intact crew returned through the Omega-4 Relay, they found themselves in something of a lull.
There was a night of full-out giddy euphoria, when they'd all but cleared out the stocks at the bar in the portside lounge. The Normandy had limped its way to Omega, where the crew had taken a few days to nurse their wounds, and they'd spent a week doing the most critical repairs, the ones Tali, Joker, and EDI deemed necessary for getting them through a mass relay jump safely. Then they'd pushed off to Illium, where Liara had arranged for a better dock and crew for more extensive repairs and retesting. They'd still been busy; everyone had pitched in on the work, even Jack and Zaeed. Shepard, with assistance from Miranda, Mordin, and others, had spent hours putting together a detailed report which she'd sent to Anderson, hoping for the best. She wasn't sure how much he could do; he'd made the Council's intent to distance itself from her very clear when she'd met him last.
In spite of the work, it was a lull, one they all liked, one they were all grateful for. No one was shooting at any of them, for a change; there hadn't even been any shipboard quarrels to settle for the moment. There was time for repairs, for people to relax, for wounds physical and mental to heal. Even Shepard was able to take some time away from work: time for her to take Garrus on a real date, like regular people, time to take the physical part of their relationship past awkward-but-good to just plain good, time to convince him she was looking for more than a one-night stand. Though convincing wasn't really the right word, since they doing a lot of things other than talking. Not even sex, mostly, just... being, in proximity to each other, that sort of early-romance blossoming that had never been so easy before. There were things they should talk about, but for now, the transformation of their friendship into romance almost took her breath away, if she stopped to think about it. Shepard had to turn her thoughts back to work to ground herself.
As good as the downtime was, it went on long enough that people were starting to get restless. Miranda reported that a number of the crew were considering leaving, especially now that Shepard had cut ties to the Illusive Man. Shepard heard much the same when she made her rounds of the ship. Samara was starting to talk about going back to Thessia, and Kasumi said wistful things about a new job, and Thane had been corresponding with his son. No one had asked Shepard what's next? yet—not in so many words—and that was good, because she hadn't figured that out yet. She'd tossed around ideas with people individually, listening to what everyone had to say, but she hadn't called a full team meeting yet, and she hadn't reached a decision.
The most obvious thing to do was to return herself, her ship, and her crew to the Alliance, and yet... Shepard wasn't sure. She'd worn Alliance blue for nearly half her life, but she wasn't oblivious to its flaws. Any time there were politics involved, a person should tread carefully, and the Alliance was nothing if not political. Liara's information suggested that some members of the Alliance brass wanted to try her for her connections to Cerberus, and she didn't want to walk into a trap. Shepard had been the Alliance's golden girl once—its Hero of Elysium, its Savior of the Citadel—but none of that had saved her reputation once she'd died, and it couldn't be expected to save her now. She knew she'd have to answer for where she'd been for the last two years, but she didn't want to spend unnecessary time bogged down in hearings and finger-pointing. The Council was another option, but one with its own set of problems; any links to Cerberus were no more welcome there than on Earth. She could try to operate the Normandy independently, but the cost would quickly become prohibitive, unless Shepard felt like taking up Jack's suggestion of turning pirate.
Whatever course she chose, the decision would have to be made soon. The Normandy was almost fully spaceworthy again, and Shepard found that she was still waiting. Waiting for... she wasn't sure what. For things to fall into place, at least in her own head; or for some opportunity to present itself, maybe. That was how she normally operated: oh, she prepared and planned for missions, but in the end, she usually went with her gut, let her fine-honed instincts tell her when was the moment to act.
Shepard's instincts told her that the moment had come when, as she passed through the CIC, Kelly said, "Commander? There's a message coming in for you. From Alliance Command."
Shepard's gut tightened. She could feel herself coming to alert, all her senses seeming heightened, as if she'd caught the scent of her quarry on the wind. She said, "Thanks, Kelly. I'll take it in private."
The yeoman nodded. The younger woman was still pale, Shepard noted, her eyes shadowed by the ordeal of her capture by the Collectors. Several of the crew wore the same haunted look. She'd done her best to buoy them up, to tell them how much she appreciated their work, but it wasn't enough for what they'd been through, what the whole galaxy might go through soon.
Shepard turned on her heel and went up to her quarters.
When Admiral Hackett's face filled the screen, Shepard had to fight the urge to snap to and straighten up like a fresh recruit. She wasn't willing to give that ground, deliberately propping herself against the wall, lazy and casual. After what Kaidan had said—and knowing how cagey Anderson had been—she knew the Alliance was watching her, just as wary as she. She wasn't officially theirs right now, and they both knew it. But this, this was clearly an overture. An overture that could get her killed, but an overture nonetheless.
Do this mission. Get us this evidence. Then we'll hear you out.
It wasn't what Hackett was saying, quite. But she thought she'd parsed the underlying message correctly. She didn't know Hackett well. By reputation, certainly, and she'd had some contact with him during the last mission, but that was all. If the Shadow Broker's dossiers could be believed, he was on her side. He'd covered for her, when others in the Alliance wanted to bring her in. Could be that was pure pragmatism, though. The Alliance didn't have the force, the resources, to deal with the Collector threat. Not really. There was no way the Alliance could have operated in the Terminus systems as freely as she'd been able to.
She kept her eyes on his weathered, scarred face. She thought—she was sure, nearly—he was being straight with her. She kept her own voice flat and neutral, her posture relaxed. Insubordinate. Borderline insolent, really. But that was the deal, wasn't it? She wasn't in his command. She had no status, as far as they were concerned. But she might. If. If she did this thing. A favor. Not an order.
And the truth was, she wanted to. Of course she did. If this Dr. Amanda Kenson had information on the Reapers? Evidence they could use, could present before the galaxy? Hell, yes. They needed that. Evidence, presented by credible people, reasonable people with credentials, people who could talk about the science, about the evidence, without the weight of Shepard's particular reputation. Shepard, the hero. Shepard, the lunatic.
Shepard, enemy of batarians everywhere.
She cut the call and let out a long breath. It might be a favor, not an order, but a lifetime of following orders made her nerves jangle. On the one hand, she had a superb team at her command. But, to get the Admiral on her side, she should probably play it the way he wanted. It had been a long time since she'd worked solo. It would be manageable, but she needed the right intel.
"EDI?"
"Yes, Shepard?" The AI's voice was smooth and calm, like always.
"I assume you were aware of that call?"
"You did not invoke privacy controls before accepting the communication. I deemed it appropriate to monitor the transmission."
Shepard smiled a little at EDI's admission. "Yeah. Get me all the intel you can on the Bahak system, will you?"
"Of course. I should warn you that the Batarian Hegemony's disinformation policies make it difficult to obtain accurate data from their systems."
Shepard sighed. "I'm not surprised. Do what you can. I need a schematic of that prison, in particular."
The team wasn't going to like it, she reflected as she took the elevator down to deck 2. Better not to spread around her plans; there were key personnel who needed to know what was going on, but the rest didn't need to be in the loop just yet.
She nodded to Kelly as she passed through the CIC on her way to the cockpit, closing the door behind her as she entered.
Joker either didn't notice her unusual action, or chose not to comment on it. He spun around his seat to face her with a grin. "Hey, Commander. My baby's almost ready to fly again!"
"Yeah." Shepard crossed her arms. "When we get the all-clear from Engineering, I need you to set a course for the Bahak system."
"Bahak? Where the hell's that?" Joker turned back to the console to bring up the nav charts.
"Hegemony space."
He spun back to face her. "What are we doing out there?" His green eyes were sharp under the brim of his cap.
Shepard kept her game face on. No point in showing anyone else the little knot of anxiety worming its way through her gut. "Got an Alliance scientist who needs a pick-up."
His eyebrows went up. "Uh-huh."
"... from a batarian prison."
She expected some kind of wisecrack, but instead Joker's eyes narrowed. He leaned back into the chair and let out a slow breath. "Well. I guess we're the ride for the job."
She nodded, relieved. "Looks like. We're going in silent."
"Understood." He started to turn back to his console, but hesitated. "Is this—independent, or—?"
"Orders from Hackett."
Joker's shoulders straightened at that, and he gave one crisp nod. "Right, then."
"I'm going to check in with Tali on the status of the stealth system now."
"Yeah, wouldn't want that to suddenly fail in the middle of the batarian space," he said, turning back to his work.
"No," Shepard said, taking her leave. "That would be a real problem."
She didn't tell Tali why she needed this particular report. She felt only the most minor surge of guilt about that. Keeping things on a need-to-know basis was for the best.
"It's fully operational," Tali said. "We... haven't really had occasion to test it, but..."
"Run a test," Shepard told her. They probably wouldn't need it long. Twelve hours, maybe. From the relay to the planet, wait for shuttle drop, mission completion, and return, back to the relay. If the batarians spotted her ship in orbit, though, there'd be hell to pay, and she wasn't going to let that happen to her crew.
She turned over in her mind who else needed to be informed as she took the elevator back up to the crew deck. Miranda, certainly. Garrus. Maybe. Probably. No, definitely. He'd take it personally if she didn't inform him. He'd likely take it personally, anyway, but... Miranda first, then down to the battery.
As luck would have it, Garrus was perched awkwardly in the chair facing Miranda when Shepard came in. She stopped in her tracks, taken aback. "What are you doing here?"
They both looked up at her, slowly, two sets of blue eyes that could hardly be more different. "Giving Miranda a report on the state of the weapons systems?" Garrus said.
"Oh. Right." This assignment had her on edge already. She needed to keep a cool head. She smoothed her hands down her thighs, to calm herself.
"But if you need to talk to her, I can go." Garrus started to stand.
"No. It's fine. I should... talk to both of you." She was... probably taking a coward's way out there, but it would be easier to get it out in one telling. "Don't get up," she added, because the last thing she wanted at the moment was to give this briefing with Garrus looming over her.
He settled back into the chair with his mandibles twitching. Miranda leaned one elbow on the desk, her eyes intent. "Is this about that call from Alliance Command?"
"Yes. I've been given a mission." She didn't miss the way Garrus's expression twitched at the singular pronoun. Miranda was the one who spoke first, though. Her lips thinned as Shepard began the rundown, and then she flung herself back in her chair in a surprisingly graceless motion.
"Alliance? Really? After all this time, after putting you off, after ignoring the Collector threat—"
"I need them," Shepard said, sharp and quelling. She didn't need Miranda to give voice to her own qualms.
Miranda subsided, but a frown stayed plastered on her face—nearly a scowl, really—and Garrus had his mandibles tucked into a set, neutral expression that told Shepard he wasn't any happier as she told them the rest.
When she was done, Miranda shifted forward again, hands loosely clasped and resting on her desk. "We need intel," she admitted. "If this Dr. Kenson has something, it might be worth the risk."
Shepard let out a slow breath. It was like Miranda to calculate the odds and choose the risk anyway. One of the things Shepard liked about her, to tell the truth. "That was my analysis, as well."
"We need more data on Kenson," Miranda added.
Garrus said, "Liara might be able to turn up something."
"Good idea. I'll get in touch with her," Shepard said.
"Intel on the prison, too," Miranda said.
"I've already asked EDI to work on it."
"Solo missions aren't usually your style, Shepard," Garrus said. Carefully. She could hear the restraint in his voice, and see it in his tight expression.
"We all have to adapt," she said, with deliberate cheer.
He started to speak, shut his mouth, and then spoke anyway. "Sure you don't want to bring some back-up?"
She'd been expecting the question, and had her answer ready. "I'd prefer to stay within the Admiral's mission parameters. A single operative will be better able to get in and out unnoticed."
"I'm forced to agree, though I'd like to see more data on that prison," Miranda said.
Garrus looked like he wanted to say something else, but didn't.
"You'll have the deck while I'm gone," Shepard told Miranda, deciding to ignore his expression if he wasn't actually going to speak.
Miranda nodded, accepting the command. That had been the normal status quo throughout the mission, and there was no need to change it now. "We'll stay on alert, ready for extraction if necessary."
"It should be easy in, easy out," Shepard said. The idea that the crew would be available to back her up if things got dicey was reassuring, she had to admit.
Garrus didn't look as though he felt the same. He followed as she left Miranda's office. "Shepard, a two-person team—"
"The mission parameters call for a solo operative," she said, not wanting to debate the situation. "And right now I need to call Liara."
His expression closed up and his shoulders stiffened.
"We'll talk about this later?" she said, hedging.
Garrus nodded, relaxing slightly.
Considering that the Bahak system was on the other side of the galaxy from Illium, it didn't take that long to get there. Only a few mass relay jumps. Enough time for Shepard to go over the intel EDI and Liara had turned up for her and cram as much of it into her brain as she could. Enough time for Tali to test the stealth system for an hour, to verify that it was operating correctly.
Enough time to have two more brief conversations in which Garrus tried to talk her out of going solo, and Shepard found a way to interrupt the conversation before it could go any further.
It was downright cowardly, and she knew it was. It wasn't like her to run from a confrontation.
It wasn't like her to have a relationship that she feared spoiling with a confrontation, either. Usually she was willing to have the fight and let the chips fall where they might. Work through it, if they had a chance. This was... something else again. What was between her and Garrus had too many layers. They were friends and comrades-in-arms, to start with. There was also the fact that he was her subordinate and accepted her orders, as a general rule. There was the fact that she'd come to take his tactical advice more and more seriously over the last few months. And then there was... whatever else they were. Simple sex wasn't the problem; the problem was that the thought of being on the outs with him made her palms sweat and her heart pound, and not in a good way. She'd had a taste of what that was like after she'd put herself between him and his traitor, and she hadn't much liked the way he'd frozen her out afterward, even if she was forced to admit that she might have screwed up, that time.
She might have screwed up this time, too. They'd never talked about love, she'd never really declared herself. They'd gone on a date, they'd acknowledged they were in a dating thing, not just a sex thing, but what that meant to her? What that meant to him? That, they'd never really talked about.
Stupid, probably. They'd had the time, hadn't they, during that lull, and now they didn't. There was only so much time before they reached the Bahak relay. Rest and food and reviewing the usual ship business and planning for the mission consumed enough of it. She had not allowed the time to have a fraught conversation with her—boyfriend—who was also her tactician—on top of everything else. She didn't want to argue with Garrus. She was on edge enough about the mission as it was. There was too much riding on it.
But he didn't simply accept that she kept putting him off, and that was itself a mark of their changed relationship. No, he sought her out, multiple times, until he finally caught up with her in the last hours before the drop. Shepard was in the armory, trying to decide which weapons to take with her. She didn't look up when she heard the doors slide open and shut, assuming it was Jacob returning to his station, but she was wrong.
"Shepard. Can we talk for a minute?"
Her shoulders tensed. The back of her neck already ached from all the time she'd spent reviewing data at her terminal. But Garrus sounded hesitant, his voice tight and strained, so she straightened from her position leaning over the work bench and turned to face him. "Go ahead."
He blinked a couple of times and rubbed the side of his neck, shifting his weight from foot to foot. "This mission... I really don't like it."
She had to bite back a sigh. "Yeah, you've made that pretty clear."
His mandibles flicked out, but he continued in a level voice. "I don't understand why you haven't considered alternatives. Thane and Kasumi would be an ideal support team—"
"We've been over this." She kept her tone brisk and level, too.
He pressed on. "—both of them have considerable experience in infiltration, Kasumi's a master at security systems, Thane is by far the expert at stealth—"
Shepard shook her head. "Garrus, stop. Orders are, it's a solo mission." If this was a protective thing he had going on, that was... sweet, she supposed, but it didn't quite sit right.
"For what? For security? For deniability?"
Shepard pressed her lips together. He'd hit the nail on the head, of course, and the deniability factor was part of what was nagging at her, setting a headache to pounding in her skull. Why had Hackett brought her in at all, instead of sending an N7 operative or team he knew he could rely on? She had a personal stake in the matter, sure, but... her ambiguous status also made her easier to disavow. When she didn't respond, Garrus said, "If it's that important that it be a solo mission, then send Kasumi or Thane."
She resisted the urge to rub her aching head. Instead, she crossed her arms, tightening them against her chest, and straightened her spine. "The admiral requested me. He's getting me. We've got critical intel here, possible real proof that the Council can't ignore—"
Garrus took a half step forward. "All the more reason to set things up so we have maximum chance of mission success. I don't understand why you feel obligated to follow Alliance orders, considering how little support you've had from them."
The ache in her temple throbbed. Shepard closed her hands into fists. "Maximum chance of mission success? What the hell does that mean?"
Her voice was rising. A small voice in the back of her head told her she should walk away right now. She ignored it.
Garrus blinked, tilting his head. "Stealth and infiltration are not exactly your specialties, Shepard."
"Are you questioning my competence, Vakarian?" she said through gritted teeth.
"Wh— no!" His mandibles flared. "Absolutely not! But the mission parameters—"
"Stop. Just stop." Her hand slashed across the air. "I am an N7 operative. I do, in fact, have training and experience in high-risk operations, both team and solo. I am also in command of this mission, and I do not need to justify myself to you."
Garrus's eyes widened minutely. He straightened, drawing himself up to his full height. "Really? That's the way you want to play this? Now?"
It wasn't, but Shepard felt tense enough to crack in two, and more words spilled out of her mouth before she could stop herself. "I don't need you questioning my judgment."
"Then maybe your judgment should make sense," he snapped. "Forgive me, Commander, but I was under the impression that you took advice from your teammates and—friends."
The moment of hesitation before the last word cut her, but the headache was building itself into actual anger. "Your objections have been noted, Gunnery Officer Vakarian. Report to your station at the battery. I want the main gun ready once we jump."
He stared at her, posture rigid, and for a split second she wasn't sure if he was actually going to follow the order. Then he turned in one swift movement and marched out.
Shepard let out a long breath. Part of her wanted to call him on the carpet for failing to acknowledge the order; part of her wanted to go after him and apologize. She couldn't indulge either part right now. She needed to hold on to that simmering anger to push through the doubt and keep herself focused. She turned her attention back to her weapons and armor. The process of suiting up helped her to focus, as well, each piece of armor settling its reassuring weight on her body, building a solid shell around her. She could do this. She would accomplish this mission as ordered, regardless of what anyone else thought. She'd just have to mend things with Garrus once she got back.
The shuttle dropped her at a distance from the prison, sufficiently outside its sensor range. Shepard went the rest of the way on foot. It was growing dark when she dropped. Perfect timing; better concealment, and she'd arrive late in the day's cycle. On the way, it started to rain. Shepard latched her helmet in place, automatically checking the oxygen stores—unnecessary, given the breathable atmosphere, but it helped quell the little surge of anxiety that came whenever she sealed herself into the helmet. The rain clattered against her armor, though the damp didn't penetrate her shell.
If the batarians caught her—caught her, after what she'd done on Elysium and Terra Nova—
They wouldn't. She wouldn't let that happen. If one or two batarians spotted her, that was easy enough to deal with. These were just prison guards, no match for an N7 operative. Especially a cybernetically augmented one. Her lips spread out into a tight smile that held no humor at all.
Get in. Free Kenson. Get out. Simple objectives. After that, she could find out what Kenson had. Liara's reports on Kenson's research had been interesting but inconclusive. Kenson's previous research had involved surveying data from the relays, trying to estimate their ages. That didn't explain what she was doing here and now, in batarian space, toward the galactic rim. Not so far from Alliance space, as the FTL drive might take you, but about as unsafe as any place could be for a human.
Especially Shepard, Hero of the Blitz—
No. Not letting herself think about that.
The dark bulk of the prison facility loomed ahead of her, and Shepard fixed her mind on the task ahead.