Without an End
Author's Note: I had problems with Shepard being okay with Cerberus after Akuze, so I wrote this.
Shepard had tried. She had tried admirably, but it was no use. Fifty people had died, fifty people she had been in command over. Such things were rarely forgotten. It had been years since the incident, and yet she still found it around every corner, every crevice. Their deaths lingered in every decision, everything.
The oldest person on her team had been twenty eight. The youngest was nineteen, some were men, but most were kids. Fourteen had kids, thirty one had wives or husbands and everyone had a future. At least until the Thresher Maws attacked. One minute they had been on a routine scouting mission and the next they were dodging acid. Thresher Maw is extremely corrosive and acts quickly. Twenty seven people died in two minutes. Shepard had watched her comrades; friends die in one of the worst ways possible.
The incident didn't deem her a traitor or a bad leader. Instead she had gotten promoted and had been offered N7 training. They told her that under the circumstances she had done everything right.
Years afterwards she had believed it was a random Thresher attack, but it wasn't. Cerberus was behind it and now she found herself working for the very people she had sworn to eliminate. The crew was Cerberus, the ship was Cerberus, and it was all Cerberus. Shepard knew that she needed them, but an idea had crept into her mind. She didn't need all of them.
Technically, she was still a Spectre, with a license to kill. That thought had been crawling in her mind and had forced its way in. Every time she tried to abandon the thought, it came back more intense. She made the decision that it was ruining her combat readiness and therefore, needed to be taken care of.
All fifty voices had whispered to do it, and now there was no escaping it. The first thing she did was to start a cooking night, where she would go first. Spaghetti was her choice, other ingredients would be hard to detect. Most of it was fine, she only modified two plates. Two essential members of Cerberus.
When she had called the crew together, she placed their plates near hers. Shepard shouldn't, wouldn't and couldn't watch her revenge play out. So there she sat watching them eat their spaghetti hurriedly and she smiled inwardly.
"Did you add something to this, Shepard?" Miranda Lawson asked, her eyes looking uncharacteristically lazy.
"Ya, seriously, this is great! What'cha put in it?" Jacob Taylor also looked at her. The same laziness crept into his eyes.
"A good cook never reveals her secret ingredient," Shepard smiled back at them. She was happy. "Eat up, it's getting cold."