Once, when she was little—four, maybe five; just old enough to have memories of it—she'd nearly drowned. Her parents had warned her again and again and again about the spring rain and the fast water, and she wasn't stupid. Still, one moment she'd been picking flowers or chasing frogs, safely distant, and the next she was in the swollen creek, little body buffeted by the current, unable to tell up from down and sky from earth. Her fingers clawed futilely, unable to find anything to grip as cold water rushed into her nose and down her throat.
She was never sure later if she actually remembered her father's large hands pulling her from the stream, his desperate mouth forcing air back into her half-drowned lungs, or if those things became memories filled in by hearing the story told and retold in the years afterward. She remembered the cold, though, and the helplessness. She remembered thinking the words I'm dying and knowing it was the same thing as the McMillans' dog or Julie Stark's grandmother and she wouldn't be coming back, not ever. And she remembered her father's warm arms curled around her, her trembling body pulled close to his sodden chest, as his hot tears dripped into her hair and he whispered her name over and over and over again like a prayer.
When Shepard woke with no memory of having fallen asleep, palms flat against the cool metal of a slab, it wasn't her father's voice calling her, and the woman saying her name over and over didn't sound like she was praying. Even over the tinny comms, the command was clear—get out of that bed now—and Shepard found herself reacting with military-honed instinct even as unfamiliar pain screamed along her nerves—your scars aren't healed—and her breath caught, her lungs willing to take in only a fraction of their usual volume. Raising a hand to protect her eyes from the glaring overhead lights, she gasped as her feet hit the ground and sent another shockwave of pain up her limbs. The woman told her to get a gun, so Shepard did it. The woman told her to move, so she moved.
Hurry!
She remembered fire. Remembered—remembered… not water. Something like drowning. Stars? Remembered—
Shepard shot down a pair of hostile mechs without pausing to wonder why they were so busy shooting at her. Whatever else had happened, her aim was good, her hands steady on her weapon. The armor she'd found was different, bulkier than she usually favored, but painted with the familiar N7 of her designation, and it fit her as only personalized gear could.
Why, then, did she feel so wrong? Her face hurt and her head hurt and every bone in her body hurt. She was good at ignoring pain, compartmentalizing it for later, later, later, but she wasn't prepared for the sudden violence of this assault. Wisps of short, short hair curled around her face; she could see them in her peripheral vision but she didn't understand their meaning. Had they burned? She remembered fire. Remembered, remembered—remembered things it didn't seem possible to remember, things that made her heart pound uncomfortably in her chest, made the still-shallow breath catch in her throat.
Running her fingertips along the red stripe painted down the length of her right arm didn't ground her. Tightening her grip on her weapon didn't ground her. It always had, before. Her thoughts raced in a dozen directions, vanishing like will-o-the-wisps whenever she came too close to recognizing them. She kept thinking about the time she'd almost drowned as a child. The memory of her father's tears in her hair seemed more real than the brightness and the mechs and the too-heavy armor, the too-flimsy pistol. She shook her head, moving forward at the insistence of the voice she thought she recognized but couldn't place, wishing it sounded more like a prayer.
She remembered fire. And cold. She remembered reaching for breath and finding nothing. She remembered her back arching. She remembered—she remembered—
She remembered forgetting something important. Something about fire and something about cold and something about stars. Something about helplessness and thinking the words I'm dying and knowing it was the same thing as Ash on Virmire and Alberts on Elysium and her parents, her parents on Mindoir. The dead didn't feel pain, though. The dead didn't find guns or miraculously well-fitting N7 armor or hear voices telling them to move. The dead didn't shoot mechs or find computers with information so chilling they could barely make sense of the words. Words like rudimentary neurological activity and bio-synthetic fusion. Words like four billion credits so far.
So she couldn't be dead, but she remembered fire and cold and her body bending backward amongst the stars, and she didn't know how she could be alive, either.
The woman's voice told her to run, so Shepard ran.
Later. She'd have time to figure it all out later. Later, later, later.
#
Two years, Jacob Taylor said.
Two years.
But that wasn't all, no. Taylor seemed competent enough with a weapon, and his biotics were finely honed, but he spoke of her death—her death—with all the sensitivity of an uppercut to the jaw. Shepard blinked at him, catching one word of every dozen as she tried to make sense of what he was saying, and he rambled on, shooting phrases like bullets with unerring aim. You were killed, he said, and welcome back to your life and, her personal favorite, you were nothing but meat and tubes.
Meat and tubes.
Shepard told herself—firmly—it would be beyond embarrassing to turn her stomach inside out in front of a complete stranger, and swallowed hard until she was just about certain her guts intended to stay where they belonged. She couldn't say the same, necessarily, for her sanity.
Two. Fucking. Years.
She wasn't in the creek behind the house on Mindoir, and she wasn't burning to death in the Normandy's wreckage or choking amongst the silent stars, but oh, she was drowning, and she knew it. The logs she'd heard earlier began to make a sick kind of sense, even though the science of it seemed impossible. She'd been spaced—killed. She forced herself to think the word, even if she couldn't yet say it aloud. Killed. She'd reached for her oxygen tube and found it broken, traitorously spewing any hope of survival into the uncaring void. Dead as dead can be when they brought you in, said back had arched against the backdrop of the stars, and she'd died amongst the fiery remains of her beautiful, doomed ship. Taylor spoke of Miranda, and Shepard realized hers had been the hands to pull her back from the brink, hers had been the metaphorical mouth forcing air into lungs ravaged by exposure to the vacuum of space.
Impossible. Wrong. So very, very wrong.
Papa, she thought, letting none of her anguish show on her face. She was good at that. Good at keeping her emotions secret, good at protecting herself, good at projecting confidence and competence even when she felt neither. Papa, what have they done to me?
But her father didn't answer—couldn't answer—and Taylor only hustled her onward, blind or indifferent to her head sinking beneath the water.
#
Cerberus.
Cerberus.
Shepard didn't permit herself the luxury of hate very often, but she almost took her wrath out on Taylor the moment he dared ask if I tell you who we work for, will you trust me? as if poison, once spoken aloud, lost its potency. As if saying words with a smile or a hand extended in friendship made them less abhorrent.
Taylor trusted her already; she could see it in his eyes, in his unguarded posture. He looked at her and saw the woman she'd been before. He saw the Hero of Elysium, the Hero of the Citadel, even-keeled and smiling. More fool he. He was an open book. A puppy waiting to be kicked. A traitor who had no idea the hole he was digging would be his own damned grave.
Too open, she thought coldly, remembering Admiral Kahoku, remembering the agony of the rachni queen, remembering bodies littering the ground like broken dolls as a thresher maw burst from beneath the ground like a vengeful god.
What the hell did Taylor know about earning trust, about keeping it? Cerberus was bad enough. Leaving the Alliance to work for Cerberus, for Cerberus, was insult added to injury, and a defection she wasn't entirely sure she could forgive, no matter how good Taylor thought his reasons. He gazed at her with pleading eyes and she imagined how easily she could have pulled the trigger. He'd never have seen it coming. Hell, he wouldn't have felt the bullet as it exploded through the back of his skull. He'd probably have died with the same placating expression on his face, his lips halfway to forming words like it's not what you think or we're not all bad. That was the currency of trust. Her fingers twitched at her sides, wanting to follow through on the impulse to end the threat before the riptide could pull her under and drag her down.
(Too late, said a voice in the back of her head, so unnervingly like Donnel Udina's she scowled in response to it. They've already bought you. Billions of credits. Meat and tubes. You want out now, you'd best be willing to turn that gun on yourself the moment you've blown his head off. They'll never let you go.)
Shepard closed her eyes, took as deep a breath as her burning lungs would allow, and let her fingers curl into a tight fist she knew she wouldn't use. Killing Taylor would ultimately be pointless, and she wasn't quite willing to end her own life, not even to get out from under Cerberus' thumb. Not before she could figure out what the hell was going on. Not before she could make sure her crew was okay. (Two years. They've moved on. They're not your crew anymore.) Not before she could put a hole between the eyes of the player arrogant enough to think he could maneuver her around a chessboard without facing the consequences.
She waved Taylor ahead, not willing to have anyone associated with Cerberus covering her six, and activated the new tactical cloak her omni-tool had been fitted with. Her lips twisted. As bribes went, it was a good one; she'd been fiddling with cloaking tech for years, but had never been able to get it to work with any kind of reliable duration. This Cerberus shit was good. Easier, she decided bitterly, when your R&D didn't have to consider rules or ethics or common human decency. She hoped no one had died to make her tac cloak possible.
Hoped. Didn't quite believe.
Within the comforting bubble of invisibility, she lifted her pistol and found the back of Taylor's skull in her sights. Bang, she thought, but she didn't pull the trigger.
You didn't sacrifice a queen to take out a pawn. Everyone knew that. And somewhere out there, this pawn's king was waiting to be brought down. She didn't plan on disappointing him, even if it meant playing the long game. She'd always had a gift for patience.
#
On the shuttle, sitting opposite Lawson and Taylor, with dead Wilson and the dying Lazarus Station behind them, Shepard graduated from imagining killing just Taylor to a fantasy of ending them both, chess be damned. Cold. Heartless. Wrong. She was still herself enough to be unnerved by how easily these thoughts of murder swam into her mind and took root. Unnerved, but not entirely dissuaded, not the way they sat there looking at her, daring her to argue with them, daring her to disapprove of the actions they'd taken to "save" her, daring her to be anything less than grateful. She huffed a disconsolate breath, silently supplying ironic air quotes, her gaze fixed on the bulkhead. Lawson wanted a gold star, and Shepard wanted Alchera all over again. Some things weren't meant to be messed with. Some lines weren't meant to be crossed.
Two against one weren't bad odds, even if they both had biotics and she was armed only with unfamiliar weapons, crammed into an unfamiliar tin can, drifting around in unfamiliar space. She'd faced worse. Survived worse. Lawson's pale eyes watched her so carefully Shepard suspected the woman had to know the tenor of her thoughts. She'd have to go first. Taylor's blind trust—his stupid, stupid trust—would buy her the extra instant she needed to act, especially if she didn't bother with weapons. A single lunge could bring the full force of a killing strike to bear, crushing Lawson's throat with the blade of her hand. Another breath could bring her elbow solidly into Taylor's solar plexus; a third would have her hands firmly in place, his neck already twisting, breaking between their force.
She folded those hands carefully in her lap, twisting her fingers together to keep them in place, to keep herself from lashing out. To keep herself from becoming something some part of her still recognized she wasn't.
They asked questions. She answered politely while imagining deaths and exit routes, feeling just this side of unhinged. Wrong. Like her armor, like her hair, like the pain in her bones, like the pain in her chest not entirely the fault of her lungs. Wrong like wanting to kill first and deal with appropriate authorities and proper judicial processes later.
Wrong like coming back from the dead.
She told them about Virmire, about the Blitz, about saving the Council during the attack on the Citadel. All the pretty words they wanted to hear. All the right things. She'd always been good at saying the right things to people who didn't care to listen between the lines. She didn't tell them that four billion credits later, they'd put her back together wrong. They'd made a version of her who sat quietly thinking about murder instead of redemption.
#
She had to hand it to the Illusive Man, he knew his audience. Knew exactly the buttons to push, exactly the sad songs to sing, exactly the tiny violin to play. She'd have gleefully hauled him in and handed him over to Anderson without a second thought (Is that all? whispered that voice, the voice that haunted her, the voice that said all the wrong things, the voice that pushed her to be something she wasn't, something she didn't want to be. You're a Spectre, after all, and he's a threat to the Council. You might deal with him more permanently. No questions asked) but she knew the Council too well to expect them to drop everything on behalf of distant human colonists.
—blood and fire and blood and her parents and a kitchen knife stuck in an alien chest and yellow paint bubbling and peeling and skin bubbling and peeling and so much blood—
So she linked her hands behind her back and she fixed her good soldier mask on her face and she listened. His might have been the order that saved her, that devoted billions of credits to reviving her—what have you done to me, what have you done?—but she didn't trust him, would never trust him. She wondered, a little, if he expected her to, if he dreamed he might actually win her over to his cause.
In the darkness between blinks she saw Admiral Kahoku. She saw all those scattered Marines abandoned like broken toys. The Illusive Man lifted his cigarette to his mouth, the orange tip flaring as he inhaled, the brightness blurred by their method of communication.
Smart of him, really, not to meet with her in person. She had to give him that much. And he smiled around the filter of his cigarette as if he knew it. She wondered if he, like so many others, was prone to underestimating her, and whether she might, in future, use it to her advantage. If she was a pawn, she was the one a single square from being made queen. Look at me and see only a pawn, she thought, her lips curling faintly in a smile of her own, one that never touched her eyes, underestimate me, please. Underestimate me right until the moment I burn your whole world down around you. I'll light the tinder with your own damned cigarette.
The Illusive Man flicked that cigarette and the connection cut out. Left alone momentarily, Shepard smiled, predatory.
Oh, she remembered fire all right. It was time for fire to remember her.
#
As soon as they walked into the first prefab unit on Freedom's Progress, as soon as she took in the uneaten dinner laid out on the table and the child's doll discarded on the floor by the unmade bed, Shepard knew she wasn't going anywhere. Not until this mystery was solved, this threat ended. The Illusive Man had maneuvered her into checkmate with a grandmaster's expertise, and she couldn't even hate him for it. Not if she could help. Not if she could stop this from happening to other children on other colonies. She picked up the little rag doll, stared into the green depths of its glass eyes, and the prickle of loss and rage and memory swam up her spine, momentarily paralyzing her. What had happened on Freedom's Progress wasn't the same as Mindoir—no blood, no fire, no batarians—but the helplessness was all too familiar. The helplessness she knew.
Shepard tucked the doll into the empty bed, pulling the covers up around it. In her peripheral vision, Lawson and Taylor exchanged uneasy glances. She hardly cared. It wasn't about Cerberus in that moment; it wasn't even about the strained game of chess she and the Illusive Man were playing. It was about a child and a doll, it was about a teenaged girl perched in a tree waiting for rescue she was certain wouldn't come, clutching a screwdriver that never would have served for a weapon if the batarians had found her before the Alliance did. However complicated her mission now, she'd joined the Alliance to help people like the child whose doll had been left behind, abandoned.
So Shepard ignored her Cerberus watchdogs, lifting her chin and straightening her shoulders, and her voice was hard when she spoke, certain, brooking no argument. "Lawson," Shepard said, "flank right. Taylor, to my left. I'm on point. Keep the bastards off me."
"Aye, ma'am," Taylor returned, with a nod like a salute.
Lawson, still looking at the doll, said nothing, and Shepard saw the first faint slip of the other woman's icy mask as she unholstered her pistol and turned toward the door, something almost like pity creasing her too-beautiful features, something like sorrow hiding in the depths of her pale eyes.
Later, Shepard thought. Later, later, later.
#
Lawson, Taylor, even Joker (are you as glad to see him as you said? Are you? Or are you remembering his obstinate hands on the Normandy's controls, the tears in his eyes as he watched you die because he didn't abandon ship when you gave the order?)—they expected her to be pleased with the new bribe, the Normandy-shaped impostor painted in Cerberus colors. But by the time they returned from Freedom's Progress, Shepard's rage was a coiled serpent that might've given the impression of sleeping but was merely waiting for the right moment to strike, and even the gift (the gift? You know better, Shepard. You know better) of a ship was only the faintest music from a snake charmer's flute.
She couldn't blame Tali for not dropping everything to join her, but the disappointment still stung. Another wrong thing. Yet more proof the world she'd come back to was not the one she'd left. She couldn't help feeling she'd reached out for a familiar hand only to feel it pull from her grip at the last moment.
And down the rushing river she went, two heads of Cerberus watching her every goddamned move, while the third smoked his cigarettes and manipulated her across the board.
Lawson's disgust was palpable as Shepard brushed aside commands disguised as requests and headed directly through the CIC and toward the elevator.
"The CO's cabin is no longer on the crew deck," Lawson said, her face a blank that did nothing to hide the frustration in her eyes. Shepard leaned back against the elevator wall and crossed her arms over her chest, lifting an eyebrow because she didn't trust herself not to snarl if she attempted to use words. "You'll find your quarters on the uppermost level. I trust they'll be adequate."
It was small and it was petty, but Shepard reached out, smacked the side of her fist against the button without speaking a single word, and stared straight ahead, unblinking, as the door closed on Lawson's face.
Adequate.
Funny.
The cabin was big. Too big. The huge glass panel above her bed and its view of the stars was a sick joke. The enormous empty fish tank with all its useless water was a sick joke. The whole damned ship was a sick joke. Joker might preen in his leather seat, but Shepard took one look at the shiny, glossy additions and knew her tactical cloak was the least, the very least of the bribes Cerberus had slipped her without asking. Ignoring the window that reminded her only of burning, of cold, of drowning, she strode with purpose to the bedside table and turned the music on. Loud. A low beat thrummed, vibrating all the way down to bones that no longer ached with impossible waking, and the distraction of noise almost bought her a moment of forgetting.
One by one, she found the bugs Cerberus had planted in her too-large room. She blew the first few, frying them with controlled bursts of electricity from her omni-tool. The ship's AI protested once—and only once—before judiciously making herself scarce. Shepard collected a handful more, plucking them out of their hiding spots and gathering them like flowers, dragging them up by their roots. These she left live, their tiny little cameras and tiny little microphones transmitting, and when she'd harvested them all, she plunked them down right beside her radio, blasted the very worst dance-pop shit she could find at maximum volume, and smiled as she imagined some Cerberus tech shrieking, ears bleeding at the assault.
In the bathroom, she stood over the sink and forced herself to look in the mirror, unflinchingly facing the woman wearing her face. Papa, what have they done to me? Her shorn hair was the right color and the wrong length. She watched her reflection as her hands lifted, fingers carding through the auburn strands, leaving the too-short waves in unruly disarray. Eyes the right shade of grey-green blinked at her from beneath eyebrows whose perfect symmetry was as wrong as her hair. She touched a fingertip to her left eyebrow, where a scar should have bisected the smooth curve.
Almost, but not quite. Close, but no fucking cigar.
In contrast to the missing scar on her brow, new harsh, red, glowing scars—wounds, really—marked her pale cheeks, far too pronounced for even the deftest makeup to cover. She made a face. The reflection echoed it, that woman's nose wrinkling, that woman's muscles shifting beneath her scarred skin. She turned her head, first one direction and then the other, committing these new, hideous gashes to memory. Your scars aren't healed yet, Lawson had said.
"You've got a hell of a knack for understatement," Shepard snarled. The woman in the mirror moved her lips, too. Right lips. Right voice echoing in the right ears. Wrong tone.
Thinking of Lawson reminded Shepard of the woman's admission after Lazarus Station, the certainty in her voice when she'd said she'd wanted to implant her with a control chip, and she shuddered visibly. Perhaps it was in there after all, some tiny piece of tech buried in the back of her skull, keeping her in place, keeping her from running, keeping her leashed, directing each of her moves across the Illusive Man's chessboard while maintaining the illusion of free will. Her breath caught and caught and caught, and no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't take a full inhale, couldn't stop the desperate thudding of her heart in her chest. She prodded at her scalp, at the base of her neck, at the sharp curve of her collarbones, wondering where the chip would be if it were there at all. After a few frantic minutes, she gave up, settling her hands on the edge of the counter and bowing her head between hunched shoulders.
"Shepard," she said under her breath. "Shepard, Shepard, Shepard."
She almost believed it.
Almost, but not quite.
#
Shepard considered heading directly back to the Citadel—she wanted to talk to Anderson, to explain herself (to make excuses, sneered the voice, to plead for clemency, to make sure you're real? Anderson will know won't he? You'd like to believe that, wouldn't you?)—but they were already in the Sahrabarik system, she wasn't quite willing to cut off her nose to spite her face, and she knew if she was going to have any hope of taking out the Collectors she needed this Professor Mordin Solus. She wasn't as certain about the other dossier Cerberus had provided. The merc leader, Archangel. On the one hand, she wasn't keen on aligning herself with mercenaries, but on the other, she could appreciate anyone who wanted to take on gangs. Especially on Omega.
(Aren't you just a merc now, too? The gun Cerberus hired to shoot at the Collectors? How long will it take to pay off that four-billion-credit debt? What will it take to balance those scales?)
"I didn't ask for it," Shepard said aloud, her voice echoing strangely in the silence of her too-large cabin. "I don't owe them a damn thing."
She was good at lying to other people. Not so good at lying to herself.
#
After speaking with Aria, Shepard decided to deal with Archangel first. It sounded like a doctor could hold against an encroaching plague slightly more easily than one man could fight an army composed of three separate merc bands. When Lawson looked like she might protest, Shepard sent her back to the ship and asked Zaeed to tag along. She wanted to see him in action anyway, get a feel for his skillset and ability to follow orders, and as little as she liked mercenaries, she wasn't going to deny herself the potential advantage his inside knowledge of the Blue Suns might afford.
The more she dug, the more questions she asked—of Aria, of Garm and Jaroth and Tarak—the more she realized she wanted someone like this Archangel on her side, merc leader or not. Hell, she was starting to think the word mercenary didn't really apply at all. Archangel didn't seem to be in anyone's employ, and a merc who didn't work for money hardly seemed a merc at all.
If nothing else, she wanted to have a conversation with the man who'd managed to so thoroughly piss off every major genuine mercenary organization on Omega. Buy him a beer, maybe. Of course, once they'd discovered the reprogrammed mech and the not-quite-repaired gunship and the eleventh hour defection, she imagined she'd shoot up to at least a solid second place on the local mercenary shit list. Smiling a thin, cold smile, she rolled her neck, glancing at the balcony across the narrow bridge. A flash of movement up on the perch was followed by a single shot. One of the freelancers on the bridge fell forward, suddenly bereft of a head.
Nice shot, she thought at the lone gunman, but he'd already ducked behind the parapet again, safe in his cover.
Perhaps it was the blue armor, perhaps it was the perfect headshot, but she found herself thinking of Garrus Vakarian, and wondering where he'd disappeared to that even the Illusive Man with all his vast resources hadn't been able to locate him. (If he'd ever tried.) Another wave of freelancers bolted across the bridge, and this time Shepard pushed thoughts of her missing crew aside, activating her tactical cloak and darting for the next crate, the next cover. Her lungs were better now, didn't burn quite so much when she pushed them, but she wasn't entirely healed, wasn't entirely healthy and she knew it. From beneath her veil of invisibility she raised her rifle, aimed, fired. Another freelancer fell, abruptly headless. She didn't smile. Didn't feel good. Omega was a hell of a place to make a living—the kid she'd stopped from joining up at Afterlife was proof enough of that—and the freelancers she had to take out to make her objective were just bodies in the wrong place at the wrong time, desperate for a little cash, desperate for a new beginning.
(You're going soft.)
She ignored the voice, whispering something like an apology, something like a prayer under her breath as she killed another hapless idiot with a shitty gun and worse armor, who never saw her coming.
At least it was quick. She could give them that much.
Hell, it was more than she'd been given.
#
She blinked as the turian held up a finger, shot his gun, and levered himself upright, leaning heavily on his rifle, using it as a crutch. He moved with the bone-deep weariness of a drowning man, like someone who'd long since given up hope of rescue and didn't know what to make of the new sail on the horizon.
He moved like Garrus Vakarian.
She told herself it was her imagination, that of course a sniper-rifle-toting turian in blue armor was going to make her think of her missing friend, but it was more than that, deeper than that. She'd known Garrus well, had watched him move on countless battlefields while they were working together to take down Saren. This turian was tired, sure, but the way he moved was so damned familiar it hurt, and she found herself holding her breath, preparing for the crash of inevitable disappointment as he sauntered toward a stack of crates, reaching up to remove his helmet.
"Shepard," said a voice she knew, a voice she recognized, a voice that wasn't a figment of her imagination, "I thought you were dead."
She meant to be pleased but professional, but what happened was she flung her arms out, cried his name, and took three steps forward as if to hug him before common sense caught up with her relief. His mandibles flickered in the faintest of smiles, but his eyes watched her carefully, as if they couldn't quite believe what they were seeing, as if he didn't quite trust them.
She understood completely.
Behind them, Taylor cleared his throat. Shepard ignored him, vowing to end him painfully if he so much as breathed a mention of all the body bags they'd passed in the same way he'd so casually said the words meat and tubes, and instead asked Garrus where he'd been and how he'd landed himself with such a mouthful of a new name, almost feeling like herself.
Almost. Not quite.
Maybe if they got out of this alive, he'd help her remember.
#
Her heart stopped when the gunship finally went down and she looked over and saw the blood, shocking blue and spreading in too swift, too large a puddle. Garrus was drowning in it, gasping, his breaths rattling and strained. She remembered her body bending backward amongst the stars, she remembered reaching for breath and finding nothing. She remembered almost drowning as a child. She remembered her father's hands plucking her from the water, his arms around her, his hot tears in her hair. Under other circumstances it would be unthinkable, but she dropped her gun, her hands already reaching for him, carefully turning him so he wouldn't aspirate on his own blood.
(Too late, whispered the voice, sneering counterpoint to Garrus' fading breaths, his groans of agony. Too late, too late.)
"He's not going to make it," Zaeed said.
All the jagged pieces that had been scraping around inside her since the moment she woke cold and alone on Lawson's slab with the wrong scars and the wrong hair surrounded by the wrong people wearing the wrong colors, all those shards of fear and rage and uncertainty slicing her into ribbons behind the serene Commander Shepard mask broke the surface. The merc, half bent over Garrus' prone figure, didn't see her coming. At the last moment Shepard pulled her punch just enough to keep herself from killing him, but the heel of her hand still caught Zaeed's jaw and sent him sprawling backward into the sticky blue puddle of Garrus' blood, his hands skidding for purchase and failing to find any.
"Get out of my fucking sight," she snarled. "You can walk back to the goddamned ship. And if he doesn't make it? Don't bother coming back at all. Go! Go!"
"Commander," Taylor began warningly, and she twisted, ready to land another blow. Whatever he saw in her face made him pause, swallow his insubordination, and take an actual step backward. Wordless, she dropped to her knees, fingers already flying over her omni-tool, whispering Garrus' name under her breath over and over like a prayer.
#
Shepard had just finished a bottle of wine when the door chimed. She thought about ignoring it, but duty was, as always, a louder voice than desire, and she was already on her feet and halfway to the door. Might as well get it over with. She was working on a good scowl these days; perhaps she could try its efficacy in scaring off unwanted, unannounced visitors.
She didn't know who she was expecting—Chakwas, maybe; Kelly Chambers if the yeoman was feeling particularly masochistic—but she certainly hadn't anticipated Garrus. She'd thought him safely ensconced in the main battery after their earlier conversation, but instead he stood at an easy parade rest outside her door, doing his best to look unobtrusive. Her scowl vanished before it had a chance to truly spring to life. She wondered how long it would take to remember the language of his facial expressions; she'd thought herself quite fluent in Garrus Vakarian by the time their last mission together ended.
Two years ago for him. Felt like yesterday to her. Later, later, later.
(When?)
She couldn't make out the meaning of this expression, though, and her stomach twisted as she feared this was when he'd change his mind, when he'd give her his respects and his regrets, but insist he couldn't throw his lot in with a group like Cerberus.
And the worst thing was, she couldn't even blame him. She wanted to do the same, wanted to wash her hands of the whole affair and take herself back to the Alliance with cap in hand, groveling on her knees if that was what it took to convince them she'd never meant to be brought back from the dead by her enemies. But she saw that abandoned doll next to the empty bed, limp, waiting for little hands that would never pick it up again, and she couldn't just leave.
Much more casually than she felt, Shepard tilted her lips in a half-smile designed to put the recipient at ease and said, "What can I do for you, Vakarian?"
He tilted his head slightly, like she was a puzzle he was trying to figure out, some spare part left on the Normandy hold's floor he knew belonged in the Mako but couldn't for the life of him remember the purpose of. Taking a step backward, she waved him inside. He hesitated on the threshold only a moment (a moment too long, warned the voice she couldn't shake) before taking her up on the offer.
"Welcome to my embarrassingly large quarters," she said, her amused self-deprecation tinged with genuine disgust. Garrus blinked at her, the flick of his mandibles a startled acknowledgement that he'd picked up on the latter more than she'd intended.
He didn't draw attention to it, though. He only stepped into the room and took a long, slow look around. "Is that… a fish tank?"
"Yes."
"With no fish?"
She lifted a shoulder. "Budget cuts."
Garrus laughed, and then caught himself, almost as if the sound had startled him, almost as though he thought the mirth inappropriate. She understood that completely, too. "I see that. And, uh, are those surveillance devices?"
"They were. Pretty sure they're all dead now."
"Murder by dance music?" He shook his head ruefully. "I just destroyed all the ones I found. This is much better punishment."
Shepard's lips twitched, a ghost of a real smile, and she turned away, inviting Garrus to join her in the cozy alcove with its soft sofas. "I'd offer you a drink, but…" She waved in the general direction of her empty wine bottle and the equally empty glass. "I'm short on dextro liquor. Uh. And levo liquor too, at the moment."
"There's turian brandy in the lounge," he replied, nonchalant, as if her solitary drinking wasn't something to be commented on. "I'll bring my own next time."
She snorted, inclining her head. "It'll be a party. Regular Normandy SR-1 reunion."
(Too honest, said the voice. Too vulnerable. You'll regret that. You always regret that. You know better, Shepard. You know better.)
"Unless," she added, the words pulled from an unwilling throat already tightening with emotion she couldn't afford to feel, "you're here to tell me you want off at the next station. I'd understand. No hard feelings."
He stiffened as though she'd struck him. "I meant what I said earlier, Shepard. I'm not going anywhere."
She turned her palms out in a gesture ever so faintly helpless.
"I thought you might…" he drifted to a halt. "You want to talk about it? Without an audience, electronic or otherwise?"
She thought about it. Really. Considered it in a way she'd never have considered talking to Chambers or Lawson or even Karin Chakwas. She even went so far as to begin, "Do I seem—" before biting the phrase in half—Real? Wrong? Like myself? What have they done to me, Garrus, what have they done?—and swallowing it before she could burden him with her doubts.
He'd taken a rocket to the face and he was dealing with God knew what shit of his own—all those body bags, all his carefully-tended dead, all the groaning ghosts—and she wasn't ready to add hers to the load he was already carrying. So she shook her head, and softened the rejection with a smile. A genuine one this time, soft and sad. The kind of smile that said she wished she could take him up on his offer. The kind of smile that said maybe one day she would. "Later. You want to talk about what happened to you?" It wasn't accusatory; just an offer as genuine as his had been, a hand reaching down into the water, ready with a firm grip.
His mandibles flared, and he bowed his head, his chin dipping toward his chest. Even this slight motion ended in a wince of fresh pain, and he brought the tips of his talons to his wounded cheek, letting them hover there momentarily without actually touching. "Not yet," he replied, dropping his hand. "Maybe soon. If that's okay."
"Whenever you want," she said. "Door's always open."
He shifted, turning to face her. Their knees bumped, and the backs of his fingers brushed the backs of hers. Unintentionally, she thought, and yet she almost reached out, almost twined her fingers with his. She remembered her father's hands, her father's arms, her father's tears. As much as she wanted to help, to pull Garrus up, she didn't want to do more damage, to drag him down with her. Her fingers twitched before curling into a fist. Garrus sighed. Or perhaps she did.
"Shepard," he said, and her heart sank as she realized he was going to ask: you okay? She prepared an answer, a deflection and a smile and the impenetrable front of her Commander Shepard mask. Garrus watched her, eyes intent—familiar, but older, so much older, and in a way that had nothing to do with the two years she'd missed and everything to do with the things he wasn't ready to speak of. His ghosts looked out at her from behind his eyes. She sat pinned beneath the intensity of that gaze, suddenly certain she wouldn't be able to lie to him, wouldn't be able to convince him if she tried. He saw her too clearly: the scars, the stars, the drowning. And then the moment passed. He didn't ask. Instead, he shook his head almost imperceptibly and laid gentle fingertips against the tight curl of her fist. "It's good to have you back."
This time the burn was a different kind altogether, not fire or pain or reaching for air and finding nothing, not rage or hate or disgust, but the prickle of unshed tears. His fingers still rested against the back of her hand, asking nothing, offering what he could. She bumped her shoulder gently against his, an old companionable gesture stolen from a time that had been in every way easier for the both of them, despite murderous rogue Spectres and the sudden arrival of a sentient machine race bent on their annihilation. "Same," she said. "So. Do we start the headshot count from scratch?"
"Definitely," said Garrus, leaning back against her sofa and crossing one ankle over the opposite knee, the very picture of ease, his fingers finally lifting from her hand. Their breath of warmth remained. Her fingers uncurled gently, like a sigh, like the sweetest of exhales. "May the best turian win."
"May the best turian wish," Shepard retorted. "Drinks are definitely on you this time."
Garrus' browplates shifted upward, mildly skeptical. "And here I thought this was supposed to be a suicide mission."
Her snort was almost, almost a chuckle. "You giving up on me, Vakarian?"
"Never," he said firmly, instantly, so serious her breath caught.
"Good," she replied in kind, when she could breathe again. "Because I'm starting to think I've got things to live for after all."
"Same," he echoed, after a moment. "Same." He nodded in the direction of the pile of bugs. "I've got to say, seeing you take the Illusive Man out is near the top of the list. I hope I'm there the day it happens."
She bumped his shoulder again, both hope and promise, and said, "Wouldn't have anyone else at my six, Vakarian. Might ask you to leave me the final shot, though."
"Promise me you won't use yourself as bait, and I'll think about it."
She nodded, remembering not drowning or stars, but the vicious thing that had been Saren Arterius bowling into her, cybernetic clawed hands reaching for her unprotected face, her throat. She'd looked death in the face then, too, not for the first or last time. Close, though. Close, but no cigar. Garrus' headshot had seen to that.
Before she could second-guess herself, she rose, crossed the room, and swept all the remaining Cerberus bugs off the nightstand, incinerating the lot. Then she turned down the music. Not off; she wasn't ready for silence just like she wasn't ready to sleep staring up at the stars, but for the first time in a long time, she didn't need to drown out her thoughts, either. She turned her gaze to the wide, wall-length expanse of empty water, and her lips twitched into a smile.
"I'm going to get fish," she said. "A whole damned tank full."
"Yeah?" Garrus asked, mild skepticism sliding directly into full-blown. "You ever actually kept pets? Uh, on a starship?"
"They're fish," she scoffed, tamping down the last sparks of her electronic pyre before the ship's AI could pop up to complain. "How hard can it be?"
"I don't know, Shepard. You used to say the same thing about scaling mountains in the Mako."
"And we only fell off the side of a few." She smiled. "You know, Cerberus gave us a hovercraft."
Garrus mirrored her expression, the smile no less sincere for all it was painted on alien features, mandibles flaring instead of lips curving. "You don't say. Is it too late to change my mind about leaving?"
"Now, now, Garrus," she said, waving a dismissive hand, "a little lava never killed anyone."
Finally, he laughed, and this time didn't immediately bite the sound off. His shoulders relaxed a little, and his eyes were bright with more than ghosts. Strangely, it made her feel as though she, too, were breaking the surface, taking in a lungful of air after a stale breath held far too long. "Far be it from me to question your skills, Commander, but I'm not sure you understand how lava works. Or the laws of physics, for that matter."
"Just like old times, then?"
"Fewer krogan with delicate stomachs, but yeah, definitely."
Her smile slipped into a grin, and this time she didn't bury it, hide it, drive it away. "Thanks, Garrus."
He snorted. "For reminding you how often a trip in the Mako made Wrex lose his lunch? Because that's something I've done my damnedest to forget."
"Yeah," she said. "For that." Crossing the room, she offered him a hand. "Concussive rounds down in the hold?"
His fingers gripped her wrist; hers curled around his, and they remained that way a moment longer than necessary once he'd regained his feet. He chuckled. "Winner gets to fly the hovercraft first."
"Deal," she agreed, and took the first breath—real, deep, damned near hopeful—since she'd died.