A/N: This fic contains massive SPOILERS for ME1-ME3, so you have been warned.
Cassandra Shepard: Renagon, romanced Garrus. Generally Renegade, but made some 'big' Paragon choices. Earthborn, War Hero.
I'm not sure about my attitude towards the ending yet. I'll see how my ideas about it develop as I write this.
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If Cassandra Shepard didn't get out of this room soon, she was going to try to kill herself with a plastic spoon, just to pass the time.
The interesting thing about being relieved from active duty was how it meant relieving of all duty. She wasn't allowed out of these rooms, which were admittedly much nicer than a prison cell, so any kind of outdoor activity was out of the question. Her only chances for company were the weekly visits from Anderson, and her chats with James Vega, the man assigned to her security detail. She liked Vega fine, but there was a limit to how cozy she was inclined to get with her Jailor.
There was one brief period of excitement when Liara used Shadow Broker resources to allow the two of them to speak on occasion, but Shepard had chanced some correspondences with Garrus, and the resulting red flag of her omnitool signature on registered channels had put a stop to that. Liara had been so very condescending in her final missive that Shepard could have sworn she was talking to Benezia, a notion that made her head hurt. Meals were brought to her, so cooking wasn't a possibility. Not that she'd ever been any good at that particular task, years of stodgy military rations ensured the mass death of taste buds by the time she was 20.
And to top it all off, the bastards wouldn't give her access to any new vids.
A little while from now, Cassandra Shepard was going to remember this moment of utter boredom, and want to kick herself in the teeth.
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"Fuck!"
Shepard twists sharply, sending the husk flying over the edge of the wreckage. Her L5s were killing her, she hadn't been meditating enough when under house arrest. While she'd never been plagued by migraines like Kaiden, the uncomfortable stretching sensation in her brain had become a full-on ache. Ignoring it, she steels herself and charges forward in a sphere of light, slamming into another group of husks. Stretch, twist, work through the pain and her mind was just another weapon. The husks crumple beneath the force of the blow.
Well, maybe not just any weapon.
Laughing triumphantly, Shepard whirls around in search of another opponent and watches in horror as the Reaper rises above her. Her vision blurs for a moment, as the angry red beam of light shoots out towards her. She dives for cover, gritting her teeth against that terrible wave of glass and force and heat.
Anderson was a blur of movement, all navy blue and streaky, and something about his confidence at that moment, an aura of sheer competence, made Shepard yearn for the days she was under his command. He'd been a good CO, and she missed not having the world on her shoulders. She'd had little cause to see him this way since she'd put him on the council. "Quickly Shepard, inside!"
They step cautiously into the burning wreck of the building, and Shepard holds the door open for Anderson to step through, her eyes flicking about the room, searching for threats. There is something here, something important, she's sure of it.
She just didn't expect it to be a child.
She's seen this boy before, with his sandy brown hair and wide eyes, he liked to play in the roof garden across from her rooms. He was so impossibly tiny, was she ever that small? She must have been, her pitiful excuse for a childhood on Earth had required her to crawl through a number of impossibly small spaces. Starvation had probably made it easier, this kid didn't seem to be sitting too comfortably in the vent.
Her voice was softer than she expected, "Hey kiddo." She crouches slowly, making sure to angle her body away slightly, give him some space and air, don't let him feel trapped.
Tremulously, "I'm scared," his eyes fill with tears. "Everyone's dying!"
Her hands reach out of their own accord, "Come with me, I can get you someplace safe. It'll be alright."
He shakes his head, one fist rubbing at his eyes, all childish stubbornness and certainty. "You can't save me."
A dark wave of emotion washes over her, this shouldn't be happening but it is and everyone is dying, and she's never had much of a mothering instinct but he's a scared kid in a air duct – and hell, doesn't she know a thing or two about that – maybe it's because her species is dying and he's so clearly offspring, but mostly it's because he's just a little boy who was playing with a toy an hour ago, and if Shepard could get her hands on a Reaper right now she just might tear it to pieces. How's that for certainty?
"Yes, I ca– "
"Shepard, there's a way out!" And her eyes dart to the door for a second, just one second, and the boy is gone. She's not a duct rat anymore, and she can't go chasing after him. She remembers his face, etches it into that special place in her heart where she keeps her failures. Its getting crowded in there, but Ashley will take care of him.
And then there is nothing but the fight. It startles her how much she's lost, sitting in those apartments. Her aim is still superb, and her body is certainly still strong and capable – at some point, she was going to get Anderson for that little comment – but its like she's lost a limb, a sixth sense. The air doesn't taste right in her mouth, and while she's killing the bastards in waves, she's uncomfortably aware that she's not fighting as well as she used to. She tells herself it's been the lack of practice, god knows that back in the day she'd find a goddam fight no matter where she'd landed, and that much consistent adrenaline is impossible to maintain. No matter how much training she'd done in private, nothing quite matches a real live opponent.
She doesn't allow herself to think of calculating sea-storm eyes on her six, of a heartbeat so in tune with her's they'd never had to speak, of hands steady and rhythmic on the trigger, of a rumbling voice that fills her with warmth and fire. Her missing limb.
When the Normandy's familiar lines and angles drops out of the sky, and she can hear Joker's voice being frighteningly capable and a smart-ass all at once, it feels like coming home. She doesn't look back, doesn't stop, she's leaping up wreckage as fast as she can, homehomehome. It's only when her boots touch the grating of the shuttle deck that she realises Anderson hasn't followed her. She can't quite comprehend what she's hearing. That Anderson would want to stay and fight is a given, but to send her away? She's no politician, and she may have the rest of them fooled, but Anderson remembers duct-rat Cassie, remembers Red Cassie, and he knows what he's asking of her. He knows she will refuse him nothing.
Her acceptance tastes like ashes in her mouth, but she knows the taste of duty well by now. She holds the ash taste through her reinstatement, through Kaiden's incessant questioning –Wasn't he there? Can't he see how much this is costing everyone? How much it costs her?– through the terrible sight of that boy's shuttle exploding in a cloud of fire, through James' protests and Hackett's debrief.
Duty. No house-arrest could compare to it, to the shackles of her own making. Cortez takes them down to Mars, and her eyes fill with the memory of Anderson standing on the wreckage of her homeworld, and she'd swear he hadn't aged a day.
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Earth, 20 years ago
Okay. Well, he was quite a bit bigger than her. In hindsight, she probably shouldn't have tried to steal the wallet of someone in a uniform, but he was so clearly unused to Earth, and uncomfortable with the idea of having to carry his currency on his person rather than in his omitool. He'd seemed like a pretty good mark, if she could work up the courage, and out here you either got brave or you got hungry.
Following him was easy, the man never looked anywhere but forward, striding around like he owned the damn place. She was quiet like a mouse, scurrying between the long shadows of the buildings surrounding the market square. He'd stopped to admire something, and Cassie darted into the small crowd that was surging towards him, her hand slipping in and out of his pocket as the they jostled past. She'd made her escape down a side alley, slipping into one of the vents behind a dumpster. As she scrambled into the tight space a large calloused hand wrapped around her ankle and yanked her out. His hands were like dinner plates, it only took the one to pull her up by the front of her shirt, pressing her against the wall.
Oh, this one was gonna hurt.
"Christ, you're tiny!" He exclaims, tilting his head to the side.
Cassie struggles, wriggling like a worm. She raises her arms to try and drop out of her shirt, but his other hand strikes out and grips her, vice-like, around her waist.
She drops the wallet, she knows when she's beat. The goal now is to get out of this with as few bruises as possible. If she can avoid breaking anything, that'd be good too. The free clinic is good, but they keep trying to call social services, and she's heard enough horror stories from the bigger kids to know that she needs to stay away from them.
He doesn't watch the money though, he just watches her with those dark eyes. His voice makes her jump, it is deep and velvety, and under different circumstances it might have made her feel safe. "How old are you, child?"
Her chin thrusts forward defiantly, "I'm ten."
"Do you have a name?"
"Maybe," her tone is petulant. "What's it to you?"
"I'm Captain Anderson, of the Systems Alliance, and I'm expecting an answer out of you young lady."
She's all set to give him a false name, or at least something enough like her own name that she'll still respond to it. So her expression is just as surprised as his when she opens her mouth and says, "Cassandra – Cassie. They say my Daddy was called Shepard, but I don't remember."
He's still looking at her, his face betraying nothing, and Cassie is distinctly uncomfortable with the certainty that she's going to stay like this until he's got exactly what he wants, though she has no idea what that might be. She's got no money, and she's got no tits yet (Though Eva does, and has been showing off her's to anyone who'll look. Cassie's slightly jealous but mostly glad, no tits means she isn't as interesting) and he doesn't seem like a perv, they tend to let their hands wander more. The only thing he might want is either to cause some pain, or some kind of intel. But he isn't asking the usual questions.
Suddenly she's on her feet, with one of those massive hands on her shoulder. He scoops up the wallet, and hands her a folded bill. She snatches it out of his hand before he can change his mind, sequestering it in one of her many pockets. Good, familiar ground now. "What info do you need, mister?"
"When was the last time you ate?"
He keeps going like this, asking questions about her. She ain't nobody special, but its like he's never seen a duct-rat before. They sit in a diner, with sticky red tables and an electronic sign that doesn't work, the food is greasy and grey and Cassie doesn't think she's ever been anywhere so nice. She's too hungry to maintain any suspicion when the food is set in front of her, wolfing it down. He even lets her have seconds. All the while, he asks about her, how she got so fast, and where did she learned to move in a crowd, why she marked him as a target.
She answers as best she can, mouth full and belly sore, but damn if she can't stop eating. He seems almost pleased by her answers, and she finds herself showing off a little, wanting to impress him. She tells him things the others don't know she can do, things the others don't know she knows.
"I'll be back in a year. You hang around that market place, child."
"Why?"
"I want you to tell me what you've learned. If you survive that long."
She looks at him, her eyes steady and sure, "I'll survive, mister. Always do."
He nods, slowly. Standing, he leaves another bill on the table. "It's going to rain tonight. You'd best stay out of the usual haunt in Sector H, the ducts in B are cramped, but they have nice heating near the fans and the waterproofing is better."
All she can think of as he walks off into the sunset, is that she'd never told him where the duct-rats slept.
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If Kaiden brings up this Cerberus shit one more time, she's refuses to be held responsible for what follows. Judging by that vein throbbing in his neck, Vega might hold him down for her.
It'd stung like a bitch on Horizon, to find the Kaiden didn't trust her, even worse that he wouldn't let her explain. She'd remembered he'd been good at giving her space to explain. He'd been prepared to follow her into hell, and damn the consequences. She didn't pay too much attention to a stray thought, that she sure was using the past tense a fair bit.
Still, Cassie didn't tend to dwell overmuch on hurt feelings, and to be fair Cerberus might have been too much to ask a man who hadn't even known she was back from the dead. But now? After the Omega 4 Relay? After the reapers were here? It wasn't even as if he was coming up with any good arguments, nothing about possible control chips and indoctrination (which, she remembered with a wince, had briefly been a very real possibility), nothing even remotely concrete about how she might be being manipulated by those who'd revived her. It would still have been easily explained – Chakwas and Mordin checked me out so thoroughly I couldn't look them in the eye for days, and technically Miranda saved me and then told the Illusive Man to go die in a hole – but at least she could understand his reservations.
Instead, she was constantly beset by accusations, barbed but toothless, that she must have been working with them, that she must still be their puppet. Like if she was really some kind of Cerberus agent, a few pointed comments were going to make her come clean? Like she was some kind of helpless child who hadn't known who she was getting into bed with, who was too stupid to understand the terrible situation she was in?
She'd tried to explain, god how she'd tried. Via extranet message, in person, on vidcom, hell she was about three tequila shots away from interpretive dance. Enough was enough. She'd felt the sting of his rejection, the loss of that blind faith in her strength and integrity. But she'd also known what it was to have someone who went in with their eyes wide open. Someone who saw all of you, good and bad, and still chose to place a trust in you that shook you to the core some days – yeah, she'd had enough.
"You don't trust Cerberus, fine. But I am done explaining myself to you."
She didn't bother to hide her glee at Kaiden's shocked expression, when Liara burst out of the vents, dispatching the Cerberus operatives with chilling efficiency. It didn't make much sense, given that Liara was a whole damn century older than her, but Shepard could feel her chest swell with pride whenever she looked at Liara these days. From that shy, awkward archeologist, so afraid of herself, into the most powerful information broker in the galaxy. Little girl grew up strong.
Cassie contemplates the relief of sending Kaiden back to the Normandy, but if this Crucible thing goes pear-shaped she'd like Kaiden to have been there in person. God knows what fresh suspicion he'd conjure up if left unchecked. Striding forwards, with her biotics swirling lazily around her, Shepard slots some more of those fucking thermal clips into her shotgun. Jesus Christ, I'm gone for a couple of years and everyone forgets how to make a half-decent gun.
"Okay people, time to do what we do best. Kaiden, if I see a single shield around these bastards, I am going to blame you, and you are going to find that unpleasant. Liara, keep them spinning, and if you see one of those fuckers with a big fancy shield, I want them in a goddam stasis field so fast I think he's ornamentation, got it?"
Liara smiles, her movements fluid with the serene grace of all the Asari. Kaiden nods, his face tense and withdrawn, and she has to resist the urge to roll her eyes. Let him sulk, she's got bigger things to worry about.
"Let's move out!"
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He's got bruises on his bruises, and she should have sent him back to the ship. Kaiden had never been a frontline soldier, that was her. She was the one with more CQC skill than you could shake a stick at, she was the one who figured out how to form an invulnerable sphere around her and turn it into a battering ram, she was his fucking CO and she should have been the one taking those hits. Now this doctor she doesn't trust is telling her about his implants, about how they may have sustained some damage from the brutal repeated smashing that damn mech inflicted.
No shit, Doc. Tell me something I don't know.
"His prognosis looks good, Commander. He should have a fairly smooth recovery, provided there are no unforeseen complications."
Cassie nods tightly, thanking the doctor for his time. She's in slightly better spirits on her trip down to the Normandy. It's better news than she expected to hear, better news than she got from the fucking council. She hadn't saved the lives of their predecessors, she had chosen to throw everything she had at Sovereign. Because securing them promotions and saving the Citadel are things we condemn people for now. Thank god for the Turian councillor, or she'd have turned the Normandy around and headed straight back to Earth.
This Victus sounds like her kind of guy, Garrus would probably have like him.
No, don't you dare start thinking like that!
But as she watches the most recent heat scans of Palaven, as those mountains and tropical jungles he'd told her about are burning beneath the beams of the Reapers, she finds it really hard to believe he isn't down there fighting those overwhelming odds. Then again, she finds it really hard to believe in most things when Garrus isn't around.
As the datapad falls from her fingers, and Cassie sinks deeper into the pillows, her last waking thought is that the sheets don't smell like him anymore.