This is the first Mass Effect fic I'm publishing. To avoid confusion, Shepard was earth born and a sole survivor (so you understand what she's referring to as she thinks), and this fic takes place a few days after Horizon. Best viewed at 3/4. Quotes in the beginning are from Trading Yesterday, seeing as they seem to fit. Anyways, please enjoy. This will be one of several installments under this title. ~

"Shadow days come to haunt me here
To wrap around me
Dark and cold to hide the sunlight from my eyes

I can not see beyond these clouds surrounding
I will not forget that this is not the end"

Chapter 1.

There was always someone who needed saving.
Some person, child, soldier, slave, orphan – a lost child crying silent tears in a back alleyway as slavers pilfer every ounce of humanity left – a broken body storing images of shattered picture frames and scattered clothes as a twisted testament of what once was.

What was the point?

What reason was there to seek out injustice?

To smother only a fraction of the pain and replace it with retribution … sometimes it just didn't seem to cover the cost. And there always was a cost, always some price to pay.
While one person's memories heal, trauma re-diverted, another falls – an endless cycle of blood and agony and helplessness diluted only by the few who challenge it.

She knew that well enough.
She had challenged it, ever since the beginning.

Sighing, Commander Shepard let her head fall into her hands, massaging her temples in an acknowledged, vain attempt to let the thoughts go – to forget. Even after two seemingly seamless years of being declared dead, every image was as vivid as it ever was, as though she had never died but instead lived on - having merely fallen asleep for but an instant …

But she knew better than that, knew with the sorrowful wrench of conscience and the glimpses of shadows in the people she used to know.

There were pieces missing now.

The tell tale signs of crew members having gone through two years without her, making their own way as best they could in her memory while she lay on a gurney, a costly investment to a group that had always left a certain sour taste on her tongue.

Hah.

Talk about cost. A soft laugh slipped past cracked lips with a noticeable lack of heart as Shepard leaned back in her chair, scanning the evidence of it in her private quarters, fingertips tracing slow whirls across the terminal, illuminated by the pale blue glow of the enormous aquarium.

Cerberus certainly had a way of making cost seem like nothing, a matter of "moving credits" as Zaeed put it, and he was right. Even now, working with Cerberus left a distinct metallic aftertaste, as though blood and death had seeped into the Normandy and retracted, leaving bleached walls and an unmistakable feel of bodies rendered – for a good cause of course.

She knew it was necessary, working with Cerberus. The council still thought she was delusional and hell – sometimes she was inclined to think so herself but … that only happened on days when the sun they were orbiting around seemed to shine a little less brightly, and the pull of an unhealed muscle signaled the fact that maybe she wasn't up to this, maybe she wanted someone to tell her that it was manageable – that the end was worth it.

At the moment though, she was alone, her only observers being the fish that swam in lazy circles in the expensive glass tank and the picture of Kaiden that sat undisturbed on the desk nearby, next to all the medals and achievements she had earned throughout her career.

Kaiden …

The thought of him sent her into yet another tangent, another branch of sorrow and disappointment as she reached for the frame, tracing the memories that now seemed so clouded, when everything else was so vivid.

She'd thought she could rely on him; trust him to understand as she knew he was able to… She'd thought he would be the one to tell her that it was worth it – that the confliction of pain she dealt and felt was only a matter of the ebb and flow of existence, that what mattered was who we are, not what we do, what we have to do.

He had always been so good with words after all …
To a certain extent, she had always thought he was a romantic – a cynical romantic, but a romantic nonetheless.
She didn't think so anymore.

The Kaiden she thought she knew wouldn't have abandoned her like this … wouldn't have left her hanging with brutal words and harsh claims of bitter betrayal and a sense of heavy disappointment that left her feelings in battered shreds.

What did he think she did for those two years?

He acted as though she had simply abandoned and betrayed everyone, left them all to drift away, to fall apart while she gallivanted about the known galaxy while everyone was left to deal with her being gone. Not to mention how he'd thrown everything they'd shared back in her face …

She had been dead for godsake!

Cerberus spent two goddamn years putting her back together and for what? So she could be sent on yet another suicide mission because no one else could do it, no one else could deal with the consequences of losing people, of losing the fight to the Reapers or the Collectors or whoever the hell else it could possibly be because the cost was too high.

Hell, she didn't know how she dealt with it herself. The wound of leaving Williams behind on Virmire still pulsed like an open sore in the recesses of the darkest parts of her – an agony of decision spurned by selfish feelings that now lay bare, raw, and red. She didn't want to think of what Ashley would think of her now.

Slamming a fist into the desk, she suppressed the tears of frustration she would never let go of, the facet of her nature she had sealed off for the good of each mission she went on. What made her so she could do this? What made her different from all the other orphans in the galaxy … the ones that never rose from poverty and loss but instead withered and died beneath the wreckage of life and a bad roll from fate?

She was such a fool for wishing for anything more than what she had.
Such a fool.

How could she wish for someone to be there for her when she had the power to command assassins and mercenaries alike merely by the strength of her will?
She had everything most people only dreamt of having, and still the empty hole in her heart seemed to mock everything she'd ever done.

Steeling her resolve, she set Kaiden's picture face down on the terminal, next to all the things she shouldn't have earned, the medals of her valor – the proof of her tenacity and ability. It was just another cost, another cost that etched a mark unto her soul and echoed sweet sorrows of things shared and left to the dust particles that would never gather.

Getting up, Commander Shepard glanced around once more before making the short walk to summon the elevator, leaning against the door as she waited.
She would go make rounds, talk with the crew, recheck the equipment – something to distract her from these dismal thoughts that continuously eddied in her mind, the thoughts she couldn't share, didn't dare share – not when words were so easy to distort.

The elevator made a low ding to announce its presence before opening and she got on, directing the elevator to the second floor.
Perhaps a cup of hot tea would help warm her resolve, she'd bought a few interesting types she hadn't tried when she went grocery shopping for Gardener, not to mention the other strange odds and ends he'd requested.

Her thoughts began to ease as she reminisced.

No matter how long she spent around other species, she'd never get over the different foods that aliens ingested. Some looked flat out disgusting (though she really couldn't point fingers when she'd nearly lived on malted army rations at one point in her life), while others just appeared … intriguing, to say the least. She could admit that she was at least willing to give anything the benefit of the doubt though, and so when the store clerk at the produce kiosk had suggested a few popular items not on the list, she had spent the next five minutes going over who was capable of eating what, and what was what.

Shaking her head at the memory, Shepard laughed softly in self amusement at the memory of the store clerk's face as she asked him to simply write it all down himself, unable to wrap her mind around the words he was uttering - she still couldn't make out even half of what the turian had suggested, and if Gardener's raised eyebrow was any inclination when she returned, neither did he.

Arriving at the second floor, the elevator opened with a quiet whoosh and she stepped out, treading silently across the floor to the small inlet of what could be reluctantly referred to as the kitchen, or in Gardener's words his "miracle working station" (though this changed on a day to day basis depending upon what he was cooking, trying to cook, or when you asked him).

Tapping her chin thoughtfully with an index finger, the Commander of the SR2 Normandy considered her options.

There was coffee, that was given – nearly three fourths of the crew consumed at least three cups of it a day, much to Mordin's dismay, who was so far unable to reason with them about how caffeinated beverages really weren't necessary to sustain life.

Instead she bent down to rummage through the cabinets beneath the stove, looking for the tea she had originally planned on making, humming a soft tune under her breath.

"I didn't know you were one for a late night snack, Shepard."

Feigning that she hadn't been surprised at all by the turian's rough, deep voice suddenly appearing, the spectre straightened, folding her arms in mock indignation as she turned towards him, catching a glimpse of his mandibles twitching in amusement at what she assumed him to think of finding his Commander rifling the cabinets in the middle of the night, in search for some elusive midnight source of sustenance.

"I could say the same to you, Garrus."

Her azure eyes flickered softly over him – noticing the subtle things like the way his eyes seemed a bit more bruised looking than usual, and how his shirt creased as though he had been tossing restlessly before seeking salvation in being up and about.

"Unless skulking about the mess hall has become something of your new pastime that is...?" A slim eyebrow rose in question before she clucked in mock disapproval, the corner of her mouth twitching.

He laughed softly, moving with his predatory grace to lean against the counter, his own blue orbs tracing her being as she had traced his – two warriors regarding the damages.

"Well seeing as how the Main Battery is only … right over there," He drawled, nodding in the direction of the place he spent most of his time, "It'd be rather difficult to avoid skulking about the mess unless one simple decided not to come out at all."

The turian and former C-Sec officer crossed his arms on the countertop and a larger smile began to creep across his rugged, plated features.

"Wouldn't that make going on missions rather difficult, Commander?"

Shepard found the grin maddening in its smugness.

"Not if I simply left you ass here all the time." She retorted, the twitch of her lips betraying her once again as she turned, crouching to rummage through the random things Gardener had shoved in the cabinet. "At least here I wouldn't have to be rescuing it all the time," she muttered, vaguely hearing Garrus chuckle somewhere behind her.

Grasping a box, she stood up, sighing in exasperation as ten others piled themselves onto the floor at her feet. Her fingers pulsed blue faintly as she levitated them back into the cabinet haphazardly, making note to inform Gardener that she did not approve of his organizational skills.

The silence was comfortable as Shepard set the tea to boil, a fact she didn't overlook. Only with Garrus was silence comfortable, even with the loom of all the things that could go wrong, would go wrong, the turian never once tried to fill the empty space with words of condolences or false hopes. He would never know how much she appreciated that.

Retrieving a mug, she poured herself some tea after it finished brewing, sighing in pleasure as she inhaled the warm, faintly spicy aroma. Wrapping her fingers around her pleasantly warm drink, Shepard regarded Garrus again, noticing the way his brow ridges were creased in thought, the emotion that swirled just beneath the surface – unaware that she had finished her preparations.

She moved away from the stove, and sure enough, his eyes slid up to meet hers at the movement, only trace amounts of the emotion she had seen left in his features. Blue orbs warmed as they regarded her, turian lips quirking.

"Done?"

Shepard scoffed, deliberately inhaling with exuberance and taking a healthy sip, making a point to raise her eyebrows in such a way as to suggest that perhaps his eyes needed checking.

"Alright, alright … dumb question, I know ..."

His expression was rueful, but still amused. He looked away briefly, shifting posture as though there was something on his mind – something he needed to say. Shepard knew Garrus wasn't one to go wandering the ship even if he had things on his mind. For him, re-calibrating the Normandy's guns, doing algorithms, or whatever else he did in the main battery was usually the way he'd deal with the frequent kinks that tended to come up.

She didn't interrupt or prompt him as to what he wanted to say, she simply waited, watching his gaze harden as he resolved something within himself. When his eyes drifted back to hers, they were softer, like the ocean at nightfall when the haze of twilight dappled the water a startling grey-blue.

"Shepard, I …had hoped to find you here ..." He said quietly, considering, voice rougher than its usual pleasant rumble.

"I wanted to talk to you."

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