a/n: This is an idea I had been playing around with for a little while now… So I sort of decided to write it out and run with it. This is a bit of an AU since I obviously (heh) didn't like the actual ME3 ending. Reviews are always welcome!
Also, thank you so much to Bluereplica for pointing out some mistakes and coming up with some ideas on how to make this chapter and chapter 2 flow more smoothly, and adding a bit more detail so that there weren't so many "why would they do that" moments.
Shepard had destroyed the Reapers… And apparently survived. She almost felt like she was lied to by the little glowing brat, she certainly felt like she should be dead judging from all the places that hurt on her body.
Lying in the rubble, she heard voices all around her. She wasn't sure where she was, or who was around, but she was glad to know that if she was dying, she wouldn't be decomposing for long before someone was able to find her and tell her family, her loved ones, that she had died in the blast; assuming there was anyone left to tell.
Shepard had briefly located Garrus, shot by Harbinger, in a pool of his own blood as she made her way to the beam. Her heart clenched as she realized he was probably dead. Well, she wasn't that far behind him, now was she?
The voices grew closer as she allowed her eyes to close, now wouldn't be a bad time to just die. She could do so knowing that she was going to see at least one person she loved shortly. As she let the darkness take her, she listened to the voices as they grew nearer, more distinct.
"Sir, I found her! She is apparently still alive, though in bad shape."
"Hurry, get her to the vehicle, we need to get her to the lab now, before the Alliance finds her."
… Alliance? Then who were these people? Shepard couldn't keep her mind focused enough to wake up fully, and she had a bad feeling about this. She felt herself being elevated, but she couldn't force her limbs to move. Within a few seconds she was completely lost to the world around her, her dreams taking her as she felt herself let go.
Shepard awoke in what seemed to be a surgical room, her head aching almost as much as the rest of her body. She tried to open her eyes, but it was difficult with the light in the room, she felt like she was a kid again trying to wake up too early in a too bright room. After a few moments of struggle between her and the too bright light, her eyes finally adjusted and she looked around, she was alone in what appeared to be a hospital room. That was when the confusion set in, this room was pristine. Hadn't most of the nearby area been completely decimated?
Her head throbbed harder, if that was at all possible, as she tried to regain her bearings. She was surprised as someone who appeared to be a doctor came into her room, looking just as surprised as her that she was awake and coherent. The older, graying, man seemed to consider her for a moment before speaking. Shepard hadn't been inclined to say much – to be quite frank, she was just now realizing how badly her throat her and she wasn't confident that speaking would be a task in and of itself.
"I see that you're awake, Commander. Do you know where you are?"
She simply shook her head, her eyes hiding any emotion other than confusion. Where was she, why was she here? Wasn't she about to die?
He considered that for a moment, she couldn't decide if he was formulating a lie or what, but when he spoke again she noted that his words seemed to be very precise and controlled.
"This is a research facility. We have been working on healing you for several weeks. You should know that you defeated the Reapers, we all owe you a great debt of gratitude. However, it was not without great cost – your entire team was lost. You're in a refugee camp, the other council races have started to try and take over Earth. It is a very dire time indeed."
Shepard couldn't wrap her head around what he was telling her, everyone was fighting each other now? She had just sacrificed everything to save everyone, and now they were attacking each other? It didn't seem plausible, it didn't seem right. Shepard wasn't even about to focus on the fact that her entire team was dead. She couldn't, she needed some answers and now. Forcing the air through her lungs, she forced the pained words out of her mouth.
"Wh… Why are they fighting? Who is trying to fight?"
He simply stared at her as she spoke, a gentleness coming over him at the pained words. He knew she was probably still sore from having the feeding tube removed, though he wondered if that was all there was to it.
"Mostly the Turians and the Krogan, with Earth so deeply ravaged, some splinter groups have taken it upon themselves to try and take over segments of the planet for themselves. With the council currently occupied with their own worlds, and much of each race on Earth to assist with the fighting, much of the turmoil here is going unnoticed. We, this camp, have taken it upon ourselves to fight back."
It still didn't make sense to her and he quickly noticed the furrow in her brow. He wondered briefly if he was going to have to go to plan B. Walking over to her carefully, he discreetly prepped the syringe in his surgical coat. He would have her cooperation, one way or another.
As the Doctor moved closer to Shepard, she felt her doubt overrun her. Normally, she would've kept such things to herself, but for some reason she felt the need to voice her disbelief.
"After everything that the galaxy went through to destroy the Reapers, everyone coming together – I don't believe that they would turn on each other now."
He seemed to relax at her words, a knowing look coming over him. He sighed as he brought the syringe to her IV, quickly injecting the liquid.
"I'm sorry to hear that, Shepard, because you will join us – you will help us. You will obey."
Shepard struggled briefly, she hadn't reacted quickly enough as she attempted to rip the IV out of her arm. She was ashamed at how easily the Doctor overpowered her and held her down. She felt whatever he had injected into her work its way through her veins, her eyes felt heavy. Slowly, painfully, she drifted into unconsciousness.
Shepard had been at the facility for a few months now; she was learning her place in whatever organization this was. She was certain it was an organization and not a refugee camp, everyone was to well armed, to well trained. They were rehabilitating her, and training her… They had upgraded her biotic implant and added a control chip into the mix. They had more plans for her than just making sure she was healthy and strong…
Shepard eventually discovered that this group wanted nothing more than to destroy anything that wasn't human – like Cerberus. They put her through the paces, training exercises, simulations – If she argued they would activate her chip and blinding, unimaginable pain would rocket through her body. Eventually, she would black out only to reawaken being shown a vid of how they had controlled her while she wasn't fully conscious, showing her that even if she fought, they would still get what they wanted.
The idea sickened her. She was being used, again, this time worse than before. At least before she had some semblance of freedom – now she was to be a weapon… A well-honed weapon with no self-control or moral compass other than that of the person controlling her, and from what Shepard could tell, that person was a psychopath.
They were systematically breaking her down with their trials and pain. She knew this, but having the knowledge that this was what they were doing and being able to stop it were two different things. She knew that they were still at the stage where they were trying to program her to act the way they wanted, the real abuse hadn't fully started… Her handler, Bernard, kept eyeing her in such a way that she knew that there would probably be more torture to come; torture of a completely different nature.
She just had to give him an edge on her, and that was something she was going to be very sure she did not do. The man gave her the creeps on so many levels that she was loath to even be in his presence. Between his wandering eye and penchant for disgustingly disturbing jokes, Shepard was certain that she would not be alone with this man if she could help it.
As it was, she could still fight for herself, Bernard hadn't been given control over her chip. That privilege was left solely in the hands of the Doctor, Dr. Felstein. He activated the chip when she wasn't listening; he deactivated it once her task was done. No, she was not going to give Bernard a chance to gain something on her, a chance to back her into a corner.
Eventually, she was brought out on a few missions to observe. These "missions" were nothing more than a slaughter fest. She had found out that wherever this base was, it was far away from London where she had first been discovered. How the group found her before the Alliance did and secreted her away without being found out was a mystery to her and Dr. Felstein didn't seem to want to share the information, if she had to guess she would say that they had an inside person with the Alliance who kept any search crews from entering the area where she was found.
If she had to guess to where she was now, she would say she was somewhere in South America, or Mexico. This area was less densely populated than where the Reapers had been focusing their attacks and therefore was apparently where this group decided to hide and wait out the attack – all the while allowing their group to build up a force strong enough for guerilla warfare… And that was exactly what she was witnessing in now.
They would travel discreetly in small, quiet transports to areas just outside of Alien camps. The camps always seemed to have little to no organized guards. The group would then go through and slaughter every man, woman and child that they could find… And then after their slaughter games were done, they would force Shepard to walk through the camp. She wasn't expected to participate, just to desensitize herself to the brutal violence this group was inflicting. To her horror and revulsion, she found it slowly working on her. Each camp got easier to walk through, each atrocity was less likely to bring the bitter bile from her stomach.
Shepard was almost to the point where she would be expected to fight with the group, she knew it. She wasn't sure how her first real test was going to play out, but she knew she was going to fight them every step of the way. She hadn't survived this long to be a tool, to be someone's weapon. She had her own mind, right? She could certainly over power the control chip over something that disgusted her this much, right?
Shepard would always remember this day… It was rainy… She was dropped off with the kill squad somewhere outside of Seattle, there was a small alien camp there. Dr. Felstein actually decided that today he wanted to witness her in action – with the remote to the control switch firmly at his side. She walked with the ground team to the edge of the camp, it was mostly Turians with some Humans and Asari, probably mates.
She hesitated only a second before the blinding pain of the chip shot from the base of her skull down her spine and over her body. She felt herself scream before the darkness took her… Her biotics flaring as she morphed from the controlled, sane individual she knew herself to be into the murdering puppet they had conditioned and built her to be.
When Shepard regained control of her mind, she was standing in the middle of the camp… Blue and red blood covered her body, her face. She realized suddenly that she was clutching a young male Turian's throat in one hand. He was long since dead. Shepard abruptly dropped what was left of the man and hurled herself away from the body. Before she could fully analyze what she had just done, her eyes moved around the area of the camp that she was in. So much carnage, so many lost lives lost so pointlessly, lost to her hands.
Shepard felt herself start to tremble, the transformation was complete, she had lost all control over what she once was. She was no longer a hero. As her eyes scanned the bloody battlefield before her, her gaze falling on women, children who were struck down violently as they ran, she knew now that she would never be able to regain who she was again. These images would haunt her for eternity.
Shepard had become accustomed to the routine, she always fought the control, always fought the slaughter. She always lost in the end. It was becoming a game, almost. To see how long she could resist before the darkness took her and she was driven into her catatonic state. They had even managed to, judging from the vids she was forced to watch of her slaughters, get her to react like she was actually aware of her actions. They had started having her use a sniper rifle to pick off people running from the camps, just outside of a biotic attack range. She wasn't just all biotics and death, in fact, she nauseatingly reminded herself of the phantoms and snipers that Cerberus had once created, she was agile, deadly with a gun… She was a creature straight from the Illusive Man's Cerberus Hell.
It wasn't until they had reached a particular camp, on some nondescript day that Shepard rediscovered something to actually fight for. In the middle of her blood lust, when she was supposed to have no control, she stumbled on a sight she had seen many times before; a young male Turian, probably only 5 or 6 years in age, clutching to a toy. It reminded Shepard of a teddy bear, only a Turian version. The similarity shocked Shepard to consciousness as she stared at the kid – he was crying. Of course he was crying, she had just slaughtered half the camp, many more people were running away screaming to get away from her. She had probably slaughtered his family.
She walked towards the kid, unsure of why, but feeling drawn to try and comfort him. Reaching out, she picked him up – he seemed to sense that she was no longer a threat and he threw his arms around her, crying into her neck. The blatant trust in her that this kid was showing moved something inside of her, she had just been killing everyone and just because she picked this kid up, he had seemingly decided that she was no longer dangerous. She ran her fingers over his small fringe, hoping that the gesture was comforting. She'd be damned if she proved him wrong to trust her now.
Without a second thought, she walked with new purpose back to the shuttle. She was going to protect this kid no matter what. She stopped just outside the camp, her eyes immediately falling on Felstein, daring him to do something about her unspoken decision. The Dr. seemed to understand instantly what she was saying and with a sneer of revulsion, he activated her control chip.
She gasped and groaned, falling to her knees, but she never took her eyes off of him. She would not lose this time, she would fight even if it killed her. She fought with a new found mental strength to keep her control. She knew she could easily die by fighting this much, but she would be damned if she was going to be the one to kill this kid still clutching to her neck.
Felstein, seeing the fight still present in her, realized lazily that this could actually work to his advantage. In allowing her to keep the child, it gave him something to control her with, something that he could easily take from her. He shut off the chip after a few minutes, seeing that she was apparently going to fight this to the death. No, he would allow her to keep her pet.
Bernard seemed to have the same thought process as he grinned maliciously at the woman and the kid… He was finally going to get to enjoy his operative the way he wanted.
Shepard knew this was only going to bring her more trouble, but she couldn't help but feel that she owed this kid something. She looked at the kid who was still latched to her and shaking, and a soft smile spread over her lips.
The kid watched her smile in awe, she had just been in a great deal of pain and now she was looking at him in such a tender way that it caught him off guard. The kid noticed the effort the woman put into keeping her voice calm as she asked him his name, he felt it only right that she should know it since he swore to himself the moment the other humans started doing something to cause her pain that he was going to protect her no matter the cost.
"Fallon." He answered softly, his eyes wide as he stared into the crystal blue eyes of the human in front of him.
At first she was an angel of destruction and death, glowing blue and killing all in her way… And then she had become his savior, her rage quelled as she lifted him up and simply left as if that was the entire reason she had been there. He had no love for the people in the camp, he was barefaced and the child of an exiled Turian woman. He had no clan and his mom had simply left him in the camp as she passed through.
Shepard smiled, her voice cracking a bit as she introduced herself right back, "Nice to meet you Fallon, I'm Eva."
Eva was his new mom, he made the connection instantly as she made an obvious show to the other humans that he was off limits to whatever they had planned. She was already doing more to protect him than his biological mother ever had. He would be damned if anyone ever tried to take her from him.