...
The heat made it hard to breathe as Shepard ran towards the Shroud, the shrieks and cries of the giant thresher maw as it brought down a Reaper forever burned in her mind. Every joint hurt and her eyes watered, but adrenaline pushed her far and fast and she never stopped her sprint once.
Mordin's voice in her comm telling her he was almost in the facility was a comfort; it was good to know some things, at least, were going as planned.
The Shroud was already in bad condition by the time she found the doctor, hands flying over a control panel, but she forced herself to shake the feeling of dread in the pit of her stomach and to ignore the way the ground shook around them and the sky burned.
"Is the cure ready?" She asked, not trying to discard the urgency in her voice, and Mordin nodded without taking his eyes off the console.
"Yes. Loaded for dispersal in two minutes. Procedure traumatic for Eve, but not lethal. Maelon's research invaluable."
Shepard allowed herself a moment of relief. They'd not lost Eve. Good.
"Her survival fortunate." Mordin continued to speak, as fast as ever, mentioning her possible role in krogan politics as Wrex's match. She let him talk, knowing full well that that wasn't really the reason the salarian was glad the shaman survived the process of extracting the cure.
The hint of a smile that pulled at her lips died down as more debris fell from the crumbling structures around them. "Damn." She bit out, and saw Mordin start to face away from the controls from the corner of her eye.
"Control room at top of Shroud tower. Must take elevator up." He said, tone unchanged, and pressed a few final buttons. The sound of metal screeching from somewhere above her barely registered, her attention focused suddenly solely on the doctor. "You're going up there?" Her eyes flickered towards the elevator, and the long, narrow shaft going up towards the burning tower. It looked ready to fall over, just like everything around them, and the dread she'd been fighting to keep down until then suddenly made her guts twist uncomfortably.
Mordin didn't seem to share her concern, opening his omnitool, stepping away from the console. "Yes. Manual control required. Have to counteract STG sabotage. Ensure cure dispersed properly."
He sounded so sure, so determined, and the pit in her gut grew. Fear suddenly licked at the edge of her consciousness, making her fingers twitch. "Mordin, the whole thing's coming apart. There's got to be another way."
His warm, intelligent eyes let her know what he was about to say long before he turned away from her to face the tower, the elevator, the swirling, intimidating mess of electricity and fire hitting the top of the Shroud, and suddenly she couldn't breathe any more.
"No. No other option. Not coming back. Suggest you get clear." He twisted at the middle to glimpse at her briefly, his impossibly kind eyes worried for her safety, and suddenly there was no denying the horrible pressure she could feel building in the back of her eyes. She blinked hard, trying to fight it, but suddenly he was moving again. "Explosions likely to be… problematic." He said, fast, always so fast— fucking salarians and their inability to do anything slow, not even when they were headed to certain death. Running towards it and leaving her behind and for a moment she was terrified that she wouldn't be able to catch up. But she did, she did because she was Commander Shepard and the first human Spectre did not falter even when she couldn't breathe, and her eyes were hot, throbbing in her skull.
"Mordin, no." She tried— she tried to make it sound like an order, she was so good at commanding others, it should have been easy, but her throat kept closing up and her tongue was like ash in her mouth.
"Shepard, please." He said, and he was already stepping up the platform and her heart was in her throat. "Need to do this."
She drew in a shaky breath but it only made her head spin worse and suddenly she could hear herself ordering Kaiden to hold the line while she went after Ashley back on Virmire. She could remember the exact moment Kaiden's voice cut off over the comm. She could remember herself stare down from the orbit at the plant's surface as it went up in flames. The cold hopelessness in her bones as she put her hand against the glass of the window and simply watched.
"No you fucking don't!" She managed to get past her gritted teeth, and she refused to acknowledge the hot sting of her tears running down her bloodied, scrapped face. She didn't care that she must've looked a hysterical mess, that her face was red and so wet and dirty and her lips trembled, because, for all her weakness, her outburst seemed to make the salarian pause. She didn't care about shame, about what he must have thought of her, as long as it kept him there, alive a moment longer.
"Shepard-" He started, almost a warning, getting over his surprise too fucking fast— just why couldn't he slow down, she kept asking herself, tremors shaking her whole frame as she sobbed.
"Please, don't." She choked out, her turn to plead, looking at him through her slightly blurry vision. "We made it, remember? The suicide mission is over. We got out of there alive." Her voice broke, because they didn't all make it. She remembered Kelly and the engineers they couldn't save, their dead eyes as they found them on the Collectors' ship, one of her biggest failures. So no, not all of them came back, but she didn't lose anyone from the squad, and that used to count for something.
The doctor took one hesitating step forward, placed a warm hand on her shoulder-pad, and her hand came up and held it there with too much force.
"My project. My work." Mordin said after the briefest beat of silence, staring down at her with his big, alien eyes, his voice made gentle just for her, and it only made the human cry harder. "My cure. My responsibility." She shook her head, hugged her free arm around her middle, felt her legs shake.
"Genophage cure vital for securing Krogan-Turian alliance. Imperative for defeating the Reapers. No other choice. Too many lives at stake." She knew he was right, but she didn't care.
It wasn't fair. And she knew war was never fair, that she had no right to be selfish. Who was she to demand a life be spared, after all?
Just the week before, Primarch Victus lost his own son in order to make sure this alliance survived. How many countless others were sacrificed like that just so they could stand a chance, yet she dared risk it all? Because she was weak? Because she couldn't bear the thought of losing someone again?
Yet, she remembered the Attican Traverse and forcing herself to tell Grunt to keep fighting the Reapers because, in the long run, the chance to acquire the rachni as a war asset was worth the risk of losing one krogan scout team. A friend.
'Ruthless calculus.' Garrus had said, but she knew she would never forgive herself for the haunted look on Grunt's face as he barely made it out of there alive. She would have to live with the knowledge that she was the one responsible for killing his men for the rest of her life, and things would never be quite the same between the two of them again.
How many times had she made the difficult choice in the past? How many things, how many people did she lose already? Was it not enough? Was it never enough?
"I'm not letting you die." Shepard said—hissed, almost, with fragile strength and stubborn determination, glaring at him through her tears. God, she was bawling like a child, but she couldn't stop.
The professor looked lost as he looked at her, and for a moment she thought his own eyes looked a bit wet. "Shepard. Not many years left for me anyway. Not many salarians who live long enough to atone for mistakes. Good way to go. Happy to do it. Not your fault."
Shepard closed her eyes tight at his words and shook her head angrily at him.
"I know I'm never good enough, fast enough, strong enough-" A broken sound escaped her, but she didn't pause. "I know that no matter what I do and how much I try I always fail someone—I…I know someone always dies because I'm just not…not enough, but I refuse to lose you too. I'm not letting you throw your life away." She ended up telling him: shouting, shaking, collapsing onto herself just like the tower was collapsing, and she knew they were running out of time. Her hand gripping his held him fast. "You promised to sing to me again, remember? Remember how I love your singing? And I promised Garrus a turian-human hybrid and how can we do it without you?" The desperation in her own voice was not something she had heard in a long while. Not since Akuze.
"Shepard, please. You know it must be done. Has to be-"
"Don't you fucking dare. Don't you dare say it." She interrupted, soft and impossibly sad.
"I will make another way." Shepard promised, something so fierce and so frail at the same time in the way she looked at him. "I will make it happen, just-" Her voice broke again, and she pressed her forehead against his chest softly, pushing herself where she knew his heart to be. From the corner of her eye, she saw the indecision on his face, and she swallowed hard. "- just trust me. I will get this done, I will do whatever I have to, just…" Another desperate look directed at him. "Just not this. Please, Mordin, please."
There is a loud, ominous crack coming from the tower, and Shepard knew this was it, there was no more time left.
She lifted her head and took a small step back, tried to rub the tears out of her eyes with her sleeve, but only ended up making a bigger mess. Armour cuffs were anything but soft.
A moment later, nimble, quick fingers carefully dried the moisture stuck under her eyes, and Shepard managed to stop crying.
"Alright, Shepard." Mordin said, soft, thoughtfully, slowly. "I trust you."
Her only response was to breathe for what felt like the first time in far too long. The professor smiled, a soft, unsure smile that made her heart break.
"Would like to run tests on seashells, anyway.", he said, and Shepard didn't for one moment underestimate how much his words meant. How much his trust meant.
She took his hand firmly in her own, and they ran towards the exit together. She felt his fingers shake slightly, but that was alright. When she heard him hum one of his songs quietly under his breath, so did hers.
…
"You failed." Wrex said, his voice tense with disbelief, dismay, and typical krogan anger, but Shepard didn't back down. Wouldn't.
Somewhere behind her Mordin watched the exchange carefully, and she could feel Garrus' concerned eyes on her back. Eve had yet to say anything, but Shepard could only imagine the sadness and disappointment the female felt. The genophage was a horrible curse and it had brought so much pain, after all. But they still had the cure. They were not done yet.
"We still have the cure." She answered the clan leader, with just as much strength in her gaze. "You will get it. I promised you one thing and I never go back on my promises."
Wrex shook his head, looking at her as if he'd never seen her before, but Shepard was done crying and she was not going to fail. She had not failed. "I need you to trust me, Wrex." She said, slow and loud and honest. "I cannot win this if you all refuse to listen. We cannot win this. If you all stopped fighting each other the Reapers would not find it so easy to take so many worlds."
Wrex only snarled, watching her, examining her. "I told you my conditions, the genophage needs to be cured. I am not sending one krogan to Palaven until then."
Shepard held her head high, her shoulders tense and pushed pack, a fierce expression on her face. "Stop being stubborn." She demanded, the very picture of a warrior going into battle. "You saw the Shroud disperse the cure, if I truly wanted to fool you, why would I tell you that it was ineffective? I would have let you believe that the genophage was cured, let the salarian Dalatrass know I've fooled you, and used both of your resources. But I didn't, did I? I still want to give you and your people your future!" Her voice rose as her anger grew, and she stood her ground. "Eve is still alive, and so is Mordin, and we have a second chance to do this, if you can only stop letting fear and distrust get in the way for one moment! You're not stupid, Wrex. And neither am I. This is not the time to hold on to hate."
"It's not you I don't trust and you know it, Shepard." He growled.
"Fuck that!" She snapped, stepping closer. "Mordin will synthesise the cure. We'll use water sources, air ventilation systems, supplies lines; I will make sure that there are drones and ships in the air and crates full of shots delivered to all your cities. Everything we can, everything we have to do, we'll do it. We will get it done, I will make sure of it. But we need your support now, not later."
Her chest heaved, and she walked even closer to Wrex, pushing her head against his and staring him down.
"I'm asking." She told him simply, her gaze level and her lips pursed with determination. "When do I ever ask for anything?"
Never, of course. Never anything like this. She'd taken down Reapers and Collectors and she'd even died once already, and she'd never, ever asked for anything in return.
Wrex looked down at the small human for a long while. Around them, the sky was still alight with the failed cure, and she didn't blink as he gripped her arm tight under his palms.
"Alright, Shepard." He told her, surprising even himself. "Because you asked."
She smiled, big and bright and showing off her strange, flat teeth, and Wrex snorted softly in return.
"I might as well call salarians and ask for their fleet too, now." She added, but with a hint of humour. "Wouldn't want you to feel like you're the only one getting cheated here."
And he could only shake his head at her.