Disclaimer: I own nothing, I make no money.
Author's Note: I don't think it needs saying but there is some creative license taken with this story. Please enjoy.
Sheparding Men
Chapter Two: The Burden of Command
" She does not pretend that it is easy. She does not promise her crew clear skies or blank rounds." - A war-battered Shepard learns about love from the different men in her life. Memory. Passion. Constancy. These are the gifts they gave her.
"Jesus Murphy, it's freezing out here," Kaidan mumbles under his breath, pulling his arms tighter into his chest and following Shepard and Tali out the Normandy airlock. He glances around the Port Hanshan docking bay.
Shepard stops in her stride and turns to the Lieutenant. "I'm sorry, what?" She cannot help the chuckle that lines her voice.
Kaidan blinks at her momentarily, and then laughs himself, shrugging his shoulders. "Nevermind. Canada speak."
Shepard laughs and keeps walking.
Tali is the first to suggest retrieving Liara from the Normandy when they hear about Benezia's presence on Noveria. Shepard looks to Kaidan unconsciously. His jaw is tight and closed. He nods, and they return to the dock.
This is not how Shepard wants Liara to remember her mother.
It is the first time Liara has witnessed Shepard's driving as they leave Port Hanshan's garage. She holds on for dear life. And Kaidan tries desperately to direct the Commander, his hand getting slapped away as he points out the ever-nearing cliff edge.
"I got this", Shepard urges. Kaidan wants to laugh at her but he fears he might get shot for it.
There is a shrill screeching burning into Shepard's mind when she sees the first rachni rampaging them, throwing aside a thick sheet of metal in its path with a strength that momentarily stuns Shepard. She dives left, barely escaping the spray of some slick, putrid venom as it shoots past her. She tumbles through the snow and gets to her feet quickly, returning her sniper rifle to its carrier and frantically grasping for her Carnifex. The sharp tearing sound of them is enough to throw her senses out of whack before she swings her pistol toward the sound and lodges three bullets into the shrieking animal's skull. Without hesitation, she throws an Incinerate toward the spindly rachni and watches in mild fascination and horror as it burns and thrashes, a sharp pained wail scraping from its throat.
She is frozen at the sight before the same piercing cry is drilling into her head again and she shakes the temporary paralysis from her mind in time to catch Kaidan's scraping and harsh scream of pain. She whips her head around and finds Liara biotically throwing a second ambushing rachni into the glass wall of Peak 15's tunnel. She is not fast enough.
The rachni's poison splashes across Kaiden's shoulder and it is all he can do to not drop to his knees just then with the burning pain of it. His shields are wiped clear of his armor in that instant and Shepard moves with an intensity she hadn't thought possible. Kaidan gets off two shots at the tumbling form of the rachni, his other hand moving to hold against his wounded shoulder holding his firearm. But he is shuddering in pain, his aim hindered, and the shots only graze the rachni. Shepard is suddenly charging the alien, her pistol rounding shot after shot into her opponent's scrambling body, Shepard's roar of fury loud and echoing in the chamber before Liara's hand on her shoulder alerts her to the still carcass of the rachni before her.
Shepard pulls in a deep, shaking breath, her pistol still heavy in her hands and turns her gaze to her companions. "What – in the fuck – was that?"
Liara is trembling but unharmed, her mouth moving without sound. She only shakes her head in confusion.
Shepard is watching Kaidan as he stumbles forward, his hand still holding the fiery pain of his shoulder, and Shepard notices the faint blinking of his shields as they attempt to recharge. He grunts softly, moving to grab his own weapon, and when he winces at the pain of such an attempt, Shepard is suddenly in front of him, her hands steady on his frame.
"Easy there, Lieutenant." Her voice is smooth and calming and warm inside the cased walls of the Peak 15 tunnels. Outside the blizzard whips mercilessly.
Kaidan is abruptly aware of her face close to his, her breath light in its cloud form between them, the air chill and stifling all at once. She is checking his shoulder, her eyes affixed to his injury and Kaidan swallows down that unexplainable urge to lean in to her.
Shepard narrows her eyes at the injury, at the greenish tint casing his armor, already seared as if by acid. She pulls her arm up, lighting up her omni-tool in a quick scan of the blistered skin and it shows no permanent damage, no lingering toxin in his system. But the wound is slow to heal and she frowns slightly before moving to apply medi-gel.
Kaidan's sudden grasp of her wrist catches her off guard and she swings wide eyes to him. He is shaking from pain, and something else sharp and burning with her closeness. But he furrows his brow at her and shakes his head, his hold of her wrist never lessening. "Commander, I'm fine. We only have four packs. And God knows what else is down there," he jerks his head toward the faint green light of the elevator console, glinting lowly in the barren chamber as if taunting them. "Don't waste your medi-gel on this."
Shepard grinds her teeth and pulls her arm from Kaidan's grasp, her stare challenging and uncompromising. "Kaidan."
And just the sound of his name is enough to make him surrender.
"It's your firing arm. You're no use to me like this. Take it, and fall in line." The warm glow of her omni-tool lights the air between them. Shepard returns her attention to his wound, not waiting for his reply, and she knows he will not fight her. But her hold on his shoulder, her lingering touch as she slips from his grasp, her heavy gaze before she turns back to Liara, they all breathe of some tender notion she could not put in words. She only nods to him silently, the stoic clench of her jaw final and unquestionable. Liara is silent beside them. They continue into the elevator.
Kaidan misses her warmth already.
"Rachni?" Liara's soft gasp of surprise is mildly entertaining to Shepard. She doesn't know what the hell is going through Saren's mind. But the warnings of the volus doctor before her plant a subtle, heavy fear in her. There is something darker here. There is something brutal and inescapable lingering in the shadows, waiting for them.
Benezia's body is slumped against the control panel, her final words lingering in the air around them. There is silence around the room, only the faint scratching and wailing of the rachni queen as she claws from her prison. Shepard watches as the alien breaks free from her constraints, the raised holding cell breaching the Noverian surface several feet above them.
Dead asari commandos litter the floor around them. Kaidan is checking any bodies for life signs. Shepard is watching Liara.
She stares at her mother's body, how her head is slumped over her shoulder, her lips parted in her last breath, the faint ebb of biotic energy leaking from her body until it fades into the floor at their feet. There is everything still and final and broken about the matriarch's form on the floor before them.
Liara closes her eyes and hums a song Shepard does not recognize. Her voice is lined with tears she is not ready to shed, her fists clenched and shaking at her sides and she cannot move to touch the fallen body of her mother. So she stands, and she breathes, and she sings softly to herself in a voice she hopes will sound like her one day.
It is all she can do not to break in this moment.
Shepard stands beside her watching uselessly. She has no words that will make any of this better. So she turns and leaves Liara to her grief.
It isn't until she finds herself sitting in the mess hall across from Liara and Garrus that she recognizes the change in Liara. The asari is silent, solid in her seat, lifted somehow in a way that makes Sheard ache at the pain of it. Liara's eyes are low and determined, regretful in ways Shepard will never understand. But she smiles nonetheless, and Liara finds the tears quick to her eyes, her smile shaking in response.
Garrus puts his fork down, his vulnerable "Hey…" muted and low between them, his arm coming up to wrap around Liara's shoulders and Shepard catches the break in her face before she is crumbling into Garrus's side. This is the first they have seen her cry since her mother's death.
Shepard catches the eye of several marines around the mess and everyone leaves with an unspoken knowledge. Liara's hiccups and sobs are smothered in Garrus's chest, and Shepard feels the urge to reach a hand across the table to either of them, both of them, anyone really. Because she thinks that touch is needed here. Because she knows what physical intimacy means. And because she doesn't know how to be there for someone in the simplest of ways. She doesn't know how to bandage grief. She doesn't know how to be 'that person'. That shoulder. So she keeps her hands in her lap and clears the room with a glance, lets the quiet and Garrus hold Liara instead as she cries and shakes.
Garrus and Shepard look at each other. And they know the worst is still to come.
Shepard finds herself lounging in one of the navigator's chairs in the cockpit sometime after the Noveria mission. Her limbs are heavy, her body slumped and she has too little energy to trade snark with Joker at this moment.
"So is it just a matriarch thing?" he asks beside her.
Shepard raises a brow in Joker's direction and finds him sliding star charts across his pilot terminal. He's not even looking at her.
"What is?" Shepard is not even sure she wants to ask the question.
"The chest." Joker raises a lewd brow in Shepard's direction and she pulls a hand to her mouth, unable to catch all the laughter from spilling forth. But she pulls in a sobering breath and narrows her eyes at her pilot.
"Joker, this is hardly the time. Liara just lost her mother." But Shepard is too exhausted to put a more demanding tone behind her statement.
Joker just shrugs and returns to his terminal. "Come on, Commander, it's not like I'm about to ask Liara her mom's bust size. I'm a tad more sensitive than that."
"Are you? I couldn't tell." Her smirk is the first she's felt in days, and before Joker can answer she stands from her seat, pats his arm affectionately and walks from the cockpit.
"Two hours to Binthu, Commander, in case you got too distracted to ask," Joker shouts behind her.
Shepard sucks in her reply and keeps moving, shaking her head.
Admiral Kahoku's last message spurs something furious and regretful in Shepard. She is grabbing her gear from the weapon bench as the engineers ready the Mako. Behind her, her team waits for orders. Her instinct is to take Garrus. She has never questioned his loyalty. But she stops. Remembers the reputation that Cerberus has. She motions for Kaidan and Ashley to follow. This is a human problem. And she wants human eyes to take this in. Somehow she feels that this ugliness shouldn't be seen by others.
It's a foolish thought. A useless hope. But when they find Kahoku's body limp and cold upon the floor of the research lab on Binthu, Shepard is surprisingly glad that this horrible mess of ambition and disregard for life is not visible to her alien teammates still waiting aboard the Normandy.
She looks to Ashley, and the Gunnery Chief opens her mouth in some comforting gesture. But there are no words for this kind of hideousness. So she closes it, silently. Ashley can only bend to retrieve the dog tags from around the admiral's neck. She holds them tight in her palm, whispers something that sounds religious to Shepard and then the Gunnery Chief is hard and ready and determined once more. Shepard wants to say something. Wants to make sense of this. But Ashley eyes her in a way that speaks of something stronger than words, her hold on her shotgun tight and sure, and Shepard knows that this, this Ashley Williams before her, this is the humanity she needs to remember when she finds herself knee deep in Cerberus research projects.
Behind them, Kaidan is looking at the floor, his own remorse bleeding into the air around them, and Shepard finds her hand along his shoulder before she knows she is moving to him. He looks at her, the slight quirk of his lip moving in recognition, and his eyes are grateful on hers. She lingers with him longer than is appropriate, and it is only Ashley's expectant clearing of her throat that moves Shepard form her lieutenant. Kaidan nods in gratitude, and together, the three of them exit the death-filled chamber, hoping the humanity they carry with them is strong enough to outweigh this horror around them.
The air stinks of mortality. And Shepard is relieved to find the steady breaths of Kaidan and Ashley beside her as they make their way up the tunnel toward the awaiting Mako.
"Holy fuuuc-!" Shepard scrambles from her cover of crates just as a grenade blows the stockpiled fuel cells beside her. She dives left, tumbling back into the stairway of the mercenary bunker. She grapples for the railing to hold her fall, her ears almost blowing out with the sound of the blast and she feels the wall of the stairwell vibrate when the debris and shrapnel blow into it. Gritting her teeth, she clambers back up the couple of stairs and leans against the wall for cover, peeking out momentarily to case the room.
"Dammit, Garrus, I said cover me!" Shepard catches sight of the turian several feet across from her on the other wall of the room, hunched behind more crates, his sniper locked and spitting bullets. She curses into the communication link in her helmet. She can hear the pirates scrambling at the other end of the bunker's room from them, between bullets shredding the crates the Normandy team were using as cover.
Garrus only shrugs, one hand raised in defense and Shepard could swear she sees his smirk behind his visor. "It'd be a lot easier if you didn't crouch in the proximity of fuel cells. I know you don't read asari, Shepard, but that little flame symbol tends to mean 'explosive'."
Shepard scoffs, reaching around the wall to send a bullet sailing through the skull of a pirate sprinting for cover. "Screw you, Vakarian!" But her voice is equal mix humor and grit. "I was about to sprint anyway."
He laughs loudly. "You were taking too long." Garrus reloads his Mantis. Another headshot. More pirates flood in from the east entrance.
"Then your aim better be faster than your mouth this time." Shepard grins devilishly, her breathing heavy behind her visor. She feels a biotic throw pound into the wall of the stairwell and Shepard takes the moment to jump from her cover and run for Garrus' position. He shouts in sudden surprise, unleashing several shots as she sprints for him. She slides into the space next to him, bullets thudding the floor her feet were pounding just a fraction of a second ago. The crates are large enough for both of them but she collides into him when she slides for cover and his responding "oof" and unintelligible curse are drowned out by the hail of bullets from the new wave of pirates and mercenaries coming in at the far end of the room.
Shepard only snickers, punching his arm and grabbing for her rifle. "Ready?"
He laughs, shaking his head at her as he steadies himself from their collision. When he nods, they break from cover and move in unison.
"So we're just hired guns now, Commander? Good to see the human tax dollars at work."
"Hardly, Joker. But I'm still a Spectre. And Dahlia Dantius was a slave trader. Ergo, big bloody battle with me on top. It had to happen."
"You're like a reluctant Robin Hood of the galaxy. Righting wrongs and fighting crime."
"That doesn't even make sense. There's no tyrant king in this situation."
"Well, that all depends on what day of the week it is for the Council."
"So, what? You're all my Merry Men? Wait a minute, don't answer that. There is so much wrong in that analogy I don't even know where to begin."
"Yeah, maybe I didn't think that one through."
"I know! You're all like…my Spectre-ettes."
"Ooh, low blow, Shepard. Not even 'Spectre gang'? Spectre-ettes? You just had to go there, didn't you? Sounds like a group of backup singers."
"I'll even let you work the harmonies, Joker."
"Gee thanks, boss."
"So where does the name Alenko come from anyway?" Shepard removes the barrel from her Mantis and begins to pull apart the trigger mechanism, careful not to upset the micro-scaled mass accelerator. Beside her at the weapon bench, Kaidan is also breaking down and cleaning his Cobra pistol.
"It comes from Vancouver," he chuckles, throwing a soft smirk in her direction.
"Oh yes, I've heard of that tribe before."
Kaidan laughs, and the sound is light and natural and everything that Shepard thinks is good. She swallows, her throat suddenly tight. He is standing close enough for her to sense his body heat beside her. Their elbows bump, and she feels the inexplicable urge to watch his hands as they move over his pistol. Those sure and purposeful hands.
"I think it's some variation of Greek actually."
His voice brings her attention back to her own weapon and she flicks her gaze up to catch his eye.
"My grandmother told me something about it once." His smile is soft and nostalgic, and Shepard wants to know what that feels like. She turns back to her work as he continues. "How Alenko was derived from Alenka, and that from Alena and then Helena and then finally starting with Helen somewhere down the line of Greek heritage."
"Wait," Shepard can't help the look of disbelief that crosses her features. "You're named after a woman?"
"You know," Kaidan chuckles, the spring in his hand coming up to point at Shepard, "Helen of Troy was considered the most beautiful. So maybe it was that that my ancestors tried to pass down."
"Ah, beauty." Shepard licks her lips absently, her eyes on the laid out weapon before her while she grabs a cleaning rag from the drawer at the edge. "Now, that I can see in you." Her eyes are subtle on his when he looks to her, and there is a silence passed between them that is anything from uncomfortable. Kaidan glances unconsciously to her lips before clearing his throat and returning to his work. Shepard feels the corners of her lips tilting up in a sly smile.
"There are some other names – very manly I promise – in my family."
Shepard releases a snorted laugh at Kaidain's statement.
Kaidan raises an eyebrow to her and continues. "My mother's maiden name was 'Skala'. It's Slavic, from someplace called Czech or something. I forget all the family tree information. Especially since the European countries have changed borders so much in the last three hundred years. Anyway, 'Skala' is supposed to mean 'rock' I believe." He finds this trading of words with Shepard unforced and effortless. There is something soothing in her mere presence beside him. "And then the other main family name is Doru. Romanian from dor, if my grandfather knows what he's talking about." At this Kaidan eyes Shepard, her focused greenish-brown eyes, her dark tangled hair pulled into a braid down her back, the tan smooth skin, the quiet fierceness, the bold, unblinking willpower, the subtle, vulnerable burden of command. He brushes against her absently. "It means 'longing'."
Shepard blinks. There is something laden and craving in his voice then. It makes her skin grow warm beneath her uniform and she finds herself unable to look at him then. She swallows thickly and keeps working, feeling his gaze on her the entire time. He looks back to his pistol after a few moments and Shepard wonders at this fear, at this thrilling exposure she feels.
She wonders what his lips taste like.
"And you?"
Shepard whips her head around to look at him, her "What?" breathless and shaky.
Kaidan motions to her with the part in his hand. "Your family name. What's in your heritage?"
Shepard opens her mouth in understanding and then closes it, because words are suddenly impossible at the way he is looking at her now. She didn't think he could ever make her feel powerless. There is silence between them for a second before Shepard moves to wipe the length of the gun barrel in her hand, her voice steady and sure now in a way she didn't feel at all in this moment. "Well, 'Shepard' is pretty self-explanatory. It's from the English side of my family. For 'sheperd', you know, herder."
"Leader."
Shepard smiles at Kaidan's input. "Yeah. The majority of my family is English, Irish, Hungarian, Spanish and Italian. Odd mix, I know," she finishes at Kaidan's questioning look.
"How do you know all this, if you don't mind my asking," Kaidan wonders softly, "if you were orphaned at such a young age?"
Shepard sighs in a way that tells Kaidan family is a strange and dangerous thing for her. Full of wounds and hurt and loss. And it is always present. "When I became N7 I gained access to certain census data. Anderson let me look through files for information on my family."
"What did you find?" The room felt so hollow and empty then. There was only Shepard before him.
Her eyes are far-off and regretful when she finally answers. Her voice haunted in ways Kaidan will never understand. "A lot of dead bodies. And no answers to speak of."
"I'm sorry, Shepard, I didn't – " Her name slips from his lips without him realizing and it has never felt so right before.
"Don't worry about it, Kaidan," she offers before he can finish apologizing, a hand coming up to hold his arm, and her touch lingers unsurely.
Kaidan averts his gaze, because if he continues to look at her like this he won't be able to stop at such an innocent touch. His skin burns for her. There is so much he wants to hold and taste and feel. It isn't until he must look away that he realizes how strong this pull is to her. He can't ignore it any longer.
Shepard clears her throat and drops her hand from him, moving her attention back to cleaning her weapon. "But I did find out about some heritage."
Kaidan fiddles with his pistol chamber and nods for her to continue.
"The English and Irish was on my Dad's side. The other family name there was 'Durnin'. It's supposed to be Gaelic for a 'descendant of Doirnín' or some such shit."
Kaidan quirks a brow at her choice of words.
"Supposed to mean 'little fist'."
Kaidan bursts out laughing unexpectedly and Shepard just stands there blinking at him. He holds a hand to his stomach to stop the laughing, and he looks at her, his other hand bracing him against the weapon bench. "I'm sorry," he breathes between chuckling. "It's just…the irony." He pulls himself together, wiping a hand at his eye and slowly moving back to his position at the bench while Shepard shakes her head and grumbles beside him. "Tell me you laughed when you read that."
The sly smile Shepard is unable to hide is answer enough for him.
"Anyway," she urges, pulling his attention back, "My mom's side had the Spanish, Italian and Hungarian. Probably where I get this unmanageable hair," she finishes, flicking her thick braid over her shoulder. "The Spanish family name was 'Oleastro'. Can't remember exactly if it meant 'olive tree' or 'dweller by the wild olive tree' or something else entirely that I'm butchering." She chuckles softly.
The two continue working together comfortably, her words flowing naturally between them and nothing has ever felt so easy.
"The main Italian name was 'Lagorio'. I didn't find much on that. Something about a green lizard that protects against vipers. But that might be ancient bullshit. And my mother's maiden name was the Hungarian 'Vadas'." Here Shepard stops and smiles devilishly at Kaidan. "Means 'wild animal'."
"Somehow I'm not surprised," he chuckles faintly. He receives a punch to the arm in response and they bump against each other momentarily, laughing and scraping before Shepard finds her face suddenly close to Kaidan's, her breath caught in the space between them. They each still in unison, and Kaidan cannot help the way his thumb grazes her wrist as he holds her arm in his. He is leaning toward her before he can question himself, his eyes dark and unhindered. Shepard feels herself tremble inside when she looks at him, but something tight and anchored in her heart makes her pull her free hand up to rest against his chest in the slightest pressure. It halts his lean forward, and his face crumbles in shame, as he instantly pulls away.
"Shepard, I'm – I mean Commander, I'm sorry. That was completely inappropriate and –"
"No, Kaidan," she is shaking her head, pulling him back to her. He stands before her, just as close as earlier, but his gaze is to the floor, his shoulders broad and straight and back to regulation. But her touch is tender and shaking and everything that screams of openness when she reaches a hand to his chin to make him look at her.
Their eyes meet and Shepard bites her lip, unable to explain why she is unable to move to him. "You did nothing wrong. Nothing." She hopes he understands that this is not his fault.
Kaidan opens his mouth to say something. But he is caught in this tangle of rank and emotion and nothing he thinks to say sounds right one way or the other. But he will not betray what seems natural with her. So he swallows thickly, reaches for her hand on his face and pulls her touch from him. He cannot think straight when she is this close. So he steps back. "I can't stop thinking of kissing you."
Shepard blinks in surprise at his admission, still and motionless in the wake of his words. That voice. That conviction.
"And maybe I was misinterpreting signals on your part. But if I'm not, and you want this as much as I do," his eyes grow hooded and there is something yearning in his gaze, "then the ball is in your court. You know where I stand, Commander."
Shepard licks her lips and feels her chest rising in shaky breathes.
"I'll let you finish your work here," Kaidan motions to the bench where their weapons were still laid out. "I'll work on mine when the bench is free. I have a marine detail to oversee. Commander."
His salute is stiff and forced and Shepard cannot do anything but watch his back as he retreats toward the elevator.
"Something doesn't smell right," Wrex grumbles into the air, just as Ashley walks over to the remaining floundering geth and unleashes a blast from her shotgun into its chest cavity. The twitching, stuttering synthetic finally falls silent on the ground and Ashley glances back at all the other geth littering the Zhu's Hope docking port.
"A platoon of dead geth? I'd say there's nothing wrong with that." Ashley wipes the barrel of her shotgun and then holsters it.
Shepard eyes Wrex. She's already in a foul mood and really not looking for something else to add. "What is it?"
He sniffs the air for a second, finding nothing distinctive enough to trace, and shakes his head. "I don't know. But every nerve in my body is screaming for blood. Just watch yourselves."
Shepard nods appreciatively to Wrex. First geth, and now some krogan spidey sense. Shepard wants to hit something.
"Of course it's a giant living plant. Because we don't have enough weird shit in this galaxy. We need to throw in killer flora." Shepard rubs a hand down her face and hears Ashley snickering behind her.
Lizbeth Baynham eyes the Commander curiously.
Wrex charges his shotgun. "Well, this just got fun."
"Alright, use the gas grenades to incapacitate the colonists. But at the end of the day, we only have so many. After that, use any and all force necessary to get to that underground entrance. Understood?"
"No problem here," Wrex bellows, his grin breaking free along the hard planes of his face, his shotgun already ready in his hands.
Shepard narrows her eyes at him. "Only after we run out of gas, Wrex."
"You spoil all my fun, Shepard." He's itching for a fight with something that actually bleeds. Geth are too…shiny.
"Commander." Ashley's voice is firm and unafraid. "Isn't there another way? These colonists have been through a lot. I don't want their blood on my hands if this goes south."
Shepard eyes her Gunnery Chief briefly, and something she thought she lost back on Earth made her hesitate for a moment. But it is gone quickly and she finds the words already ready on her tongue. She does not falter. "Tough shit, Williams. You signed up to be a soldier. Sometimes you do shit you don't want to do."
"But Commander – "
Shepard's eyes flash and even Wrex can sense her immediate anger.
"Listen up, Chief," Shepard spits in Ashley's face, her finger jutting into the other woman's chest. "When you're busy trying to simply knock one unconscious, or disarm them, another one is going to catch you from behind and they won't be using the safety on their weapons. So when your brains are spilling out on the floor and I have no one covering my back, then you can wonder if there isn't another way. Until then, you fall in line. The mission is what matters. Do you understand?" There is something hard and sharp and unreadable in Shepard's eyes, her mouth tight and pulled into a deep frown.
Ashley feels the urge to argue rising in her throat, feels the words collecting there with stinging vehemence. But this is not the time. And some part of her knows that when it comes down to her or them, she will never hesitate to pull the trigger. But she hates that Shepard says it. She hates that it must be said. So her eyes harden and she puts the focus on the current mission. She nods abruptly, her jaw clenched. "Yes, Ma'am!"
Shepard sighs, a sound so faint and weary that Ashley barely hears it. But she understands then that Shepard hates it too. Hates that the call must be made. Hates that she will always be the one to make the call. Hates that life and breath and chances are cut short at her hands. But this is the life she chose. And she knows how to walk away when the bodies hit the floor. She knows how to walk away with some semblance of sanity in this brutal, bloody galaxy. It is all she can do to wake up the next day and remember the lives that still need saving. She does not pretend that it is easy. She does not promise her crew clear skies or blank rounds. But she has always promised her loyalty, always promised her fierce support, always promised to be that gun watching their backs as they creep forward through the dark and disturbing alleys of space. She has always promised herself to her crew.
Ashley swallows down that sharp pang of fear and guilt, following the Commander as they make their way up the ramp and into the tower. She finds she would follow this woman anywhere. Even to death.