Chapter Two
If there is a god, I bet he's Batarian…
Shepard stared at the chunk of soap in her hand. And it was a chunk of soap, not a bar, and definitely not the fruity-smelling gel she was accustomed to using.
She'd just laughed when she'd seen the… toilet… arrangements.
Commander Shepard; first human Spectre, Savior of the Citadel, Destroyer of an insanely powerful race of synthetics bent on the destruction of advanced organic civilization throughout the galaxy… sitting on a plank and pissing into a bucket.
This was not the way it was supposed to go. The hero either survives, gets absolutely plastered with her goddamn squad, and spends the rest of her life dodging the media, or dies in a blaze of glory and flying body parts. There is no third option. And certainly not one involving buckets.
In those last few moments of consciousness, Shepard hadn't seen her past flash before her eyes, she'd seen her future. That was her one regret - that she'd never get to see Tali's house on Rannoch, or Wrex and Bakara's first child, or find out how Joker and EDI's peculiar romance worked out. She'd created a future, but not one she'd live to see.
Shepard had never been a religious woman. She'd seen too many things growing up on the streets to believe that anyone was in charge of this bullshit. But the one thing she'd clung to, that she couldn't give up, was Thane's belief that one day they'd be together again. She may not understand it, but she'd sure as hell believe in it. And her one regret hadn't been enough to keep her from embracing the darkness in the hope that she'd find the sea.
But there was no future, and there was no sea.
There were buckets.
Methodically, Shepard scrubbed herself down. The bath was little more than another bucket, albeit one she could sit in, should she choose to. She did not. She knelt, and used the chuck of soap and a rough cloth to try and wash this reality away.
The young woman's name was Hawke; the man, Anders. Hawke had left Shepard some clothes to wear- her armor evidently hadn't survived the blast— and the sort of rough smock she'd been wearing when she awoke hardly covered her bare ass. Shepard was still more than a little amazed at the way both Hawke and Anders took her story at face value and with a kind of equanimity that puzzled her. It hinted that, well… that stranger things than Shepard had happened and would probably go right on happening.
She was still piecing things together, like assembling a jigsaw puzzle without the benefit of a picture. And possibly with bits of another jigsaw puzzle thrown in for good measure.
One piece that nagged at her was this: If her injuries were as severe as she suspected, how had she survived without medical care? Tea tasting of dirty feet (which, she had to admit, did relieve the nausea and vertigo) was no substitute for medigel. And one scruffy-looking man wearing the contents of a xenophilic salarian transvestite's refuse bin* was no substitute for a skilled medical professional like Dr Chakwas.
How the hell was she alive?! No, how the hell was she alive and uninjured? There weren't even any new scars, for fuck's sake.
It wasn't technology, Shepard was sure of that. These people seemed to be part of a pre-industrial society. The first computer wasn't even a glimmer of a glimmer of a fever dream. Hell, while they apparently knew about electricity, it seemed the extent of that knowledge was, "something that hurts when it zaps you".
Maybe this is hell… Shepard thought glumly. The special kind reserved for someone who kills entire systems.
The trouble was, Shepard was the type of person who kills entire systems. When necessary…
And the thing about the type of person who kills entire systems… when necessary… is that there is only so much wallowing in regret and self-pity that someone like that can do before they look up with a fire in their eye and say, "Bring it on."
She may not have gotten a future or a death, but by god she'd gotten something. And damned if she wasn't going to make what she could out of it.
She was Commander-fucking-Shepard, and this world better watch the fuck out.
A/N: *ie, Elton John's wardrobe