3.
The next time Shepard steps off the elevator onto the CIC, she's alone, overnight bag in hand. She tries not to focus on the vacant stations, but that's easier said than done. It's all too reminiscent of when the Collectors took her crew, her friends; the ship is as hollow and empty as it was then.
She steps onto the galaxy map platform, leaning forward on the railing to look down at the curved arms of the Milky Way. She has had the stars at her fingertips, literally. How many people can say they've had that privilege, that amount of power, that heavy of a responsibility?
Another thing she can't ignore is that this will be the last time time she'll be allowed the freedom to stand in this space. There's only one thing she's ever been good at, and it's slipping away.
This time tomorrow, the stations will be manned by Alliance personnel, prepping the Normandy for the trip back to Earth. This time tomorrow, she'll be back on board, confined to quarters on a ship that was once hers to command.
This time tomorrow, she'll have already said goodbye to Thane. She grips the railing tighter, staring at the bands of stars.
Christ. Rational people didn't pick the eve of war to fall in love.
Then again, when has rationality ever factored into her personal life?
She's always been realistic about her strengths and weaknesses. She can't dance and her hacking skills are sub-par. She'd never admit it to Garrus, but she knows she's only a fair shot at best.
On the other hand, she can drink a krogan under the table. She's excels in biotic combat. She also knows she's a damn good commander, with a knack for accomplishing what most people can't.
But, her relationships had always ended in, to understate it, disaster.
The most painful case in point was Kaidan. She'd never think of what happened between them on the SR1 as a mistake, but she hadn't been prepared for the way he shut her down on Horizon. Her training and past experiences had been useless in combating his cold anger.
He's still a dull ache in the corner of her mind, one she's not too eager to explore.
Slightly less a disaster was her one, awkward attempt at starting... something with Garrus. Garrus, her closest friend, who obviously didn't have a thing for aliens. One look into his startled blue eyes and she'd turned it into a joke about sparring and performed a graceless retreat.
Brilliant strategy, Commander.
A rational person might have taken this as a sign, and chosen to avoid relationships with other crew members.
Then she found herself visiting Life Support, talking with Thane about his family, and philosophy, and the violence that came part and parcel with their lives. Soon after, rationality went into a total, white-flag-waving surrender.
She hadn't meant to love him, obviously. And once she realized that fact, she'd never intended to tell him.
But then they had visited the desert. He'd pulled her out of the rain, and held her tightly against him, while her rain-soaked clothing cooled against her body. He slid a hand along her side, between wet fabric and skin, resting his palm flat in the small of her back.
He looked at her with quiet possessiveness and even though she saw the warmth in his eyes, there was something equally raw there. All she could do was stare at back at him, eyes flicking over his features.
It was his expression that tipped the balance.
He may have pledged his arm to her cause, but he would never really see her as his commander; she would never be his mentor. He might call her siha, but he was someone who could meet her every challenge.
It had been a startlingly easy thing to say.
Thane... I love you.
She'll never regret saying the words, but somehow she hadn't been prepared to hear him speak them in return.
I wish... to tell you I love you as well.
She can already feel the sharp pain of leaving; they both know how unlikely it is that she will be released from Alliance custody before Kepral's takes him.
She shakes her head, trying to clear her thoughts, realizing she's still in front of the galaxy map, staring blankly. This one night of shore-leave will be the last she and Thane share together; she's determined not to spend it with regret hanging over them.
Her omni-tool pings. Joker.
It's sort of creepy when you just stand there like that so long. Got something for you, when you're done with your husk routine.
She frowns and looks down, to her right, at her private terminal station. She knows he can see her scowl in the camera embedded above the screen.
"If you're sending messages to my omni-tool because you shorted out the intercom system again, we may have to have words, Joker," she says, pushing back from the railing, stepping off the platform.
"I'm seriously hurt you'd suggest that. I don't make those kinds of mistakes," he pauses, as though considering his words. "Not twice, anyway."
When she reaches the cockpit and drops her bag behind Joker's chair, he doesn't swivel around to face her. Layers of overlapping holographic display screens are scattered chaotically in front of him, some are updating slowly, but most scroll data faster than she can track.
She tries to read the text on one screen as it races downward and almost immediately abandons the cause; it's always been a mystery to her how he can keep up.
"Hey, Commander," he says.
She can't help but notice how exhausted he sounds. The emotional and physical strain of preparing for this change of command has taken its toll on all of them, and it hasn't spared him. Even if she couldn't hear it in his voice, she reviews the logs and knows how many hours he's been putting in.
"Joker."
"Thought you'd be station-side by now. Didn't Krios leave a few hours ago?"
They both know he had, but subtlety isn't exactly in Joker's skill-set.
"He had some things to take care of first; I'm meeting him later. Besides, I had to feed my fish. That damned paddlefish was expensive as hell."
He shakes his head. "If there were enough of us left on board, I'd start a pool on it being belly-up by this time tomorrow."
She snorts in reply, then narrows her eyes on the top of his hat as she remembers something. "Or put EDI up to telling me there's one."
"Hey, Krios knew about that. He thought it was... amusing." He pitches his voice lower, an attempt to capture the drell's tone.
"Oh. I know," she says, smiling faintly at the memory. "And I told him conspiracy can be considered mutiny."
Joker raises his hands briefly in surrender. "Gotta find something to pass the time. Teaching the AI to appreciate quality humor is important."
"Uh-huh."
She crosses her arms in front of her, and stares into the perfect, eternal daylight of Citadel airspace. Ships and shuttles and air cars navigate traffic, and as a turian frigate glides by, she frowns when one of Joker's less-frantic data screens translate the identifiers. It's the Reliant, the ship Garrus will be on in two days, headed for Palaven.
It's hard not to think that her crew is fracturing, falling away from her as surely as they had on the SR-1.
Joker shifts in his chair, minimizing a handful of screens before bringing up the life-support interface and idly tapping a command in. A row of green symbols light up, confirming all systems are within normal parameters.
He doesn't need to check, of course; life support has redundant safe-guards. Distraction as a coping mechanism is something she's all too familiar with. Whether it's Garrus with his god-awful wisecracks or Joker triple-checking system operations, she understands the need to deflect.
"So. Yeah," he finally says. "Great speech."
"Yeah?" She's known him too long to buy the overly-sincere tone of his voice.
"Oh. Absolutely, no doubt. Knocked it out of the park." He mimes an arc through the air with one hand. "Home run."
"You're not much of liar, Joker."
"How would you know? You don't pick up on half of them."
She smiles, even though he can't see it. "Trust me on this. You'd make a shitty criminal."
"I'll keep that in mind. For when I'm deciding my future career path. Assuming it isn't making little rocks out of big rocks in Leavenworth."
Her smile slips.
They're all falling away from her, and there's not a damn thing she can do about it. She'd promised herself she'd never be as helpless as she was two years ago, but this is all too familiar.
Should know better by now. Rational people don't make promises - even to themselves - they can't keep.
"I won't insult you by suggesting you get off here," she says, cautiously, "...but -"
"Sorry. What did you tell the Illusive Man? Getting a lot of bullshit on this line?" His tone is defensive, borderline insubordinate; if he's trying to hide his feelings, he's doing a piss-poor job of it. He adjusts his hat, like he does when he's getting ready to put the ship through her paces. "Already told you. I'm not losing another Normandy. Commander."
"I know." She uncrosses her arms, rests one hand on the back of his chair, and then clears her throat. "The Alliance will be sending techs before the official hand-off. They're calling it a pre-flight safety inspection, but - "
"Surveillance sweep. New bugs for old. Got it."
"I've forwarded their clearances to EDI."
"Don't worry, we'll play nice with the new kids."
"I'm counting on it." She deliberately doesn't ask about EDI's absence in the conversation. She's fairly certain the two of them have something planned to keep the AI safe when the Alliance techs start digging into the ship's systems. Whatever it is, she doesn't want to know. As many times as they've pulled her ass out of the fire, the least she owes them is her trust.
"You said you had something for me?" she asks.
"Yeah. Just a sec," he mutters, sorting through the minimized displays spread out in front him. She tries to read the data screen over his shoulder, but he's sorting through screens faster than she can follow.
"So, you want the good news first, or the bad?" he asks, as he works.
"Always start with the bad. Finish on a high note."
"Right." He finally sweeps a screen to the middle, restoring it to full size. "The batarians are still mad as hell and from the transmissions we've been pulling in, someone's not-so-secretly hired the Blue Suns to bring you in. The bounty on your head's been upped, too. So congrats, there."
"Thanks." She sighs. "Let me guess... there is no good news?"
He turns his head enough to glance at her. "You really know how to ruin a punchline."
"Obviously I don't appreciate quality humor." She looks pointedly at the displays in front of him.
"Right. When we blew out of the Omega 4, EDI left behind some monitoring buoys. The relay's been seeing some traffic." He slides the projected screen to one side, pulling up another, tapping it for effect. He leans to one side of his chair, propping his head on a closed fist. "Same ship's been coming and going for the last few weeks."
"Another guess... the Normandy."
"Got it in one, Commander."
She makes the connection immediately.
It really shouldn't surprise her that Cerberus duplicated the IFF and is using this to clear the relay. Still, thinking about the implications of the Illusive Man raiding the remains of the Collector base makes her head hurt. He'd made no secret of his desire for the power that the technology represented.
She closes her eyes and rubs her temples.
"Should have used a bigger bomb," Joker says, and this time she believes his sincerity completely.
"No argument here."
Her crew is fractured, she's lost her command, the Reapers are coming, and here's Cerberus, adding to the threat.
"Since time travel and more explosives aren't options... orders?"
She opens her eyes, dropping her hands as she looks at the string of signatures listed down the left margin of display. She can't give the order she wants to.
What she wants to do is tell him to recall those of the crew he can, she wants to stand in front of the galaxy map again and order her ship back out into the spiral of stars, to do the only thing she's ever been good at.
"Commander?"
It's not her fight, not any longer. "Forward everything to the Alliance."
He's silent for a moment; maybe he's thinking the same things she had been. "Aye, aye, ma'am," he says, fingers moving over the screen again.
Shepard watches for a minute more, then bends to pick up her bag. "Take care of my ship while I'm gone."
"Sure thing, Commander," he says, but his tone makes it clear it's a needless order.
She starts for the airlock, stops after two steps, turning back to face him again. "What, no smart-ass remarks about being careful on shore-leave? Safety briefing on the crime rate on the Citadel? Watch out for the Blue Suns and pick-pockets, that sort of thing?"
He turns his chair to face her. Despite the dark circles under his eyes, she can see the glint of humor in them.
"Nah. You and Krios? Total power couple." He raises an eyebrow, before swiveling back to his displays. "I have a feeling it wouldn't end well for anyone messing with either of you."
