Disclaimer: Mass Effect and all its characters belong to Bioware.

Author's Note: Ended up scrapping the first version of this chapter and drafting something 75% new. Alas looks like Shepard's recruitment has been delayed another chapter.

This Is It

Terminus Systems, 2183

As Shepard was pitched from the Normandy, he looked back to see the alien ship turning toward the Alliance frigate once again. He heard the cruiser ready the attack – the high pitched metallic screaming was unmistakable – just before three successive bright yellow beams shot out and hit the Normandy: one in the bridge, one in the aft, and one right through the center where Normandy was emblazoned on the frigate's sides.

The ensuing explosion was remarkable.

Shepard could only watch as the Normandy, the most advanced frigate in the galaxy, unparalleled in speed and maneuverability, the vanguard in the attack against Sovereign, was consumed in flame and reduced to scrap metal.

Shepard was prepared for what he thought was inevitable. Slowly but surely he would consume what remaining O2 stores his suit held. At 10% oxygen he would begin hyperventilating, his lips would turn blue, his judgment would be impaired. At 8% his body would have consumed all the oxygen in his blood; dizziness, fainting, and unconsciousness were likely to occur abruptly. Within 8 minutes of passing out he would be dead. Simple. Relatively painless. Now it was just a matter of how long he had until his reserves got down to 10%. Two hours is the Alliance standard, he thought to himself, two hours and this will all be over.

The explosion that finished the Normandy had finally died down and there was nothing but silence. At least there was supposed to be nothing but silence. Instead, Shepard heard a hissing from the back of his N7 helmet that was growing louder by the second. Reaching back behind his head he could feel the oxygen escaping from his suit.

Fuck.

Earth, 2171

"Shepard. We have her."

Shepard sat in the back of the small pub, face half cloaked in shadow, dangling a shot glass from his right hand while his left arm remained perched along the back of his corner booth. Though he sat, right ankle balanced lazily on his left knee, almost perfectly still, his black cotton tee still clung to his skin due to his light sweat. Between the half dozen or so warm bodies around him, the smoke that hung like a fog in the small pub, and the fact that the pub was located in the underbelly of the city where pipes built more than half a century ago still crisscrossed buildings, heating water, and giving off steam, it was impossible not to be sweating.

He motioned with his free hand for the girl to be brought forward. Shepard watched as the door to the pub opened, tainting its heavy silence with the sounds of the City, and a young woman was escorted across the pub's threshold, a Red on either side of her with their hands clamped firmly around her upper arm. The woman walked with her back straight and looked directly at Shepard. Her eyes were feral; her pupils looked up at Shepard the same way a cornered animal might. The look was one not unfamiliar to Shepard; it spelled rebellion and an unwillingness to cooperate – in other words, trouble.

"Let her go. " The two Reds holding her took a step back. A third, the one who had initially addressed Shepard and who Shepard recognized as the man he had installed as the head of District Seven a few months back, dismissed them but kept a cautious eye on the woman.

Shepard looked straight at the woman before nodding his head towards the seat opposite him in the booth. Sit. She did. Not, Shepard thought, because of his silent suggestion but because she was currently located in the heart of Tenth Street Reds territory. Before her sat the undisputed leader of the gang, behind her a District Head, and to her right three more Reds whose proximity to Shepard suggested some degree of power within the organization. Outside the pub lived the oldest of the gang's members and every family within five miles was a guaranteed Reds sympathizer.

"You…have caused trouble for me," Shepard started. The woman continued her unrelenting glare at him. "Sabotaging weapons shipments, stealing medical supplies, trying to get the police from the Upper Tiers involved….Aside from the fact there's obviously leaks within the Reds," Shepard looked over at Seven who quickly registered his newest assignment, "you've managed to create quite a disruption in my operations."

Shepard leaned forward to place his still full drink on the table. When he leaned back again he laced his fingers together and let his hands rest in his lap.

"Would you care to tell me why?" Shepard spoke politely but there was no mistaking the steel in his voice.

"Not everyone believes in what the Tenth Street Reds stand for."

"No? We police these streets. Rapists, thieves, murderers…they've all perished by our hand. Crime is virtually nonexistent within Reds territory. We give the people here incentive to work and we protect them from the corrupt policies of the government."

"You forget that it's you who are the murderers. And how could you when you practically advertise the fact? The homeless 'disappear' from your streets and men and women barely hanging on to life always seem to pass away within a day of your men discovering them. Don't pretend that enforcing your twisted ideologies makes you a paragon of the people."

"Twisted?"

"Inhumane."

"So I lack humanity?" Shepard leaned forward once more, his elbows on his knees.

"How could you not? You kill in cold blood, for no other reason than some self-invented abstract ideology."

"But I disagree. In fact I think I'm more humane than you. The way I see it humanity is compassion towards all human life. You may have compassion for the individual, but I have compassion for the group. I kill the criminals who threaten the lives of others directly and I kill the parasites that threaten their lives indirectly. But you? You stubbornly insist on preserving both threats under the guise of natural rights and common morality. It's the high idealists like you, in fact, who are the most inhumane." Shepard could clearly see the shock the woman felt at the accusation, though she hid it well. Pleased with the result, he continued before she could manage to respond:

"Let me put it this way. Can we agree that compassion is one's ability to sympathize with the misfortune of your fellow man and a genuine desire to relieve that misfortune?"

"Yes." The woman eyed Shepard warily.

"And isn't the fact that the middle class works to feed the poor a misfortune? Isn't the fact that they must forgo the pleasures that let them live instead of just exist a misfortune? Isn't living in fear of the evil deeds of already established evil men a misfortune? Isn't the fact that the the government insists on spending most of its money to sustain the lives of dying men and women for a few short months instead of preserving the vital, working, actively contributing sectors of society a misfortune? Don't my actions relieve these misfortunes? And I assure you my desire to do so is genuine."

"Yes, those are arguably misfortunes but they're small misfortunes. Surely there's no man or woman who wouldn't give up a vacation to save another man's life."

"Naïve idealism. But debating man's base nature is beside the point. And even if a man were willing to give up his vacation for another innocent man's life, I doubt very many would be so willing when it comes to murderers."

"Like yourself?"

Shepard laughs. "Again, beside the point. Let me ask another question than: is the greatest misfortune of any one man ever great enough to surpass the small misfortunes of every man?"

"Yes," the woman delivered resolutely.

"And that is why we will never see eye to eye. But it is also why I find you strangely intriguing." Shepard quickly found himself conversing freely with the young woman, revealing more than he had initially intended. "As sure as I am in my definition of right and wrong you are surer in yours. My morality is accompanied with a strange detachment from my fellow man, but yours is accompanied with a burning passion."

"One might argue that that's evidence you're unsure of your own beliefs."

"And similarly one might argue that it is necessary in order to be able to accept the bloodshed my ideology requires."

"That your ideology requires bloodshed at all is a sign of its weakness."

"Again, we must disagree. What wise man decided that bloodshed is the sign of inferior ideas?"

"It is not something that needs to be taught, Shepard. It is something that is obvious; in the perfect world everyone is equal and everyone will be saved. Anything less is imperfect."

"So you aspire to perfection?"

"Yes."

"And you believe perfection can be attained?"

"…I have to hope."

"You don't think its silly to aspire to a perfection you believe inaccessible? You say my ideology is imperfect but you admit everything is imperfect. Imperfection, in that case, is hardly an insult."

"You want me to say that if there is no perfection than there is no absolute right. You're trying to break the morality in me you can't explain."

"I'm simply trying to direct you towards an inevitable truth. Just as there is no perfection, just as there is no absolute right, there is no absolute justice."

"The words of a small man who would prefer to accept what he knows rather than struggle for something greater." Shepard held the woman's fiery gaze. Such conviction.

"Suppose then that there exists an evil that justice cannot bring down."

"I don't-"

"Yes, I know you don't believe in it. But let's say this evil is imminent and all the justices you have available are insufficient."

"Fine."

"Would you taint your hands with evil to destroy evil? Or would you continue your own justice and succumb to that evil?"

The woman remained silent.

"If I must become evil – your evil – to defeat a greater evil still, I shall."1

Shepard's tone was final. The conversation was over. Briefly, he had allowed himself to be prodded. Why he did this he couldn't say. Perhaps, he thought, he was waiting for that one argument that would tear a hole through the heart of his beliefs. Yet even the unyielding young woman could do nothing. Maybe, Shepard thought, he was past the point of return. He could be so entrenched in his own ideas that the only way to disprove them was to play by the rules they created.

Shepard closed his eyes, straightened his back, and drew a long, slow breath. When he opened his eyes again they had returned to a cold, calculating state. "You don't deny that you're the one who's been interfering with the Reds?"

"No." Shepard continued to observe the woman in silence. "What do you plan to do to me?" The woman's eyes still bore into Shepard but not with the unrelenting conviction of before; rather they were the eyes of a girl who was beginning to realize she wasn't ready to sacrifice herself for her ideals.

Shepard let his head rest back against the booth and watched the smoke crawling slowly across the ceiling. "Nothing." The woman's eyes widened.

"Shepard," the District Seven head who had retreated into shadows while Shepard and the young woman were talking, slithered forward. "She's admitted her guilt. I suggest she be made an example of before this becomes a trend."

Shepard ignored the man and continued addressing the woman. "As far as I can tell, you have done nothing to provoke a violent reaction either by me or any member of the Tenth Street Reds." Shepard brought his eyes back to the woman's. "However, I suggest that you discontinue these practices. Should you choose not to, and should I ever feel that you have become a substantial obstacle to what the Reds are trying to achieve-"

"Basically if you ever decide that my 'contribution' to society becomes outweighed by the so-called burdens I keep you from removing." Shepard waited patiently for her to finish.

"Should these conditions ever be met, I can no longer guarantee your safety."

"This is ridiculous. You mean to control my fate by simple whim."

"Hardly. Fate is something no one can control."

The young woman stood up to leave.

"Seven. If you would escort her from Reds territory…."

"Yes, Shepard."

As the two walked out of the pub into the city night, Shepard sat in the dark, alone.

Author's Note:

For this chapter I wanted to shed light on a few more elements of society Shep finds a bit unsavory. But I didn't want to show it outright like I have before. I thought simply having a back and forth (which could just as easily mirror inner turmoil) might serve as a pretty good medium. Also I wanted to introduce this concept of Fate and how Shepard approaches it. The woman wasn't intended to be a recurring character in any capacity. She is as abstract a personage as the ideas she represents. If I ever come back to her (likely in a post ME2 or ME3 world) I may change that.

1: This is a reference to a line Lelouch delivers in Code Geass R2 Episode 4: Counterattack at the Gallows. For anyone who hasn't seen this series, I strongly recommend it.