I said I'm ok but I know how to lie
You were all that I had
You were delicate and hard to find
Got lost in the back of my mind
And I can never get back, no I never got back
You were not there when I needed to say
I hit the bottom so fast that my head was spinning 'round for days
Now I gotta go it alone
But I will never give up, no I'll never give up
What am I fighting for?
There must be something more
For all these words I sing
Do you feel anything
4: Two Weeks From Twenty
Losing loved ones was no stranger to Ashley Madeline Williams.
When her father died, she'd coped by reading her father's favorite poetry until she knew it by heart, losing herself in the diction and the structure and everything else that made up a poem. Sometimes she'd stay up all night dissecting Tennyson's work, until at last she didn't have to cry herself to sleep anymore.
Now, she did the same, digging up her father's old poetry books with her old annotations in them. Reading gave her a little peace of mind and helped her to escape from her grief, if only for a little while.
Poetry and praying, both in rapid succession, successfully kept Ashley's despair at bay until one day, when she realized that she could no longer recite Tennyson's "Ulysses" by heart.
"It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Matched with an agèd wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not…"
She stopped. The words that once came so naturally were utterly lost on her.
"Know not…"
She started over, hoping that she would remember. But she didn't. She couldn't, and it terrified her. She'd known this poem since she was a kid.
What the hell…
If she were in her right mind, Ashley would have brushed it off and went through the motions of re-memorizing the poem. But what with all that was going on, she was anywhere but in her right mind.
"Why can't I remember?" she found herself saying out loud, to nobody in particular. "Shit."
Frustration took over. She sat down heavily on the couch, reaching for her old poetry books, rifling through the pages until she stopped on the page that held her poem. Well, used to. The page was gone, ripped from the spine. Ashley vaguely remembered a part of her ripping out the page and throwing it away, sometime after someone had died, but she couldn't remember—had it been after her father had died, or after Shepard had died? It was hard to remember. And despite it all she started crying in half-frustration, half-grief, and mostly just infuriated misery that none of her questions were being answered, by anyone.
Penelope must have done this, she thought. Penelope, the wife of Odysseus, who'd waited for him for twenty years to come home...her patience had been rewarded. And even though she'd lost hope so many times, her husband had come home.
But that meant that Shepard was going to come back, right?
He had to come back.
She prayed for him that night, the three hundred and sixty-fifth time since he had died.
"There. On the monitor—something's wrong."
A muted voice reached his ears as consciousness slipped back into his extremities. His eyes fluttered open and he turned his head, trying to figure out where he was. A face swam in his vision, impossibly beautiful, incredibly familiar…
"Ash?" he croaked. His throat felt parched. His mouth was dry.
And then the pain, waves of it, crashed down on his head, on his body, on his chest. Am I dead? he thought desperately. Is this hell?
"Ash," he tried again. She was so close—wasn't it Ashley Williams tending to his wounds? No—it had to be…
But it wasn't.
"Shepard! It's okay, you're safe. Don't move, try to stay calm…"
Somewhere far away, an incessant beeping noise grew and became more insistent, and he realized it was his own heart, so this meant he had to be alive…
But who were these people?
The face reappeared and he reached for it desperately, scrabbling for anything to hold onto, anything so that the darkness would not take over.
"Another dose. Now!" The woman straightened up and directed her gaze at somebody he couldn't see. Almost immediately, the darkness returned and his senses dulled and then he was gone again, back in that dreamless, empty void.
His hand thudded heavily to his side and Miranda breathed a sigh of relief.
"That was too close. We almost lost him."
The officer cast an irritable look over her shoulder at Wilson, who was still standing by the controls.
"I told you your readings were off. Run the numbers again."
When Ashley returned to duty, Anderson wasted no time in chaining her to a desk. This was a slap in the face, a betrayal—how could he simply turn her into a desk jockey and forget about her? Did they not care? Did they not give a flying fuck about anything she and Shepard had accomplished? Was this their way of silencing her?
Hours of pent-up frustration were often spent at the bar, where more often than not she walked out with a collection of fresh injuries and a freakish blood alcohol level. Eventually, one particularly nasty incident caught the attention of Anderson.
She was at the bar again, drinking up a storm. There were four empty glasses lined up neatly on the bar in front of her, and the numbness was only beginning to set in. She raised her hand for another drink and dropped her head, staring at the table.
Somewhere across the room, she could hear a group of turians laughing loudly over something. Frowning, she cast them a sidelong glance and listened in.
"…I heard Shepard's entire team has been broken apart now," one of them chortled. "Guess that goes to show how much the Council appreciates his efforts! Ha, ha!"
"Thank the spirits, too," another one chipped in. "I was getting pretty tired of his 'the end is near' rant. Wonder how much red sand the Alliance bought for him?"
More laughter. Before she knew it Ashley was standing, staring daggers at the three turians chuckling in the booth. Her hands were clenched in fists. She strode over just as the first turian took a swig from his glass. With a single vicious swipe of her hand, she sent the glass smashing into his face, along with its contents. He doubled over, cursing and sputtering.
"What the hell?" he demanded, glaring at her. "Who the fuck—wait a minute."
A glint of recognition shone in his eyes as he continued. "I recognize you," he said. "You're that whiny bitch that was on Shepard's squad, right? How's granddaddy's legacy treatin' you?"
"Shut up," growled Ashley.
"Did she just sass me?" The turian exchanged glances with his buddies. "I think she just sassed me."
"That voice of yours is really getting on my nerves!" she snarled. At the last word, her fist collided with his face, sending him staggering back onto the table. The other two turians made to strike her, but she kneed one in the crotch and elbowed the other in the jugular.
To their credit, the turians recovered quickly, and the next thing she knew Ashley was collapsed in a pile of broken glass, bleeding. Snarling in anger, she got up and reached for a barstool,
"Thank the spirits, too," another one chipped in. "I was getting pretty tired of his 'the end is near' rant. Wonder how much red sand the Alliance bought for him?"
More laughter. Before she knew it Ashley was standing, staring daggers at the three turians chuckling in the booth. Her hands were clenched in fists. She strode over just as the first turian took a swig from his glass. With a single vicious swipe of her hand, she sent the glass smashing into his face, along with its contents. He doubled over, cursing and sputtering.
"What the hell?" he demanded, glaring at her. "Who the fuck—wait a minute."
A glint of recognition shone in his eyes as he continued. "I recognize you," he said. "You're that whiny bitch that was on Shepard's squad, right? How's granddaddy's legacy treatin' you?"
"Shut up," growled Ashley.
"Did she just sass me?" The turian exchanged glances with his buddies. "I think she just sassed me."
"Shut up, you stupid talking bird," she snarled. Her fist collided with his face, sending him staggering back onto the table. The other two turians made to strike her, but she kneed one in the crotch and elbowed the other in the jugular, sending them reeling. She felt a quiet sense of triumph as she watched them flounder, ignoring the shouted protests of the bartender.
To their credit, the turians recovered quickly, and the next thing she knew Ashley was collapsed in a pile of broken glass, bleeding. Snarling in anger, she got up and reached for a barstool, lashing out at the turians with it. She missed, ludicrously, whether from the rage or the alcohol she had no idea. But then something collided with her head, followed by blinding pain, and she stumbled. Something hot and sticky was running down her face, into her eyes, blinding and stinging her.
In the same moment, her legs gave out under her and she fell to her knees, her head spinning. The world was muted, far-off; in the back of her mind Ash could hear sirens but she didn't quite know where. She felt someone pick her up, and registered the words "anaphylactic shock" before the world went black.