Smelled like sterilizers and antiseptics, and, worst of all, medigel. The stench made her gag.

Chakwas looked up from her computer at the noise, smiling faintly. It made Ashley want to punch her teeth out of her mouth, but she remained where she was standing, barely in the room. "Feeling all right, Williams?"

"Yes, uh, ma'am," she said. "Just...distracted is all." She blinked several times, squinting at the bright lights. "Little disoriented. I'm still trying to get my bearings...ma'am?"

The doctor smiled well and truly now, and the urge to hit her was nearly overwhelming. She swayed slightly. In the back of her mind, she knew taking another step into the room would be a mistake. The smell of the medigel was irritating her, both senses and her temper, and hitting the doctor was counterproductive. That, and they used to be friends, if her memory served. Which it didn't.

"We were..." Ashley frowned, a customary expression as of late. "Were we friends?"

"If that's what you want to call it, yes," Chakwas said. That relaxed her a bit. She'd spent a large portion of the day asking Garrus questions and assuming things that were wrong. Getting something right was a pleasant change. "Can I help you?"

"I was just..." Just what? She didn't know. Not really. "...looking for some place that was quiet."

Chakwas turned back around in her chair. "The med bay is the quietest spot on the ship as long as you stay back from the server room, and the doors back out onto the deck."

"Can I stay here for a bit?"

"Decompressing?"

She frowned again. "Something like that."

The doctor nodded. "Of course. Make yourself at home, Williams."

"Ashley," she said. "Or...I don't know. What was my nickname?"

"Ash?"

"That's it." Without further interruptions, Ashley took a seat on the same bed that she'd come to adopt as a second home. It was as good a place as any for her, anyway. When she'd been cleared for usual duty (which, in her case, was wandering around aimlessly while trying not to hit someone, or something important) she spent the first few solar cycles in the armory with that Cerberus guy, Jacob.

Her hands wound up in the thin cotton blanket beneath her. She'd nearly shot him for being on her side. Wilson was pissed about something or other, hacked the mechs, and tried his damnedest to kill her and Shepard, and she ended up smearing the floor with his blood. But Jacob? He just didn't like what they were doing to her. He'd been...something to her, before. Not kind, but not harsh and cruel like the scientists had been. He'd been the one to bring her meals when she was locked in her quarters, or just talk when she was feeling disoriented. Not friends, but not enemies. Once, when she got curious, she asked why it was always him being sent to check on her. Said it was because forming attachments to Cerberus agents would help the...indoctrination. Lawson sent Taylor constantly just to fuck with her.

Ashley clenched her fists. Fucking Cerberus.

Instead of moping and making it more likely she'd snap, she decided asking questions would help her more. Help her sort out the jumbled shitstorm in her head.

"Kade was the guy I stayed behind for...right?"

"Kaidan?"

"Shit, Shepard already corrected me on that one," she grumbled. "Come to think of it...he called me Ash too."

"You'll be fine," Chakwas assured her. "There will be side effects of Cerberus' experiments for a while. Most will come as a surprise."

"You..." Her brows shot up and she twisted at the waist to look at the doctor, nose still buried in her computer. "What makes you think I'll be fine?"

Chakwas looked up briefly, then back down, an amused smirk tugging at her lips. "You're stubborn enough." Ashley frowned. "You were stubborn enough to get yourself this far in only a few days. You're stubborn enough to see it through."

"I...well... Okay."

"But yes, to answer your original question, you stayed behind so Commander Shepard could rescue Lieutenant Alenko. You set of a bomb that destroyed Saren's breeding facility on Virmire."

"His...what?"

"Breeding facility. He was curing the genophage, making an army of krogan."

Ashley's eyes went wide, turned back around. "Damn, that's...wow. I did that?"

"And died in the process. Does this surprise you?"

She nodded, hands tightening on the edge of the bed. "Guess it hasn't sunk in yet." Chakwas made a noise in her throat, a questioning one. "The fact that I wasn't always with Cerberus, I mean. The first clear thing I can remember... It's not pretty." She didn't make any sound that Ashley had to continue, but she did. "I was strapped to a chair, I think. Smelled like blood and chlorine, and lots of stuff I can't recognize. They left me there for a while before dragging me off to my cell.

"We passed an operating room," she continued. "Couple of doctors were bickering over their patient, probably Shepard. I remember praying for whoever it was. They didn't want..." Ashley scratched her head, got off the bed. "I didn't want them waking up in the same position I was in."

Chakwas cleared her throat. "Are you sure you don't want to talk with Chambers?"

"If I wanted to, I'd have done it already," she snapped, suddenly defensive. "She's Cerberus through and through. I don't want some Cerberus psych preaching at me about how great they are. Fuck Cerberus. Fuck every Cerberus agent on this ship, myself included. I'd throw myself out the airlock if it got this mission over with any faster."

The doctor looked up from her computer, concern etched into her features. "That's not a healthy attitude, Williams. You should—"

Ashley buried her fist in the glass window, not quite hard enough to damage it, but not exactly gentle enough to leave herself unharmed either. Her knuckles would be split, bruised, something. The pain didn't register right, never would anymore thanks to Cerberus' implants. She noted the injury, stored it away for later, and stormed out the door, right back to the women's restroom. Why she chose to go there she didn't know, but that's where she went, and as soon as the doors slid shut behind her, she had EDI lock them.

They all ended up frustrating her at some point. Joker, Garrus, Chakwas. It wasn't their fault, not really. Hers for having such a short temper. Hers for watching it but not quite controlling it. Any slip up and someone would be dead.

She tore off her Cerberus suit with an irritated grunt, leaving the various pieces in a heap on the floor. A nice, cold shower was in order. Then a trip down to the shuttle bay and storage, a good place she could kick the shit out of a few crates. Then back up to the observation decks to try getting drunk again, and then passing out to the nightmares. Maybe some more crate kicking in the morning, followed by a round of punching the daylights out of a wall. Her usual, day to day routine. Inaction infuriated her, but she knew it was the best in the end. Going out with Shepard's team only put them in danger.

She didn't remember turning on the water. She didn't remember crying either, but warm tears rolled down her cheeks. Damn, but did she want it to end. All of it. Thinking, pain, everything. Ashley just wanted the universe to curl in on itself and tell whatever else was out there exactly where it could shove its hopes and dreams.

Then again...she used to be like that too, didn't she? All humans had hopes, dreams, fears. She remembered hoping against hope that Shepard would save her instead of Kaidan, but also hoping he'd go save him. She remembered lying there in a pool of blood while the life fell from her body, remembered praying for Shepard and Kadain, and the ship's crew. She remembered praying for her sisters and mother, the family she only knew of from her conversations with Shepard. She remembered watching the bomb go off from a small room covered in windows, thinking that maybe, if they were lucky, she'd caught Saren in the blast. All of it hurt, made her see red, hurt in a way that wasn't anywhere near the throb in her hand.

Looked down, knuckles dislocated. She fixed them and resumed her moping, resting her forehead against the cool metal wall. The throb turned to an ache, and she felt like she was falling. Everything was a target to be shot, punched, or kicked, and getting put on the damn Normandy felt like the Illusive Man wanted her to go rogue.

The thought made her shudder. Ashley didn't want that. As a matter of fact, all she wanted was herself. Cerberus' damn tests blurred the lines of reality and imagination, and sometimes it went so far to make her think breathing was fake, and that maybe she should stop so she didn't poison herself on the oxygen. But most of the time, she was sitting somewhere, staring off blankly into space while trying to sort through her thoughts. She doubted if she was even real. Everything, doubt. Was that a wall, or was that something in her head? Was Shepard really Shepard, or had Cerberus just tricked her into thinking someone else was Shepard?

That one scared her the most. Ashley didn't want to believe this was all some elaborate nightmare going on in her head, cooked up by Cerberus just to make her even more miserable. She'd rather find out she was dead and living in her own personal hell for getting the 212 killed.

The what?

Dammit, but she hated not knowing what half the things she thought meant. She hated looking at Shepard and feeling...something. She hated feeling like an outsider looking in on her own memories of him. She tried to understand what it was that made her snap to attention back when they first got on the SR-2. Such a simple thing, such a simple order while she was activated, and she responded. It had shut her off pretty damn quick too. Fucking weird. Nothing ever shut her off except a good rocket to the face, or Lawson's phrase.

And then came Commander Shepard, shutting off the remorseless Cerberus agent buried in her head with an order and a pull of Alliance rank. For a second, just a split second, she felt like herself again, the one that existed before the damn Lazarus Project. Then her eyes locked on Lawson's gun, first aimed at her, and then Shepard, and she'd lost it again. Threatening the success of the project was a trigger. Trying to kill Shepard had been a personal thing. It was...strange when both parts of her agreed on hitting that bitch. Biotic bastard. Nearly launched her across the med bay. Would have too, had Ash not been spending every waking second having the shit beat out of her for failing.

But still, her mind trailed back to Virmire. It always seemed to, especially when she was herself. Or, as much of herself as she could manage. Something about the mission always rubbed her the wrong way. It wasn't that she didn't know Cerberus grabbed her almost immediately after the nuke stopped going, but more that she didn't know the people she died for anymore. Shepard, nope, but she was going to try. Garrus, nope there too. Chakwas and Joker? Double negative. That quarian, Tali'Zorah, from that colony? Also a no, but when Lawson suggested that they might not get what they needed from Veetor, called her a liar, Ashley had to fight the urge to hit her in the back of the head with the butt of her battle rifle. Fucking Cerberus bitch. It was a challenge not to march back out to the deck and beat the shit out of her.

Luckily for Lawson, Shepard would be back soon, and Ashley didn't want him to come back to a missing bulkhead. Especially not when they were in orbit over a Blue Suns base. Recruiting a damn krogan madman. This mission just got better and better.

For a while, she just stood there, letting the icy water pelt her skin. It felt good, refreshing. Helped her focus on a single train of thought when she needed it. Her brain kept focusing on Virmire, half thinking they should've known better than to land on the damn planet. She was starting to wish Shepard had saved her and left Kaidan.

Something in her revolted at the thought. No, it was good that she was left behind. Right choice. She repeated that for a while. Then it stopped working. A tide of memories hit her, the conversations over the comms with the Lieutenant while she, Shepard, and Garrus shot their way through Saren's base. The frantic radio chatter when the SR-1 brought in the nuke, the reluctant voice of their Commander echoing in her head.

"I'm sorry, Ash. Alenko's got the salarians, and—"

"It's the right choice, Commander."

She shut the water off abruptly, toweled off, got back in the suit of Cerberus armor. Then Ashley stormed to the shuttle bay, searching for something that looked sturdy enough. Her knuckles kept getting dislocated, the crew kept staring as she punched and beat the metal crate, and she kept replaying Shepard's apology in her head.

"Forgive me, Ash."

"Not needed, Skipper."

The next punch broke her hand.